In an 1894 Journal article, Cather writes about Lillian Lewis's plans to play Imogen: "If it were only some other Shakespearean play, but Imogen is familiar to so few people and has been played by so few actresses, that she is rather uncontaminated as yet, and seems almost like a dream which is so much Shakespeare's own that it hardly belongs to the world yet. She is so cold and sad and remote from all the raving, ranting women of France whom Lillian loves that it seems a pity....I hope I shall never see Lillian play it."
Cather reviewed Margaret Mather in Shakespeare's Cymbeline for the Journal in 1897: "But O, the play; such a rambling, stringing together of impossible incidents, such unnecessary slaughter, such barbarous taste.... From reading the play you caught no adequate idea of how absurd it appears when presented."