role in the play. George Bernard Shaw, who criticised the play perhaps more harshly than he did any of Shakespeare's other works, took aim at what he saw as the defects of the final act in his 1937 Cymbeline Refinished; as early as 1896, he had complained about the absurdities of the play to Ellen Terry, then preparing to act Imogen. He called it "stagey trash of the lowest melodramatic order". He later changed his view, saying it was "one of the finest of Shakespeare's later plays", but he remained convinced that it "goes to pieces in the final act". Accordingly, in Cymbeline Refinished he rewrote the last act, cutting many of the numerous revelations and expositions, while also making Imogen a much more assertive figure in line with his feminist views. There have been a number of radio adaptations of Cymbeline between the 1930s and the 2000s. The BBC broadcast productions of Cymbeline in the United Kingdom in 1934, 1951, 1957, 1986, 1996, and 2006. NBC broadcast a production of the play in the United States in 1938. In October 1951 the BBC aired a production of George Bernard Shaw's Cymbeline Refinished, as well as Shaw's foreword to the play. Screen adaptations Lucius J. Henderson directed the first screen adaptation of Cymbeline in 1913. The film was produced by the Thanhouser Company and starred Florence La Badie as Imogen, James Cruze as Posthumus, William Garwood as Iachimo, William Russell as Cymbeline, and Jean Darnell as the Queen. In 1937 the BBC broadcast several scenes of André van Gyseghem's production of the play, which opened 16 November the same year, on television. The scenes that comprised the broadcast were pulled exclusively from Acts I and II of the play, and included the 'trunk scene' from Act II Scene 2. In 1956 the BBC produced a similar television program, this time airing scenes from Michael Benthall's theatrical production, which opened 11 September 1956. Like the 1937 program, the 1956 broadcast ran for roughly half an hour and presented several scenes from Cymbeline, including the trunk scene. In 1968 Jerzy Jarocki directed an adaptation of the play for Polish television, starring Wiktor Sadecki as Cymbeline and Ewa Lassek as Imogen. Elijah Moshinsky directed the BBC Television Shakespeare adaptation in 1982, ignoring the ancient British period setting in favour of a more timeless and snow-laden atmosphere inspired by Rembrandt and his contemporary Dutch