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Cymbeline
Cymbeline tells the story of a British king, Cymbeline, and his three children, presented as though they are in a fairy tale. The secret marriage of Cymbeline’s daughter, Imogen, triggers much of the action, which includes villainous slander, homicidal jealousy, cross-gender disguise, a deathlike trance, and the appearance of Jupiter in a vision.
Cymbeline displays unusually powerful emotions with a tremendous charge. Like some of Shakespeare’s other late work—especially The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest—it is an improbable story lifted into a nearly mythic realm.
Cymbeline displays unusually powerful emotions with a tremendous charge. Like some of Shakespeare’s other late work—especially The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest—it is an improbable story lifted into a nearly mythic realm.
324 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1610
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About the author
William Shakespeare
21.4kbooks45.6kfollowersWilliam Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 902 reviews
August 17, 2019
I've read this play three times, and I've found that the longer since I last read it, the better I imagine it to be. In theory, it's a great play: the political situation, involving the tribute an emerging British nation must pay to a "Roman" empire has interesting Jacobean parallels in continental politics involving a "Roman" Church; the theological implications, the way Shakespeare finds a place for compassion in the merciless world of Lear's gods and flies, is instructive and attractive; and the cavalier manner in which the bard treats stage conventions--from the anonymous two lords in the first scene who only exist to present the necessary exposition to the eventual appearance of a literal "deus ex machina" in the person of Jupiter--shows a master of form thumbing his nose at his own expertise for his particular metaphysical purposes.
Sure, this all sounds great in retrospect, but the characters themselves are petty and cold and and when they are fresh in my mind they--with the exception of Imogen--fail to move me. Iachimo ("little Iago") is too pathetic and irresolute in his villainy, Posthumous Leonatus is too easily persuaded of his love's infidelity and too abruptly murderous in his intentions, and even Imogen is much, much too ready to forgive. Also, the play is so full of misunderstandings that it takes one of the longest final scenes in Shakespeare merely to straighten out all the loose ends.
And yet. . . Cymbeline is full of marvels and immortal poetry (including a "dirge" that is one of the finest lyrics in the English language) and it is graced with a heroine--Imogen--who is as admirable, lovable and brave as any the poet has created.
March 16, 2020
Book Review
3 out of 5 stars to , a play written in 1611 by . I read this during a Shakespeare course in college and then watched a film version. My review covers both. There seems to be a very dark aura surrounding the characters and the setting. All of the characters seem to be angry with each other, as though they do not like each other. Cymbeline didn’t get along with his wife nor with his daughter. Cymbeline as suppose to be an anxious and frustrated man, yet he appeared to be sickly and weak instead. The forces in the play were controlled by some other figure, instead of how they were in the actual words of the play. The set was mostly back with gold trim and the characters were often in silhouette. This darkness about the set and characters made the emotions and psychology of the play seem dark also.
Moshinsky (director) wanted the characters to appear as though they were alone. I definitely got this impression. When Imogen was locked in her room trying to find her bracelet, the camera went back and forth between her and Cloten serenading her. They weren’t in the same room, yet there was a divider between them. Neither seemed close to anyone. They were separate entities. The psychological interpretation of these behaviors, as directed by Moshinsky, was somewhat confusing. It seemed as though the director was focusing on optimism -- as in the death songs of Imogen. I suppose the behaviors then would be forgiveness and helpfulness and kindness. All three are evident in the play and shown in the film we saw. The unraveling scene at the end showed the forgiveness of Iachimo, etc. It was light-hearted by that point.
As for the meaning of the play - it was definitely challenging to me, especially after watching the video and seeing a different interpretation than I thought it was. When I saw Cloten’s bloody head dripping and Imogen lying next to the bloody body, bathing herself in it, etc. I then saw the dark emotions of death and it’s repercussions. However, within the death, it was portrayed as though it was nothing. The psychology here could be shown as the director believing that the play was very dark, when in my opinion it was more light and happy. The only horrible part was the death of Cloten. In the text it seemed bloody, but not disgusting. In the video, it was horrific. So, it was more of a murky version than what I expected it to be. I was thrown by these dark emotional scenes which was the opposite of how I interpreted the play.
About Me
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on ŷ, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at , where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.
3 out of 5 stars to , a play written in 1611 by . I read this during a Shakespeare course in college and then watched a film version. My review covers both. There seems to be a very dark aura surrounding the characters and the setting. All of the characters seem to be angry with each other, as though they do not like each other. Cymbeline didn’t get along with his wife nor with his daughter. Cymbeline as suppose to be an anxious and frustrated man, yet he appeared to be sickly and weak instead. The forces in the play were controlled by some other figure, instead of how they were in the actual words of the play. The set was mostly back with gold trim and the characters were often in silhouette. This darkness about the set and characters made the emotions and psychology of the play seem dark also.
Moshinsky (director) wanted the characters to appear as though they were alone. I definitely got this impression. When Imogen was locked in her room trying to find her bracelet, the camera went back and forth between her and Cloten serenading her. They weren’t in the same room, yet there was a divider between them. Neither seemed close to anyone. They were separate entities. The psychological interpretation of these behaviors, as directed by Moshinsky, was somewhat confusing. It seemed as though the director was focusing on optimism -- as in the death songs of Imogen. I suppose the behaviors then would be forgiveness and helpfulness and kindness. All three are evident in the play and shown in the film we saw. The unraveling scene at the end showed the forgiveness of Iachimo, etc. It was light-hearted by that point.
As for the meaning of the play - it was definitely challenging to me, especially after watching the video and seeing a different interpretation than I thought it was. When I saw Cloten’s bloody head dripping and Imogen lying next to the bloody body, bathing herself in it, etc. I then saw the dark emotions of death and it’s repercussions. However, within the death, it was portrayed as though it was nothing. The psychology here could be shown as the director believing that the play was very dark, when in my opinion it was more light and happy. The only horrible part was the death of Cloten. In the text it seemed bloody, but not disgusting. In the video, it was horrific. So, it was more of a murky version than what I expected it to be. I was thrown by these dark emotional scenes which was the opposite of how I interpreted the play.
About Me
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on ŷ, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at , where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.
July 24, 2020
When I first started reading this play, another reviewer pointed out that "it's like Shakespeare just said fuck it, I'm using every good idea I ever had in one play," and, damn, she was right. Cymbeline is such a wild ride from start to finish that never ceases to be thrilling. It has elements of Othello, The Winter's Tale, King Lear and many more of Shakespeare's most revered plays.
Cymbeline is set in Ancient Britain and concerns itself with the Celtic British King Cymbeline (...not gonna lie, when I started this play, I thought Cymbeline would be a woman, lmao, just goes to show the amazing knowledge that I have of British history). The play has been considered a tragedy (in the First Folio) but modern critics often classify it as a romance or comedy, which I would agree with as well.
In case you're up for a little background knowledge on the whole quarto versus folio spiel (that you can whip out at parties to impress ... absolutely no one): Shakespeare was quite popular with his contemporaries, but his commitment to the theatre and to the plays in performance is demonstrated by the fact that only about half of his plays appeared in print in his lifetime, in slim paperback volumes known as quartos, so called because they were made from printers' sheets folded twice to form four leaves (eight pages) None of them show any sign that he was involved in their publication. For him, performance was the primary means of publication.
Luckily for us, in 1623, seven years after he died, his colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell published his collected plays, including the 18 that had not previously appeared in print, in the First Folio, whose name derives from the fact that printers' sheets were folded only once to produce two leaves (four pages).
Anyways, let's get back to Cymbeline. It is one of Willie's last plays and a very perplexing work of art. It was probably written in the middle of 1610 and managed to connect the primary genres of tragedy and comedy through the phenomenon of wonder.
It is the story, familiar in all Western literature, of how children struggle to get free from their parents. In Cymbeline all these traditional rites of passage (that allow children to detach themselves from their parents without being too damaged in the process) are abruptly and disastrously interrupted. The mysterious snatching away of the baby princes (Guiderius and Arvirargus), Britain's break with Rome, Imogen's sudden wedding and flight from her father... Seen this way, a good deal of suffering in Cymbeline can be attributed to fathers and father figured, whether it's the kidnapper and substitute-father Belarius, or the Roman Emperor denying Britain full nationhood, or Cymbeline himself, peevishly trying to block his daughter's marriage. Fathers fail their children in Cymbeline, or get in the way, or simply become unimportant, as they do in most of Shakespeare's work.
In the play, Imogen's exiled husband Posthumus meets Iachimo, who challenges the prideful Posthumus to a bet that he can seduce Imogen, whom Posthumus has praised for her chastity, and then bring Posthumus proof of Imogen's adultery.
Iachimo heads to Britain where he aggressively attempts to seduce the faithful Imogen, who sends him packing. Iachimo then hides in a chest in Imogen's bedchamber and, when the princess falls asleep, emerges to steal from her Posthumus's bracelet. He also takes note of the room, as well as the mole on Imogen's partly naked body, to be able to present false evidence to Posthumus that he has seduced his bride.
What the audience will ask is whether any harm has been done to Imgoen by his gazing at her and turning her into an image, beyond the damage he plans to do to her reputation with Posthumus. Has he in any sense raped her or transformed her? Shakespeare opens up several disturbing things in this scene about men and their sexual desires. Iachimo is a voyeur and when Imogen falls asleep she becomes vulnerable to his exploitation.
Due to their similar actions and functions within the play, Iachimo naturally reminded me of Othello's Iago (remember that damn handkerchief?). However, I think it is preparedness that ultimately distinguishes the two. In Othello Iago's opportunism � his ability to exploit new circumstances and to relish taking a risk, even after a temporary setback � differs from the subtle and cautious planning implied by Iachimo arriving with a conjurer's trick boy and fancy explanation about a gift for the Emperor. Both men are villains who know how to manipulate their victims' insecurities and jealousies, but Iachimo's villainy looks more like a careful instrument of some design than the embodiment of capricious and anarchic malice.
Returning to Italy, Iachimo convinces Posthumus that he has successfully seduced Imogen. In his wrath, Posthumus sends two letters to Britain: one to Imogen, telling her to meet him at Milford Haven, on the Welsh coast; the other to the servant Pisanio, ordering him to murder Imogen at the Haven.
Cloten's main function in the play is to suffer the insults and death that Posthumus deserves. Shakespeare breaks with the established image of the blameless hero or husband, who, in the source material of the play (and in all earlier versions of the wager story), goes unpunished, even though he orders the murder of his own wife. (!!!) Posthumus is naive even beyond what normally happens in this type of test-a-wife story, so easily deluded in fact that his outbursts suffuse he had never fully trusted Imogen. Later in the play, the departure from this convention of the impeccable hero is even more startling when Posthumus regents and feels suicidal that he ordered Pisanio to murder Imogen. Posthumus' hysterical loss of self-control points to a deep-rooted distrust of women.
To protect Posthumus from the ultimate penalty for his crime, Shakespeare invented a surrogate for him, and then played a joke on the surrogate by giving him an especially appropriate name, Cloten � the clot, that is, the thick lump, the clod poll, the blockish head. But Cloten is linked to Posthumus by more than his name. The characters, significantly, never appear onstage together, and there are disturbing similarities in the things they plan to do to Imogen to take revenge on her. The consensus now is that they are Jekyll and Hyde doubles, and that a single actor may have played both parts on the Jacobean stage. The more closely Cloten resembles Posthumus, the darker the play will be.
Meanwhile, Cloten learns of the "meeting" between Imogen and Posthumus at Milford Haven. Dressing himself enviously in Posthumus's clothes, he decides to go to Wales to kill Posthumus, and then rape, abduct, and marry Imogen.
Imogen has now been travelling as "Fidele" through the Welsh mountains, her health in decline as she comes to a cave: the home of Belarius, along with his "sons" Polydore and Cadwal, whom he raised into great hunters. These two young men are in fact the British princes Guiderius and Arviragus, who themselves do not realise their own origin. The men discover "Fidele", and, instantly captivated by a strange affinity for "him", become fast friends.
Outside the cave, Guiderius is met by Cloten, who throws insults, leading to a sword fight during which Guiderius beheads Cloten. Imogen believing the corpse to be her husband, driven by the extremity of her grief, bloodies her face from the severed arteries in the man's neck, so that together she and he may seem 'the horrid' to those who will chance to find them. This is awful, and it is awful in a way that goes beyond the horrors of classical tragedy.
Some of Shakespeare's contemporaries believed that the world of Ancient Britain was purer and more primitive than their own (because closer in time to the lost Golden Age and not corrupted by Rome and the Pope), so perhaps in Cymbeline he set out to show them just how wrong they were.
The play ends with pardons, reunions and settled quarrels, and with the prophecy explained. The concluding lines close in a moment of stasis, just before all good things are about to begin. If we take a closer look at the reunion between Imogen and Posthumus though, we will find another image of dependency fixed for ever. When Imogen embraces Posthumus, he lifts her up and says:
This is especially sickening since Posthumus is such bad, weak, evil man who blames everyone but himself for his own shortcomings and questionable actions (like ordering the murder of Imogen herself, ugh). Indeed, the rehabilitation of Posthumus at the end of the play is the most difficult task that Shakespeare set himself in Cymbeline, and I'm not quite sure if he succeeded (not in my book, at least).
Favorite quote: "Sir, I would advise you to shift a shirt; the violence of action hath made you reek as sacrifice" is basically Shakespeare's fancy way of saying "You stink, put on some fresh clothes." And I love him for that.
Favorite stage direction: Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle. He throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees. I mean, you can't make that shit up! Just imagining how they must've staged that in the early 17th century makes me cackle so much. What a mess!
Cymbeline is set in Ancient Britain and concerns itself with the Celtic British King Cymbeline (...not gonna lie, when I started this play, I thought Cymbeline would be a woman, lmao, just goes to show the amazing knowledge that I have of British history). The play has been considered a tragedy (in the First Folio) but modern critics often classify it as a romance or comedy, which I would agree with as well.
In case you're up for a little background knowledge on the whole quarto versus folio spiel (that you can whip out at parties to impress ... absolutely no one): Shakespeare was quite popular with his contemporaries, but his commitment to the theatre and to the plays in performance is demonstrated by the fact that only about half of his plays appeared in print in his lifetime, in slim paperback volumes known as quartos, so called because they were made from printers' sheets folded twice to form four leaves (eight pages) None of them show any sign that he was involved in their publication. For him, performance was the primary means of publication.
Luckily for us, in 1623, seven years after he died, his colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell published his collected plays, including the 18 that had not previously appeared in print, in the First Folio, whose name derives from the fact that printers' sheets were folded only once to produce two leaves (four pages).
Anyways, let's get back to Cymbeline. It is one of Willie's last plays and a very perplexing work of art. It was probably written in the middle of 1610 and managed to connect the primary genres of tragedy and comedy through the phenomenon of wonder.
It is the story, familiar in all Western literature, of how children struggle to get free from their parents. In Cymbeline all these traditional rites of passage (that allow children to detach themselves from their parents without being too damaged in the process) are abruptly and disastrously interrupted. The mysterious snatching away of the baby princes (Guiderius and Arvirargus), Britain's break with Rome, Imogen's sudden wedding and flight from her father... Seen this way, a good deal of suffering in Cymbeline can be attributed to fathers and father figured, whether it's the kidnapper and substitute-father Belarius, or the Roman Emperor denying Britain full nationhood, or Cymbeline himself, peevishly trying to block his daughter's marriage. Fathers fail their children in Cymbeline, or get in the way, or simply become unimportant, as they do in most of Shakespeare's work.
In the play, Imogen's exiled husband Posthumus meets Iachimo, who challenges the prideful Posthumus to a bet that he can seduce Imogen, whom Posthumus has praised for her chastity, and then bring Posthumus proof of Imogen's adultery.
Iachimo heads to Britain where he aggressively attempts to seduce the faithful Imogen, who sends him packing. Iachimo then hides in a chest in Imogen's bedchamber and, when the princess falls asleep, emerges to steal from her Posthumus's bracelet. He also takes note of the room, as well as the mole on Imogen's partly naked body, to be able to present false evidence to Posthumus that he has seduced his bride.
What the audience will ask is whether any harm has been done to Imgoen by his gazing at her and turning her into an image, beyond the damage he plans to do to her reputation with Posthumus. Has he in any sense raped her or transformed her? Shakespeare opens up several disturbing things in this scene about men and their sexual desires. Iachimo is a voyeur and when Imogen falls asleep she becomes vulnerable to his exploitation.
Due to their similar actions and functions within the play, Iachimo naturally reminded me of Othello's Iago (remember that damn handkerchief?). However, I think it is preparedness that ultimately distinguishes the two. In Othello Iago's opportunism � his ability to exploit new circumstances and to relish taking a risk, even after a temporary setback � differs from the subtle and cautious planning implied by Iachimo arriving with a conjurer's trick boy and fancy explanation about a gift for the Emperor. Both men are villains who know how to manipulate their victims' insecurities and jealousies, but Iachimo's villainy looks more like a careful instrument of some design than the embodiment of capricious and anarchic malice.
Returning to Italy, Iachimo convinces Posthumus that he has successfully seduced Imogen. In his wrath, Posthumus sends two letters to Britain: one to Imogen, telling her to meet him at Milford Haven, on the Welsh coast; the other to the servant Pisanio, ordering him to murder Imogen at the Haven.
Cloten's main function in the play is to suffer the insults and death that Posthumus deserves. Shakespeare breaks with the established image of the blameless hero or husband, who, in the source material of the play (and in all earlier versions of the wager story), goes unpunished, even though he orders the murder of his own wife. (!!!) Posthumus is naive even beyond what normally happens in this type of test-a-wife story, so easily deluded in fact that his outbursts suffuse he had never fully trusted Imogen. Later in the play, the departure from this convention of the impeccable hero is even more startling when Posthumus regents and feels suicidal that he ordered Pisanio to murder Imogen. Posthumus' hysterical loss of self-control points to a deep-rooted distrust of women.
To protect Posthumus from the ultimate penalty for his crime, Shakespeare invented a surrogate for him, and then played a joke on the surrogate by giving him an especially appropriate name, Cloten � the clot, that is, the thick lump, the clod poll, the blockish head. But Cloten is linked to Posthumus by more than his name. The characters, significantly, never appear onstage together, and there are disturbing similarities in the things they plan to do to Imogen to take revenge on her. The consensus now is that they are Jekyll and Hyde doubles, and that a single actor may have played both parts on the Jacobean stage. The more closely Cloten resembles Posthumus, the darker the play will be.
Meanwhile, Cloten learns of the "meeting" between Imogen and Posthumus at Milford Haven. Dressing himself enviously in Posthumus's clothes, he decides to go to Wales to kill Posthumus, and then rape, abduct, and marry Imogen.
Imogen has now been travelling as "Fidele" through the Welsh mountains, her health in decline as she comes to a cave: the home of Belarius, along with his "sons" Polydore and Cadwal, whom he raised into great hunters. These two young men are in fact the British princes Guiderius and Arviragus, who themselves do not realise their own origin. The men discover "Fidele", and, instantly captivated by a strange affinity for "him", become fast friends.
Outside the cave, Guiderius is met by Cloten, who throws insults, leading to a sword fight during which Guiderius beheads Cloten. Imogen believing the corpse to be her husband, driven by the extremity of her grief, bloodies her face from the severed arteries in the man's neck, so that together she and he may seem 'the horrid' to those who will chance to find them. This is awful, and it is awful in a way that goes beyond the horrors of classical tragedy.
Some of Shakespeare's contemporaries believed that the world of Ancient Britain was purer and more primitive than their own (because closer in time to the lost Golden Age and not corrupted by Rome and the Pope), so perhaps in Cymbeline he set out to show them just how wrong they were.
The play ends with pardons, reunions and settled quarrels, and with the prophecy explained. The concluding lines close in a moment of stasis, just before all good things are about to begin. If we take a closer look at the reunion between Imogen and Posthumus though, we will find another image of dependency fixed for ever. When Imogen embraces Posthumus, he lifts her up and says:
Hang there like fruit, my soul,Tennyson wanted these lines with him on his deathbed, he thought them so beautiful, but they also tell us something more uncomforting about this couple. Posthumus says he is the tree, and Imogen is the fruit, so she will hang pendant from him for ever, never ripening and falling, always his wife and always his daughter.
Till the tree die.
This is especially sickening since Posthumus is such bad, weak, evil man who blames everyone but himself for his own shortcomings and questionable actions (like ordering the murder of Imogen herself, ugh). Indeed, the rehabilitation of Posthumus at the end of the play is the most difficult task that Shakespeare set himself in Cymbeline, and I'm not quite sure if he succeeded (not in my book, at least).
Favorite quote: "Sir, I would advise you to shift a shirt; the violence of action hath made you reek as sacrifice" is basically Shakespeare's fancy way of saying "You stink, put on some fresh clothes." And I love him for that.
Favorite stage direction: Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle. He throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees. I mean, you can't make that shit up! Just imagining how they must've staged that in the early 17th century makes me cackle so much. What a mess!
November 19, 2021
Faithful to the Big Will, I tried the Cymbeline experiment. Adventure because Shakespeare plays that I had read famous plays. I knew what I was going to find. But, of course, every time I found much more than my preconceived ideas, the playwright's imagination went far beyond what I could expect. Besides, a whole corpus of texts often accompanied this reading: Verdi, films, historical context, and the best: the theatrical performance.
For Cymbeline, none of this! I had never heard the title that suggested a fairy to me; Cymbeline is a pretty name for a pixie. This reading, without any preconceptions, with the name of Shakespeare for any recommendation, was an adventure.
We must not fear the improbabilities, the royal children kidnapped, the poisons of an ugly mother-in-law, the reversals of the jacket and the cross-dressers. Not to be looking down on beheading (even if it's for a good cause), resurrections.
For Cymbeline, none of this! I had never heard the title that suggested a fairy to me; Cymbeline is a pretty name for a pixie. This reading, without any preconceptions, with the name of Shakespeare for any recommendation, was an adventure.
We must not fear the improbabilities, the royal children kidnapped, the poisons of an ugly mother-in-law, the reversals of the jacket and the cross-dressers. Not to be looking down on beheading (even if it's for a good cause), resurrections.
February 23, 2009
Imagine that characters from previous plays have ganged up on Shakespeare and threatened to sue him for libel--clearly, they would never behave in the way he suggests. They demand the real story be told. He offers a compromise: rather than go to the trouble and expense of rewrites and retractions, he will write a special play, just for them, and not interfere at all in the execution of plot. In fact, the deus ex machina gets to be a character too, since it was threatening to report him to OSHA over its use in past plays. The characters haul along their favorite plot devices from previous plays, and clearly bicker about setting and timeframe: Roman Britain, Renaissance Italy, republican Rome, and Henry V's England all manage to coexist without invoking paradox, while travel across physical distance seems to take no time at all. One is left suspecting the offscreen involvement of Dr. Who and his TARDIS contraption. Nonetheless, the play turns out surprisingly well, with rather realistic characters and a plot that is comely and well-formed. The story goes something like this:
Twenty years ago King Lear unjustly banished Prospero, who took revenge by stealing the king's two infant sons. Lear's wife dies, so he remarries; Lady Macbeth, Gertrude, and Tamora agree to share this character, and get up to no end of trouble in their attempts to put their sonChiron Demetrius Troilus on the throne. Lear's remaining daughter, now grown, is a pragmatic mix of Viola and Juliet, who occasionally channels Cressida's propensity for mouthing off; she refuses to marry Troilus, instead marrying Othello (a foundling in the court) without permission. Under the urging of the queen, Lear imprisons Viola and exiles Othello to Medici Italy. Punishment indeed. Meanwhile Lady Macbeth acquires what she thinks is a deadly poison, but actually turns out to be Juliet's famed sleeping draft, and gives it to Viola's loyal servant Benvolio Horatio as medicine. In Italy, Othello strikes a Merchant of Venice bargain with Iago (who is also Puck and Harlequin), betting fat stacks of cash that Harlequin can't seduce his wife. Harlequin travels to Roman Britain and attempts to do so, Viola turns into an offended Wendy Wellesley, and later Harlequin sneaks into Viola's bedchamber to and catch a look at her boobies. Presenting the ring and intimate knowledge of said boobies as evidence, Harlequin convinces Othello that he really has slept with his wife. Othello spurts out two scenes of mysogynistic doggerel and orders Horatio to kill Viola. Instead, Horatio spirits Viola away to Wales, helps her disguise herself as a man, and hatches a mad scheme to fake her death offer her service as a page to Marc Antony, who is headed to Lear's court to discuss tribute payments to Rome. Viola gets lost in the Welsh wilderness, but falls in with Prospero and her two brothers. She would have stayed there, of course, but falls ill and takes Horatio's "medicine," which causes her to fall into a coma for a while. Taken for dead, she is given a proper funeral by her brothers. Meanwhile, Troilus whines. Lady Macbeth flatters Lear into playing Henry V. Lear is Lear, so he really can't pull it off. They refuse to pay tribute, Marc Antony vaguely attempts to reason with them, and they end up at war with Rome. Troilus pursues Viola to Wales, intent on seeing her boobies (in the Biblical sense). Naturally, he gets himself lopped in half by one of the lost princes, which is how Troilus and Cressida should have ended. Viola wakes up after the funeral to find Troilus's dead body, sans head, dressed in her husband's clothes; she concludes that it's all a nasty plot of Horatio's, that he has killed Othello and meant the poison to kill her. Marc Antony and his retinue pass by, and seeing her grief at a slain captain, offers to take her on as a page; she consents, though she is no longer trying to emigrate to Italy. Meanwhile, Othello feels some remorse for having his wife slain. Seeing no further point in living, and bound by anachronistic Catholic notions regarding suicide, everybody goes to war with everybody. British forces very nearly lose, but then Prospero and the two renegade princes show up, and the three of them defeat the entire Roman army. Othello, Marc Antony, Viola, and Horatio are taken as prisoners of war. Just in time for the last scene, Deus Ex Machina gets to dress up as Zeus for a scene, bumbles through his first real lines in the entire corpus of Shakespearean literature, and uses magic tricks to make everyone listen to one another's explanations. Lady Macbeth dies of a fever, not a broken heart (since she doesn't have one), never suffers madness or remorse, and makes her deathbed confessions only because Zeus compels her to do so. Everybody forgives everybody, Lear issues official pardons, Viola and Othello are named next in line for the throne, Britain starts paying Rome tribute again despite winning the war, and everybody lives happily every after. Except Troilus. Which is as it should be.
All in all, I can't help thinking that Shakespeare would have been better off giving his characters freer rein. They were clearly better at plotting, though they relied on him for snappy/poetic dialogue. This might have been an exceptional play, in fact, if only the characters and author had been on speaking terms.
/exit stage left, followed by a bear.
Twenty years ago King Lear unjustly banished Prospero, who took revenge by stealing the king's two infant sons. Lear's wife dies, so he remarries; Lady Macbeth, Gertrude, and Tamora agree to share this character, and get up to no end of trouble in their attempts to put their son
All in all, I can't help thinking that Shakespeare would have been better off giving his characters freer rein. They were clearly better at plotting, though they relied on him for snappy/poetic dialogue. This might have been an exceptional play, in fact, if only the characters and author had been on speaking terms.
/exit stage left, followed by a bear.
December 21, 2017
"I cannot sing. I'll weep, and word it with thee,
For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse
Than priests and fanes that lie."
- William Shakespeare, Cymbeline
Not a great Shakespeare play. It has a few good lines and seems to follow the path cut by earlier jealousy plays like and . I think, if grouped with these two, it is the runt of the jealous litter. My favorite quote about this play (or this point in Shakespeare's life) comes from Lytton Strachey, who said it is "difficult to resist the conclusion that he [Shakespeare] was getting bored himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams.". I tend to agree. This seems a bit dashed off. A bit loose and ended a bit too happy. While I don't need everyone to die, like in Hamlet, I prefer my Shakespeare endings to be complex, uneven, human. The deaths in this play still seemed to contain very little drama to them. And to be sure, the IDEA of the play was an interesting one. I think if Shakespeare had written this earlier in his life, or if he had more energy toward the end of his life, this might have been able to achieve something between Winter's Tale and Othello.
One note, I might have even given it only 2-stars, but Act IV, Scene 2 is amazing. Belarius has some great lines, and the funeral song is amazing (I'm normally not a fan of Shakespeare's songs, but this one was amazing).
Favorite lines:
“I am glad I was up so late, for that's the reason I was up so early.� (Act 2, Scene 3)
“The game is up� (Act 3, Scene 3)
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. (Act 4, Scene 2)
"The ground that gave them first has them again,
Their pleasures here are past, so is thie pain." (Act 4, Scene 2)
“Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.� (Act 4, Scene 3)
For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse
Than priests and fanes that lie."
- William Shakespeare, Cymbeline
Not a great Shakespeare play. It has a few good lines and seems to follow the path cut by earlier jealousy plays like and . I think, if grouped with these two, it is the runt of the jealous litter. My favorite quote about this play (or this point in Shakespeare's life) comes from Lytton Strachey, who said it is "difficult to resist the conclusion that he [Shakespeare] was getting bored himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams.". I tend to agree. This seems a bit dashed off. A bit loose and ended a bit too happy. While I don't need everyone to die, like in Hamlet, I prefer my Shakespeare endings to be complex, uneven, human. The deaths in this play still seemed to contain very little drama to them. And to be sure, the IDEA of the play was an interesting one. I think if Shakespeare had written this earlier in his life, or if he had more energy toward the end of his life, this might have been able to achieve something between Winter's Tale and Othello.
One note, I might have even given it only 2-stars, but Act IV, Scene 2 is amazing. Belarius has some great lines, and the funeral song is amazing (I'm normally not a fan of Shakespeare's songs, but this one was amazing).
Favorite lines:
“I am glad I was up so late, for that's the reason I was up so early.� (Act 2, Scene 3)
“The game is up� (Act 3, Scene 3)
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. (Act 4, Scene 2)
"The ground that gave them first has them again,
Their pleasures here are past, so is thie pain." (Act 4, Scene 2)
“Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.� (Act 4, Scene 3)
January 5, 2024
Rating: 3.5 stars
Cymbeline is believed to be one of Shakespeare's final plays, and is set in Ancient Britain when Augustus Caesar was Emperor of Rome. The play is based on legends that are recorded in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles concerning the early historical Celtic British King Cunobeline. The part of the wager is derived from Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron and the anonymously authored Frederyke of Jennen.
This is a rather long, busy, convoluted romance-comedy play in which Shakespeare seems to have recycled every idea/theme/motif he came up with (or pilfered as the case may be), except the shipwreck. I think I would have preferred it if someone had been shipwrecked or drowned.
SPOILER SUMMARY OF THE PLAY
PS: I have no idea why Shakespeare thinks women would go back to a husband that assumed they were unfaithful on some strangers say-so and that then tried to kill them (it's not just this play, it's quite a lot of them).
Cymbeline is believed to be one of Shakespeare's final plays, and is set in Ancient Britain when Augustus Caesar was Emperor of Rome. The play is based on legends that are recorded in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles concerning the early historical Celtic British King Cunobeline. The part of the wager is derived from Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron and the anonymously authored Frederyke of Jennen.
This is a rather long, busy, convoluted romance-comedy play in which Shakespeare seems to have recycled every idea/theme/motif he came up with (or pilfered as the case may be), except the shipwreck. I think I would have preferred it if someone had been shipwrecked or drowned.
SPOILER SUMMARY OF THE PLAY
PS: I have no idea why Shakespeare thinks women would go back to a husband that assumed they were unfaithful on some strangers say-so and that then tried to kill them (it's not just this play, it's quite a lot of them).
November 2, 2024
“Heaven mend all!�
CYMBELINE is one of Shakespeare's last plays and boasts more subplots than almost any other of the Bard's works. However, the resolution of this play brings all the subplots together nicely in a satisfying (and convenient I admit) resolution that is one of the happiest endings in all of Shakespeare.
By the way, I give "Cymbeline" a 4-star rating compared to other Shakespeare, not to literature as a whole. The Bard is in a class of his own.
CYMBELINE shares a lot in common with the play that Shakespeare wrote soon after it, THE WINTER’S TALE. Many readers don't like these late works of Shakespeare's, but I love them as their themes of grace and redemption resonate mightily with me. The two male leads of both plays (Posthumus and Leontes) also share common traits, as both are quick to anger, rage, and willingness to believe the worst about their spouses. And both are the unworthy recipients of the redeeming power of forgiveness and grace.
Act 2:4 is a highlight of this dizzying play as we get to see one of Shakespeare's lesser villains, Iachimo, toying with Posthumus, who believes he is a cuckold. Iachimo paints such vivid pictures in the jealous mind of this dupe that he backs Posthumus into a corner with sexual imagery. The cat enjoys toying with this mouse, and it makes for delightful reading!
This play also boats the richly drawn character of Innogen, the daughter of the king of the title and wife to Posthumus. She is a great Shakespearean heroine, especially in Acts 3 and 4 of this play. In those two acts she is on par with AS YOU LIKE IT’S Rosalind, who is in my opinion Shakespeare's greatest female creation. Innogen is almost too well drawn a character for this play, such is her vivacity and delight for the reader.
Act 4:2 contains one of the more famous aspects of CYMBELINE, a very simple and touching elegy that is spoken over the grave of one of the characters. To my mind it is one of the best statements about death in all of literature. In fact, it is often quoted at funerals to this day. In context it is spoken by two brothers at the grave of their friend/adopted brother, and it is what every living soul hopes for the dead.
Quotes:
� “Away, thou’rt poison to my blood.�
� “Sir, as I told you always: her beauty and her brain go not together.�
� “Boldness be my friend.�
� “I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure.�
� “How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature.
� “No, tis slander, whose edge is sharper than the sword.�
� “Society is no comfort to one not sociable.�
� “…nothing routs us but the villainy of our fears.�
� “I am merrier to die than thou art to live.�
� “Pardon’s the word to all.�
This is a play that is not easy to read and will require a commitment from you. With its large cast and many plotlines, you cannot pick this text up at random. However, if you stick with it and focus on it you will experience a gem of the Shakespeare canon.
Note on this specific edition-
The RSC Modern Library editions of the plays of Shakespeare are a quality trade paperback edition. These editions include an Introduction to the play, an essay on the performance history of the piece, and interviews with directors and actors who have worked on it. For CYMBELINE these extras are a miss. The Introduction is typical quasi-intellectual claptrap. Skip it, as it is overthinking the play. Also, the extra essays for this one I did not find as satisfying as I have for some of the other plays.
The Modern Library edition also includes a scene-by-scene analysis, which can help point out an image or symbol you might have missed. The edition also includes a nice “Further Readings� list specifically for this play. Frankly, all the extra essays allow you to dive into the world of the play, and it is all included in one text.
CYMBELINE is one of Shakespeare's last plays and boasts more subplots than almost any other of the Bard's works. However, the resolution of this play brings all the subplots together nicely in a satisfying (and convenient I admit) resolution that is one of the happiest endings in all of Shakespeare.
By the way, I give "Cymbeline" a 4-star rating compared to other Shakespeare, not to literature as a whole. The Bard is in a class of his own.
CYMBELINE shares a lot in common with the play that Shakespeare wrote soon after it, THE WINTER’S TALE. Many readers don't like these late works of Shakespeare's, but I love them as their themes of grace and redemption resonate mightily with me. The two male leads of both plays (Posthumus and Leontes) also share common traits, as both are quick to anger, rage, and willingness to believe the worst about their spouses. And both are the unworthy recipients of the redeeming power of forgiveness and grace.
Act 2:4 is a highlight of this dizzying play as we get to see one of Shakespeare's lesser villains, Iachimo, toying with Posthumus, who believes he is a cuckold. Iachimo paints such vivid pictures in the jealous mind of this dupe that he backs Posthumus into a corner with sexual imagery. The cat enjoys toying with this mouse, and it makes for delightful reading!
This play also boats the richly drawn character of Innogen, the daughter of the king of the title and wife to Posthumus. She is a great Shakespearean heroine, especially in Acts 3 and 4 of this play. In those two acts she is on par with AS YOU LIKE IT’S Rosalind, who is in my opinion Shakespeare's greatest female creation. Innogen is almost too well drawn a character for this play, such is her vivacity and delight for the reader.
Act 4:2 contains one of the more famous aspects of CYMBELINE, a very simple and touching elegy that is spoken over the grave of one of the characters. To my mind it is one of the best statements about death in all of literature. In fact, it is often quoted at funerals to this day. In context it is spoken by two brothers at the grave of their friend/adopted brother, and it is what every living soul hopes for the dead.
Quotes:
� “Away, thou’rt poison to my blood.�
� “Sir, as I told you always: her beauty and her brain go not together.�
� “Boldness be my friend.�
� “I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure.�
� “How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature.
� “No, tis slander, whose edge is sharper than the sword.�
� “Society is no comfort to one not sociable.�
� “…nothing routs us but the villainy of our fears.�
� “I am merrier to die than thou art to live.�
� “Pardon’s the word to all.�
This is a play that is not easy to read and will require a commitment from you. With its large cast and many plotlines, you cannot pick this text up at random. However, if you stick with it and focus on it you will experience a gem of the Shakespeare canon.
Note on this specific edition-
The RSC Modern Library editions of the plays of Shakespeare are a quality trade paperback edition. These editions include an Introduction to the play, an essay on the performance history of the piece, and interviews with directors and actors who have worked on it. For CYMBELINE these extras are a miss. The Introduction is typical quasi-intellectual claptrap. Skip it, as it is overthinking the play. Also, the extra essays for this one I did not find as satisfying as I have for some of the other plays.
The Modern Library edition also includes a scene-by-scene analysis, which can help point out an image or symbol you might have missed. The edition also includes a nice “Further Readings� list specifically for this play. Frankly, all the extra essays allow you to dive into the world of the play, and it is all included in one text.
December 1, 2018
Cymbeline, is not one of Shakespeare's best known plays but it certainly one of the easiest to read.
It mostly takes place in Roman-ruled Britain. It has an evil stepmother and her unworthy son, a princess, and prince and two lost princes. It has weird medicine, intrigue, and battles. It is full of interesting characters and happenings.
But most of all it is satisfying in the way it handles sin and repentance. Where there is repentance there is forgiveness for even the most heinous crimes. Where there is lack of repentance there is death and agony. Many of the characters make mistakes and most of them acknowledge them.
We are nearing the end of Shakespeare's plays as we reach this play. It comes on the heels of that terror of a play King Lear. I like to think Cymbeline shows a depth of understanding of the wages of sin and the availability of forgiveness in Shakespeare's own life.
It would be fun to translate all the Roman names. I am sure they are all purposefully named beginning with the orphan Posthumous.
It mostly takes place in Roman-ruled Britain. It has an evil stepmother and her unworthy son, a princess, and prince and two lost princes. It has weird medicine, intrigue, and battles. It is full of interesting characters and happenings.
But most of all it is satisfying in the way it handles sin and repentance. Where there is repentance there is forgiveness for even the most heinous crimes. Where there is lack of repentance there is death and agony. Many of the characters make mistakes and most of them acknowledge them.
We are nearing the end of Shakespeare's plays as we reach this play. It comes on the heels of that terror of a play King Lear. I like to think Cymbeline shows a depth of understanding of the wages of sin and the availability of forgiveness in Shakespeare's own life.
It would be fun to translate all the Roman names. I am sure they are all purposefully named beginning with the orphan Posthumous.
June 22, 2021
"Cymbeline" I considered a difficult play to stage until a surprisingly coherent version at the Huntington Theater, in 1991, directed by Larry Carpenter. My grad school classmate Peter Altman ran the Huntington back then. But reading it under the Trumpster makes all Iachimo’s lies problematic; our context changes the register of the play, disenchants it. Wonder about the Boston Shakespeare Project production, the matinee on Boston Commons today, 3 Aug 19, directed by my favorite director of all, Fred Sullivan of the Gamm and Trinity Square in Pawtucket and Providence. His comedies are especially effective, but I shall miss this because of prior commitments.
So many Shakespeare villains articulate truths, like Iago, and here, the clod Cloten, whose assault on the married Imogen gave me the title to my book on Shakespeare and popular culture, which I called "Meaner Parties."* Cloten says of her marriage to Leonatus,
“It is no contract, none;
And though it be allowed in meaner parties…to knit their souls,
On whom there is no more dependency
But brats and beggary, in self-figur’d knot,
Yet you are curbed…by the consequence of a crown…�(II.iii.116ff)
He refers to canon law’s accepting, in York Minster's Dean Swinburne’s "Of Spousals," handshake marriages—as long as there were witnesses to the vows spoken along with the ring or token. By the way, three centuries before DeBeers, engagement and marriage rings weren't distinct; both could be military or wax-sealrings.
I first read Swinburne’s Of Spousals--written in 1604, published in 1680's-- in the Harvard Law School Library Treasure Room. (My brother, who went to Harvard Divinity, said Swinburne’s book had been in the Divinity Library, which did not have ample funds to protect it.) I applied Swinburne and Lawcourt studies to plays with handfast marriages: MFM, All's Well, and Cymbeline.
A couple scenes prior to Cloten here, Iachimo comes to England with a letter of endorsement, part of a bet, from Posthumus Leonatus (I.vi). Posthumus had been exiled to Italy by Cymbelene for displacing the new queen’s execrable son Cloten in Imogen’s affection—in fact, marrying her.
As in Merchant of Venice, where Shylock compares his daughter and his ducats, his dearest possessions, Posthumous compares Imogen’s gift ring and herself; to Iachimo’s taunt, “I have not seen the most precious diamond that there is, nor you the lady,� Posthumus rejoins, “I praised her as I rated her: so do I my stone.� Iachimo even refers to Imogen as “she your jewel� to accompany the diamond, “this your jewel�(I.iv.153).
Having set up so close a comparison—indeed, an identity� between the token jewel and the lover jewel, no wonder Posthumus falls apart when Iachimo brings back the bracelet he’d stolen from Imogen. Posthumus’s friend Philario notes he is “Quite beyond the government of patience!�(II.iv.150)—rather like a certain new Supreme Court judge.
Later confessing to King Cymbeline’s inquiry, “How came it yours?� about the diamond on his finger, Iachimo blurts out that he defamed Imogen with token evidence,
“that he could not / But think her bond of chastity quite crack’d,/ I having taken this forfeit�(V.v.206). Posthumus need not have so concluded had he not merged token and person so strongly in his own mind.
But Renaissance marriage-court records fill with rings and bracelets betokening contract, whereas in fact it was the words accompanying the token, the vow, that counted in law. What we call domestic courts were then in church, canon courts like Deacon Swinburne’s in York Minster (the room still exists, with three judge chairs on a raised dias, now used as a vestry).
Shakespeare’s plays feature tokens and vows. Cymbeline could have learned how to run a ring court from the King of France in All’s Well. And of course Twelfth Night boasts the most rings of the Bard’s plays. (See my “Early Modern Rings and Vows in TN,� in Twelfth Night: New Critical Essays (NY: Routledge, 2011), ed. James Schiffer. Note: I quote from my old Harrison edition, which uses Iachimo, not Jachimo, but I quote a bit from Wells and Taylor, Compact edition, 1992.
[I shall add on birds in the play, Ruddock (euro-Robin) and Puttock (bird of prey) and others.]
* "meaner" in Elizabethan usage, lower status "parties" (in the legal sense)...average Joes and Jo's.
So many Shakespeare villains articulate truths, like Iago, and here, the clod Cloten, whose assault on the married Imogen gave me the title to my book on Shakespeare and popular culture, which I called "Meaner Parties."* Cloten says of her marriage to Leonatus,
“It is no contract, none;
And though it be allowed in meaner parties…to knit their souls,
On whom there is no more dependency
But brats and beggary, in self-figur’d knot,
Yet you are curbed…by the consequence of a crown…�(II.iii.116ff)
He refers to canon law’s accepting, in York Minster's Dean Swinburne’s "Of Spousals," handshake marriages—as long as there were witnesses to the vows spoken along with the ring or token. By the way, three centuries before DeBeers, engagement and marriage rings weren't distinct; both could be military or wax-sealrings.
I first read Swinburne’s Of Spousals--written in 1604, published in 1680's-- in the Harvard Law School Library Treasure Room. (My brother, who went to Harvard Divinity, said Swinburne’s book had been in the Divinity Library, which did not have ample funds to protect it.) I applied Swinburne and Lawcourt studies to plays with handfast marriages: MFM, All's Well, and Cymbeline.
A couple scenes prior to Cloten here, Iachimo comes to England with a letter of endorsement, part of a bet, from Posthumus Leonatus (I.vi). Posthumus had been exiled to Italy by Cymbelene for displacing the new queen’s execrable son Cloten in Imogen’s affection—in fact, marrying her.
As in Merchant of Venice, where Shylock compares his daughter and his ducats, his dearest possessions, Posthumous compares Imogen’s gift ring and herself; to Iachimo’s taunt, “I have not seen the most precious diamond that there is, nor you the lady,� Posthumus rejoins, “I praised her as I rated her: so do I my stone.� Iachimo even refers to Imogen as “she your jewel� to accompany the diamond, “this your jewel�(I.iv.153).
Having set up so close a comparison—indeed, an identity� between the token jewel and the lover jewel, no wonder Posthumus falls apart when Iachimo brings back the bracelet he’d stolen from Imogen. Posthumus’s friend Philario notes he is “Quite beyond the government of patience!�(II.iv.150)—rather like a certain new Supreme Court judge.
Later confessing to King Cymbeline’s inquiry, “How came it yours?� about the diamond on his finger, Iachimo blurts out that he defamed Imogen with token evidence,
“that he could not / But think her bond of chastity quite crack’d,/ I having taken this forfeit�(V.v.206). Posthumus need not have so concluded had he not merged token and person so strongly in his own mind.
But Renaissance marriage-court records fill with rings and bracelets betokening contract, whereas in fact it was the words accompanying the token, the vow, that counted in law. What we call domestic courts were then in church, canon courts like Deacon Swinburne’s in York Minster (the room still exists, with three judge chairs on a raised dias, now used as a vestry).
Shakespeare’s plays feature tokens and vows. Cymbeline could have learned how to run a ring court from the King of France in All’s Well. And of course Twelfth Night boasts the most rings of the Bard’s plays. (See my “Early Modern Rings and Vows in TN,� in Twelfth Night: New Critical Essays (NY: Routledge, 2011), ed. James Schiffer. Note: I quote from my old Harrison edition, which uses Iachimo, not Jachimo, but I quote a bit from Wells and Taylor, Compact edition, 1992.
[I shall add on birds in the play, Ruddock (euro-Robin) and Puttock (bird of prey) and others.]
* "meaner" in Elizabethan usage, lower status "parties" (in the legal sense)...average Joes and Jo's.
Read
March 22, 2025a classmate of mine said that this is just essentially shrek 2 and you know what? yeah. I see it.
September 23, 2019
“Fear no more the heat of the sun.�from Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf led me to Shakepeare’s Cymbeline, the first verse, sung in the play, reads:
� Fear no more the heat o� the sun,from Act 4 always bought me to a pause, now having read the play I realise this is an elegy.
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.� ***
When I recognised this line from Mrs Dalloway I had not heard of Cymbeline before, but it got my curiosity and it did not take me long to discover where this line came from. Reading Shakespeare I have always approached with dread but recently it’s become important to me to just have a go and see where it leads me. This time I discovered it was an easy read and my dread of it being hard to understand disappeared as it was funny, not big laughs more like a light comedy due to the bucket loads of dramatic irony. In a different hand the plot would have seemed contrived to me but this just worked beautifully.
The story also felt familiar as it was a mix of Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing but set in an ancient English royal court. It also has mayhem, confusion, misunderstanding, villainy and war, but driving all this is a romance, a marriage broken by others because the princess marries a man outside her social class. It was also a surprise to find elements out of Homer’s text, of seers and a kind of a wishing which resonated sacrifice rituals. And I was a little thrown by the presence of Jupiter, albeit through a dream, but when the play ends I couldn’t help thinking he had a hand in the outcome.
So, yeah, I enjoyed reading this one, and more so because it gave me a deeper understanding of Mrs Dalloway as she thinks about: “Fear no more the heat of the sun.�
BBC's production of Cymbeline
Available on DVD and made in 1982, directed by Elijah Mohinsky and cast includes Helen Mirren and Claire Bloom.
This was entertaining to watch and the bonus is the play’s performance helped me to put into the context how some parts of the text are sung. This and the composition of the music along with costume and sparse sets helped me to see how this production could have been performed in Shakespeare’s time. Reading it before watching it added to my enjoyment of watching this dvd. This coupled with brilliant performances made me forget I was watching it on a small screen.
The DVD does not come with many features; the title screen is simple which includes subtitles. I also like how the chapter is divided into scenes and acts of the play � allowing me to jump straight to a specific scene to watch again.
More info on production available here
*** In the text this is marked as being sung which I couldn’t imagine until watching the BBC production on DVD.
review updated late Sept 2019
March 19, 2018
Bir şeyler söyle, okuduğumda
Beni öldürecek darbelerin şiddetini azaltır belki sözlerin.
5/5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Bir arkadaşımın övgüleri üzerine bu kitabı çok merak ederek almıştım ve o kadar memnun kaldım ki umarım yorumumda yeterince anlatabilirim. Açıkçası kitabı şiir kitabı olarak hep aklımda tutmuştum. Yazarın şiir kitabı var mı onu bile bilmiyorum. Shakespeare benim için sadece Romeo ve Juliet eserinin sinema versiyonlarını bildiğim kadardı. Kitaplarını okumak da sanırım roman türünde olmadıkları için pek ilgimi çekmiyordu. Tabii ki bu durum yalnızca bu kitaptan yirmi sayfa kadar okuyuncaya dek sürdü. Tiyatro metni şeklinde yazılan kitapların bu kadar hoşuma gideceği aklımın ucundan geçmezdi. Öyle çok sevdim ki okurken resmen bitmesin istedim. Konunun klişeliği benim için kitabın tadında hiçbir değişiklik oluşturmadı. Her karaktere ayrı bayılarak, her sahneyi kendi kafamda hayal ederken keyiften uçuşarak okudum. Bu tarz kitaplar için bol bol öneri biriktirdim. Bir an önce okumaya sabırsızlanıyorum. Kesinlikle herkese hitap eden, ucundan bile merak edenlerin hemencecik buldukları gibi okumaya başlamalarını önereceğim harika bir kitaptı. Bazı yerlerinde çok duygulandım, bazı yerlerinde sesli güldüm. Kitabı bitirdikten sonra yabancı tiyatro oyununu da ucundan izledim. Artık bol şekilde tiyatro metinli kitapların yorumunu gireceğimin sözünü vererek size de keyifli okumalar dilerim..
Beni öldürecek darbelerin şiddetini azaltır belki sözlerin.
5/5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Bir arkadaşımın övgüleri üzerine bu kitabı çok merak ederek almıştım ve o kadar memnun kaldım ki umarım yorumumda yeterince anlatabilirim. Açıkçası kitabı şiir kitabı olarak hep aklımda tutmuştum. Yazarın şiir kitabı var mı onu bile bilmiyorum. Shakespeare benim için sadece Romeo ve Juliet eserinin sinema versiyonlarını bildiğim kadardı. Kitaplarını okumak da sanırım roman türünde olmadıkları için pek ilgimi çekmiyordu. Tabii ki bu durum yalnızca bu kitaptan yirmi sayfa kadar okuyuncaya dek sürdü. Tiyatro metni şeklinde yazılan kitapların bu kadar hoşuma gideceği aklımın ucundan geçmezdi. Öyle çok sevdim ki okurken resmen bitmesin istedim. Konunun klişeliği benim için kitabın tadında hiçbir değişiklik oluşturmadı. Her karaktere ayrı bayılarak, her sahneyi kendi kafamda hayal ederken keyiften uçuşarak okudum. Bu tarz kitaplar için bol bol öneri biriktirdim. Bir an önce okumaya sabırsızlanıyorum. Kesinlikle herkese hitap eden, ucundan bile merak edenlerin hemencecik buldukları gibi okumaya başlamalarını önereceğim harika bir kitaptı. Bazı yerlerinde çok duygulandım, bazı yerlerinde sesli güldüm. Kitabı bitirdikten sonra yabancı tiyatro oyununu da ucundan izledim. Artık bol şekilde tiyatro metinli kitapların yorumunu gireceğimin sözünü vererek size de keyifli okumalar dilerim..
December 2, 2017
All Roads Lead to Milford Haven
2 December 2017 = Sydney
Here I am, sitting in a pub on my laptop, though a part of me feels that maybe I shouldn't be sitting on my laptop in this pub, though it isn't anywhere near as bad as some pubs I've been to. Yep, I'm still in Sydney, wandering around the place and taking heaps of photos of old buildings that I'll probably never use after sorting them (though they might land up on Flickr one of these days, though that is a big maybe because my camera equipment is pretty shocking). However, since I've finished another book I probably better get around to writing a review before my thoughts flee my head. Oh, and while they do have free wifi, the amount of info they want (namely a Facebook checkin) is a little too concerning, so I'll just turn my phone into a wifi hotspot.
A friend of mine suggested that artists usually only have around a decade of gems and then they start to get a little old and tired. Well, that isn't always the case because you do have Queen, and Pink Floyd, though they did manage to reinvent themselves during their time in the sun. However, Shakespeare seemed to set a pretty high standard in that he was writing plays over a period of 25 odd years and seemed to just get better and better as time went on (though his couple of comeback performances were pretty substandard � ). However, a number of his later plays don't seem to be performed as much as say his great tragedies � I'm sure somewhere in the world, at this very moment, somebody is playing Macbeth (well, I'm probably exaggerating a little since the French really don't care for Shakespeare because they have their own playwrights that they adore).
So, Cymbeline is one of the later plays, but seems to be a combination of numerous other elements of his earlier plays. For instance we have a woman fleeing into the forest, and disguising herself as a boy in the process. We have that same woman drinking a sleeping potion, and then everybody mistaking her as being dead. We even have numerous cases of mistaken identities, jilted lovers, and husbands being kicked out of the kingdom because they married somebody that they shouldn't have. Throw in a wicked stepmother and an equally monstrous stepbrother, and you have a play that pretty much has everything in it. However, as I have mentioned, it doesn't seem to be performed anywhere near as much as some of the more popular plays (though the Royal Shakespeare Company did do it quite recently).
The play is mainly set in England during the reign of Augustus Caesar. The titular character is the king of England (or Britain as it was back then), and discovers that his daughter Imogen has married a guy named Posthumous (which means born after his father's death), which displeases him somewhat so he kicks Posthumous out of the country. All the while the queen is attempting to get rid of Imogen since in doing so opens up the way for her son Clotus to take the throne. Anyway, Posthumous travels to Rome where he enters into a bet with a merchant Iachimo that his wife would be faithful to him, so Iachimo travels to Britain, attempts to seduce Imogen and fails. So decides that he will cheat, hide in a chest and wait for her to go to sleep, and then not only steal the bracelet that Posthumous gave her, but also have a sneak peak under her bodice so as to have something intimate to tell Posthumous. Posthumous, no doubt having been fooled by Iachimo, sends a note to Imogen suggesting that she head off to the town of Milford Haven, but sends a second letter ordering her to be killed on the way.
Well, this is certainly starting to look pretty complex, and we aren't even into the Milford Haven bit, nor have I mentioned the fact that Imogen has two brothers, but they vanished at birth and are believed to be dead. Shakespeare does, in his traditional style, manage to bring everything together, though the final scene where that happens, and everything is forgiven and forgotten, turns out to be one of the longest closing scenes in his canon. It is also interesting in that it doesn't neatly fall into the category of comedy (nobody gets married at the end), and it certainly isn't a tragedy, but it certainly is quite a lot of fun when you eventually see a good performance of it.
I have to comment on the character of Posthumous though, because this whole idea of making a bet with somebody that his wife will be faithful to him, is somewhat chauvinistic, and probably proves that the partner is probably not worth spending all that much time with (and it also sounds as if he is pretty possessive, and untrustworthy, since he believes Iachio at face value). In fact I've heard of stories where one partner, in an attempt to see if the other partner is faithful, to basically set up a trap by having somebody attempt to seduce the partner, and the report back the results. However, these particular relationships eventually come crashing down as soon as the partner finds out what is going on. This concept of distrust in a relationship does seem to run deep in our psyche � a part of us seems to what to believe that our partner is being unfaithful, to the point that we will even pay huge sums of money to place them under surveillance (forget the Maltese Falcon, this is where the big bucks are made with regards to private investigations).
We also see the idea of the centre and the fringe in this play, though interestingly we have three main locations � Rome, Britain, and Milford Haven. Whereas Britain is on the fringes of the Roman Empire, Milford Haven lies outside the empire in the wilderness beyond. In a way it is a wild and savage land, and people travel there to get beyond the reach of the power of Rome. This is particularly evident when the Roman Legions descend upon Milford Haven and are promptly defeated. It is here that Imogen flees from the clutches of the queen, but in doing so disguises her self � just as Rosalind must disguise herself when she flees into the Forest of Arden. Yet unlike the Forest of Arden, Milford Haven doesn't seem to have this civilising calm on those who enter, but rather it is a dangerous realm. Clotus is killed upon entering, the Romans are defeated, and even Imogen falls sick. In the end Cymbeline does not remain here, but rather pulls back into London where there is at least a semblance of peace and order.
The version that I watched recently was interesting because they made connections between the play and Brexit. In a way Rome could easily be substituted with Brussels, and Milford Haven as the wilds of a post-European Britain. There is this constant struggle between a desire for stability and a desire for independence. Cymbeline goes with the former, despite the fact that the Romans were defeated, since Rome offers a sense of security, a situation that collapsed when they eventually pulled out centuries later. In another sense though Rome is seen by the English, at least at the time, as being somehow related. Monmoth wrote in his history of the that the first king was actually a Trojan that chose not to settle with Aeneas but to continue on to another land (and he also suggests that before the arrival of the Trojans the British Isles were ruled by giants).
I could go on about Brexit, however I think I'll leave it at that, and instead point you to on the RSC version of the play that I saw.
2 December 2017 = Sydney
Here I am, sitting in a pub on my laptop, though a part of me feels that maybe I shouldn't be sitting on my laptop in this pub, though it isn't anywhere near as bad as some pubs I've been to. Yep, I'm still in Sydney, wandering around the place and taking heaps of photos of old buildings that I'll probably never use after sorting them (though they might land up on Flickr one of these days, though that is a big maybe because my camera equipment is pretty shocking). However, since I've finished another book I probably better get around to writing a review before my thoughts flee my head. Oh, and while they do have free wifi, the amount of info they want (namely a Facebook checkin) is a little too concerning, so I'll just turn my phone into a wifi hotspot.
A friend of mine suggested that artists usually only have around a decade of gems and then they start to get a little old and tired. Well, that isn't always the case because you do have Queen, and Pink Floyd, though they did manage to reinvent themselves during their time in the sun. However, Shakespeare seemed to set a pretty high standard in that he was writing plays over a period of 25 odd years and seemed to just get better and better as time went on (though his couple of comeback performances were pretty substandard � ). However, a number of his later plays don't seem to be performed as much as say his great tragedies � I'm sure somewhere in the world, at this very moment, somebody is playing Macbeth (well, I'm probably exaggerating a little since the French really don't care for Shakespeare because they have their own playwrights that they adore).
So, Cymbeline is one of the later plays, but seems to be a combination of numerous other elements of his earlier plays. For instance we have a woman fleeing into the forest, and disguising herself as a boy in the process. We have that same woman drinking a sleeping potion, and then everybody mistaking her as being dead. We even have numerous cases of mistaken identities, jilted lovers, and husbands being kicked out of the kingdom because they married somebody that they shouldn't have. Throw in a wicked stepmother and an equally monstrous stepbrother, and you have a play that pretty much has everything in it. However, as I have mentioned, it doesn't seem to be performed anywhere near as much as some of the more popular plays (though the Royal Shakespeare Company did do it quite recently).
The play is mainly set in England during the reign of Augustus Caesar. The titular character is the king of England (or Britain as it was back then), and discovers that his daughter Imogen has married a guy named Posthumous (which means born after his father's death), which displeases him somewhat so he kicks Posthumous out of the country. All the while the queen is attempting to get rid of Imogen since in doing so opens up the way for her son Clotus to take the throne. Anyway, Posthumous travels to Rome where he enters into a bet with a merchant Iachimo that his wife would be faithful to him, so Iachimo travels to Britain, attempts to seduce Imogen and fails. So decides that he will cheat, hide in a chest and wait for her to go to sleep, and then not only steal the bracelet that Posthumous gave her, but also have a sneak peak under her bodice so as to have something intimate to tell Posthumous. Posthumous, no doubt having been fooled by Iachimo, sends a note to Imogen suggesting that she head off to the town of Milford Haven, but sends a second letter ordering her to be killed on the way.
Well, this is certainly starting to look pretty complex, and we aren't even into the Milford Haven bit, nor have I mentioned the fact that Imogen has two brothers, but they vanished at birth and are believed to be dead. Shakespeare does, in his traditional style, manage to bring everything together, though the final scene where that happens, and everything is forgiven and forgotten, turns out to be one of the longest closing scenes in his canon. It is also interesting in that it doesn't neatly fall into the category of comedy (nobody gets married at the end), and it certainly isn't a tragedy, but it certainly is quite a lot of fun when you eventually see a good performance of it.
I have to comment on the character of Posthumous though, because this whole idea of making a bet with somebody that his wife will be faithful to him, is somewhat chauvinistic, and probably proves that the partner is probably not worth spending all that much time with (and it also sounds as if he is pretty possessive, and untrustworthy, since he believes Iachio at face value). In fact I've heard of stories where one partner, in an attempt to see if the other partner is faithful, to basically set up a trap by having somebody attempt to seduce the partner, and the report back the results. However, these particular relationships eventually come crashing down as soon as the partner finds out what is going on. This concept of distrust in a relationship does seem to run deep in our psyche � a part of us seems to what to believe that our partner is being unfaithful, to the point that we will even pay huge sums of money to place them under surveillance (forget the Maltese Falcon, this is where the big bucks are made with regards to private investigations).
We also see the idea of the centre and the fringe in this play, though interestingly we have three main locations � Rome, Britain, and Milford Haven. Whereas Britain is on the fringes of the Roman Empire, Milford Haven lies outside the empire in the wilderness beyond. In a way it is a wild and savage land, and people travel there to get beyond the reach of the power of Rome. This is particularly evident when the Roman Legions descend upon Milford Haven and are promptly defeated. It is here that Imogen flees from the clutches of the queen, but in doing so disguises her self � just as Rosalind must disguise herself when she flees into the Forest of Arden. Yet unlike the Forest of Arden, Milford Haven doesn't seem to have this civilising calm on those who enter, but rather it is a dangerous realm. Clotus is killed upon entering, the Romans are defeated, and even Imogen falls sick. In the end Cymbeline does not remain here, but rather pulls back into London where there is at least a semblance of peace and order.
The version that I watched recently was interesting because they made connections between the play and Brexit. In a way Rome could easily be substituted with Brussels, and Milford Haven as the wilds of a post-European Britain. There is this constant struggle between a desire for stability and a desire for independence. Cymbeline goes with the former, despite the fact that the Romans were defeated, since Rome offers a sense of security, a situation that collapsed when they eventually pulled out centuries later. In another sense though Rome is seen by the English, at least at the time, as being somehow related. Monmoth wrote in his history of the that the first king was actually a Trojan that chose not to settle with Aeneas but to continue on to another land (and he also suggests that before the arrival of the Trojans the British Isles were ruled by giants).
I could go on about Brexit, however I think I'll leave it at that, and instead point you to on the RSC version of the play that I saw.
April 27, 2023
i appreciate shakespeare getting weird with the process near the end of his career but i wish he had remembered to also make it interesting. did LOVE seeing get his head cut off though & also guiderius being like "yeah i killed that little dick wannabe rapist lmfao and i'd do it again. fuck with me" to the literal king. other assorted thoughts here
June 3, 2024
“Our peace we’ll ratify; seal it with feasts.
Set on there! Never was a war did cease
(Ere bloody hands were wash’d) with such a peace.�
Five stars just for Imogen. What a fantastic Shakespearean leading lady. But there's SO MUCH packed into this play it would be five stars no matter what. Other standouts to me are the language (Shakespeare really had hit his stride at this point in his career), fairy tale patterns and motifs, and the echoes of earlier Shakespeare plays (with a twist, of course!), my favorite being the nods to Othello. This play’s Iago pulls off his own deception to call the wife’s chastity into question, but this time death is but a sleep, giving way to a resurrection. The couple is restored to one another, and the villain repents and is forgiven. "Pardon's the word to all."
(The Literary Life Podcast 2023 Reading Challenge � Work by Shakespeare you have never read before)
(Lit Life Patreon SIAY 2023-2024)
Set on there! Never was a war did cease
(Ere bloody hands were wash’d) with such a peace.�
Five stars just for Imogen. What a fantastic Shakespearean leading lady. But there's SO MUCH packed into this play it would be five stars no matter what. Other standouts to me are the language (Shakespeare really had hit his stride at this point in his career), fairy tale patterns and motifs, and the echoes of earlier Shakespeare plays (with a twist, of course!), my favorite being the nods to Othello. This play’s Iago pulls off his own deception to call the wife’s chastity into question, but this time death is but a sleep, giving way to a resurrection. The couple is restored to one another, and the villain repents and is forgiven. "Pardon's the word to all."
(The Literary Life Podcast 2023 Reading Challenge � Work by Shakespeare you have never read before)
(Lit Life Patreon SIAY 2023-2024)
December 14, 2020
Cymbeline may have been a king of Britain in Roman times � or maybe not: the evidence for his existence as an historical figure is scanty at best. But whether his status is more historic or legendary, more factual or mythological, he is the title character of an intriguing and unusual play by William Shakespeare.
Within Shakespeare’s oeuvre, the play Cymbeline, King of Britain is customarily categorized among Shakespeare’s “romances�, alongside plays like The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale. These plays, composed late in Shakespeare’s career, combine elements of the comic and the tragic, often within a strange and otherworldly setting.
Shakespeare may have been writing romances at this time in part because his theatrical company, enjoying at that time the patronage of King James I, was able to perform indoors, at the Blackfriars theatre; there, elaborate productions that were heavy on pageantry and special effects could be staged more easily than in the outdoor setting of the Globe theatre. Additionally, Shakespeare’s composition of “romances� may reflect changes in the theatrical fashion of his time � audiences may have gotten tired of plays being tidily categorized into tragedies like Hamlet, comedies like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and histories like Henry V.
As movies from the “Bollywood� cinematic tradition of India often offer their viewers a little bit of everything � a mix of music and drama and comedy and suspense and romance, constituting a sort of cinematic masala � so Shakespeare’s romances typically have something for everyone; and Cymbeline is no exception in that regard.
The play Cymbeline is set in the time of the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar -- or, to put it another way, sometime between 27 B.C. and 14 A.D. And as the play begins, Cymbeline, King of Britain, is angry with Imogen, his daughter from his first marriage to a wife who has since died. The reason? Like many another Shakespearean father, Cymbeline has tried and failed to control the marital destiny of his daughter; having remarried, Cymbeline would have liked for Imogen to marry his new Queen’s son, Cloten. But Imogen secretly married the noble but poor Posthumus, thus incurring her father’s wrath.
Cymbeline’s Queen is meanwhile pursuing her own hidden agenda; she has been encouraging Cymbeline to refuse Rome the tribute that the Britons have paid since the time of Julius Caesar � an act that makes war between Rome and Britain all but certain. This is all part of the Queen’s plan to do away with Cymbeline and make her son Cloten the king of Britain. The Queen is confident in the success of her foul scheme; seeking to persuade Posthumus� servant Pisanio to join her conspiracy, she declares that Cymbeline’s “fortunes all lie speechless, and his name/Is at last gasp.� Fortunately, Pisanio is one of a number of characters who reject treachery.
Cloten, the Queen’s son, is a good example of the apple not falling far from the tree. He loves to indulge in vain boasts regarding his quarrelsome nature � “Every jack-slave hath his bellyful of fighting, and I must go up and down like a cock that nobody can match.� And Cloten wants to possess Imogen, bringing musicians to serenade her with songs about how “the lark at heaven’s gate sings,/And Phoebus gins arise,� and he is frustrated that she rejects him. Mind you, Cloten does not love Imogen; Cloten loves no one but Cloten.
And as if Imogen did not have enough troubles already, further troubles await. For Posthumus, sent away from Britain by the king’s order, has taken refuge in Italy; and while in Italy, staying at the home of his friend Philario, he has made the acquaintance of one Iachimo, a “player� who boasts that he can seduce any woman, including Posthumus� beloved Imogen. Posthumus impulsively, and foolishly, agrees to a wager with Iachimo, to the effect that Imogen will be true. I can’t help wondering how Imogen would feel about this wager, if she only knew.
Iachimo travels to Britain, meets Imogen, and (after a brief and notably unsuccessful seduction attempt) persuades Imogen to let him store some of his valuables in her locked bedroom. Bad idea, that � for one of the larger boxes turns out to contain Iachimo himself, who lets himself out in Imogen’s room after Imogen has fallen asleep. Noting that the household has fallen asleep � “The crickets sing, and man’s o’erlaboured sense/Repairs itself by rest� � Iachimo beholds Imogen’s beauty: “‘Tis her breathing that/Perfumes the chamber thus.� While he’s about it, Iachimo takes careful note of the paintings and decorations in the room, steals off Imogen’s arm a bracelet that Posthumus gave her, and notes a mole-shaped birthmark near Imogen’s exposed breast � all so that he can pretend to have accomplished Imogen’s seduction, and so that he can win his bet.
Posthumus, like a long line of jealous and frankly misogynistic men in Shakespeare’s plays � Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, for example, or both Iago and Othello in Othello � believes Iachimo’s claims to have seduced Imogen, and bitterly denounces the manner in which, as he believes, Imogen pretended to be “As chaste as unsunned snow.� Posthumus� rage extends so far as ordering his servant Pisanio to take Imogen to Milford Haven in Wales, and to kill her on the way.
Fortunately, Pisanio is an ethical man who is resistant to treacherous plans, whether those plans come from his master or from Cymbeline’s Queen. Pisanio, a choral figure in the play, tells Imogen of Posthumus� order, blaming his master’s misplaced jealousy on “slander,/Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue/Outvenoms all the worms of Nile.� Imogen is initially in despair at learning that her beloved husband believes in her infidelity and has called for her murder; but eventually, she learns that “Some griefs are med’cinable.� At Pisanio’s urging, Imogen (like Rosalind in As You Like It and Viola in Twelfth Night) disguises herself as a boy, and her journey to Milford Haven continues on that basis.
So, is this play plot-heavy enough for you yet? But wait, I prithee; for verily, there is yet more. It turns out that, twenty years before the main action of Cymbeline, King of Britain, the kingly title character (whose royal judgement is often questionable) unjustly suspected Belarius, one of his noblemen, of treason. Belarius fled the court, and took with him Cymbeline’s sons Arviragus and Guiderius. Unaware of their true identity, and long thought to be dead by everyone at court, Guiderius and Arviragus have been brought up as sons by Belarius, and the three live humbly, as hunters, in the area around � wait for it, wait for it � Milford Haven, in Wales!
Coincidence, that force that ne’er stands still,
Resolveth many a play by Master Will.
Imogen, now disguised as a boy named “Fidele,� finds a welcome home with Belarius, Arviragus, and Guiderius, all of whom are charmed by her “boyish� good looks. Belarius describes Imogen/”Fidele� as “By Jupiter, an angel! Or, if not,/An earthly paragon. Behold divineness/No elder than a boy.�
There is still, seemingly, a potential danger for Imogen. Cymbeline’s treacherous queen, like Claudius in Hamlet, had sought to prepare poison as a backup plan; she gave to Pisanio the potion that she had prepared, claiming that it was a tonic. Fortunately, the court physician, one Cornelius, had suspected the Queen of treachery, and had made the “poison� into a harmless potion that induces nothing more than a deep sleep. Yet when a headache-stricken Imogen asks Pisanio for the potion, takes it, and falls asleep, everyone assumes that she has died, and a sorrowful Arviragus offers moving words of mourning:
With fairest flowers,
Whilst summer lasts and I live here, Fidele,
I’ll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack
The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins.
Posthumus, meanwhile, has made his own way to Milford Haven, and has been captured in the context of a Roman-British war that has broken out over the nonpayment-of-tribute issue. Sentenced to hang, Posthumus must endure not only the fears of impending death but also the company of an unnecessarily jolly jailer who is given to dime-store philosophizing like this prosaic little tribute to the hangman’s rope: “O, the charity of a penny cord! It sums up thousands in a trice.�
Yet “Fear no more the heat o� the sun,/Nor the furious winter’s rages�; for Cymbeline, King of Britain is a romance, not a tragedy. Cloten, plotting a particularly grotesque revenge against both Imogen and Posthumus, will get his comeuppance; so will the treacherous and conniving Queen. And, as if to draw attention to how hard he is working to give the audience a happy ending, Shakespeare has Jupiter � the king of the Roman gods himself � put in an appearance toward play’s end, in a deliberate and quite literal example of deus ex machina that may remind readers of the moment when Hymen, the Greek god of marriage, appears to bless the happy couples at the end of As You Like It.
Cymbeline, King of Britain holds an unusual place among Shakespeare's plays. It is, with King Lear, one of only two Shakespeare plays set in ancient, pre-Norman Conquest Britain -- in contrast with nine plays about English history (Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV, Henry V, the three parts of Henry VI, Richard III, and Henry VIII). Moreover, as you may already have gathered, Shakespeare’s romances can be something of an acquired taste.
If you prefer the generic purity of the Bard’s comedies, histories, and tragedies, then a play like Cymbeline, King of Britain may not be for you. But the play continues to make itself part of the Shakespearean conversation � as when filmmaker Michael Almereyda adapted Cymbeline for the screen in 2014, with a contemporary setting (the Britons are a Sons of Anarchy-style motorcycle gang, the Romans are corrupt police officers) and a talented cast that includes Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich, John Leguizamo, Dakota Johnson, Bill Pullman, and Delroy Lindo. Cymbeline unquestionably gives the reader the chance to experience something different in a Shakespeare play.
Within Shakespeare’s oeuvre, the play Cymbeline, King of Britain is customarily categorized among Shakespeare’s “romances�, alongside plays like The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale. These plays, composed late in Shakespeare’s career, combine elements of the comic and the tragic, often within a strange and otherworldly setting.
Shakespeare may have been writing romances at this time in part because his theatrical company, enjoying at that time the patronage of King James I, was able to perform indoors, at the Blackfriars theatre; there, elaborate productions that were heavy on pageantry and special effects could be staged more easily than in the outdoor setting of the Globe theatre. Additionally, Shakespeare’s composition of “romances� may reflect changes in the theatrical fashion of his time � audiences may have gotten tired of plays being tidily categorized into tragedies like Hamlet, comedies like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and histories like Henry V.
As movies from the “Bollywood� cinematic tradition of India often offer their viewers a little bit of everything � a mix of music and drama and comedy and suspense and romance, constituting a sort of cinematic masala � so Shakespeare’s romances typically have something for everyone; and Cymbeline is no exception in that regard.
The play Cymbeline is set in the time of the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar -- or, to put it another way, sometime between 27 B.C. and 14 A.D. And as the play begins, Cymbeline, King of Britain, is angry with Imogen, his daughter from his first marriage to a wife who has since died. The reason? Like many another Shakespearean father, Cymbeline has tried and failed to control the marital destiny of his daughter; having remarried, Cymbeline would have liked for Imogen to marry his new Queen’s son, Cloten. But Imogen secretly married the noble but poor Posthumus, thus incurring her father’s wrath.
Cymbeline’s Queen is meanwhile pursuing her own hidden agenda; she has been encouraging Cymbeline to refuse Rome the tribute that the Britons have paid since the time of Julius Caesar � an act that makes war between Rome and Britain all but certain. This is all part of the Queen’s plan to do away with Cymbeline and make her son Cloten the king of Britain. The Queen is confident in the success of her foul scheme; seeking to persuade Posthumus� servant Pisanio to join her conspiracy, she declares that Cymbeline’s “fortunes all lie speechless, and his name/Is at last gasp.� Fortunately, Pisanio is one of a number of characters who reject treachery.
Cloten, the Queen’s son, is a good example of the apple not falling far from the tree. He loves to indulge in vain boasts regarding his quarrelsome nature � “Every jack-slave hath his bellyful of fighting, and I must go up and down like a cock that nobody can match.� And Cloten wants to possess Imogen, bringing musicians to serenade her with songs about how “the lark at heaven’s gate sings,/And Phoebus gins arise,� and he is frustrated that she rejects him. Mind you, Cloten does not love Imogen; Cloten loves no one but Cloten.
And as if Imogen did not have enough troubles already, further troubles await. For Posthumus, sent away from Britain by the king’s order, has taken refuge in Italy; and while in Italy, staying at the home of his friend Philario, he has made the acquaintance of one Iachimo, a “player� who boasts that he can seduce any woman, including Posthumus� beloved Imogen. Posthumus impulsively, and foolishly, agrees to a wager with Iachimo, to the effect that Imogen will be true. I can’t help wondering how Imogen would feel about this wager, if she only knew.
Iachimo travels to Britain, meets Imogen, and (after a brief and notably unsuccessful seduction attempt) persuades Imogen to let him store some of his valuables in her locked bedroom. Bad idea, that � for one of the larger boxes turns out to contain Iachimo himself, who lets himself out in Imogen’s room after Imogen has fallen asleep. Noting that the household has fallen asleep � “The crickets sing, and man’s o’erlaboured sense/Repairs itself by rest� � Iachimo beholds Imogen’s beauty: “‘Tis her breathing that/Perfumes the chamber thus.� While he’s about it, Iachimo takes careful note of the paintings and decorations in the room, steals off Imogen’s arm a bracelet that Posthumus gave her, and notes a mole-shaped birthmark near Imogen’s exposed breast � all so that he can pretend to have accomplished Imogen’s seduction, and so that he can win his bet.
Posthumus, like a long line of jealous and frankly misogynistic men in Shakespeare’s plays � Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, for example, or both Iago and Othello in Othello � believes Iachimo’s claims to have seduced Imogen, and bitterly denounces the manner in which, as he believes, Imogen pretended to be “As chaste as unsunned snow.� Posthumus� rage extends so far as ordering his servant Pisanio to take Imogen to Milford Haven in Wales, and to kill her on the way.
Fortunately, Pisanio is an ethical man who is resistant to treacherous plans, whether those plans come from his master or from Cymbeline’s Queen. Pisanio, a choral figure in the play, tells Imogen of Posthumus� order, blaming his master’s misplaced jealousy on “slander,/Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue/Outvenoms all the worms of Nile.� Imogen is initially in despair at learning that her beloved husband believes in her infidelity and has called for her murder; but eventually, she learns that “Some griefs are med’cinable.� At Pisanio’s urging, Imogen (like Rosalind in As You Like It and Viola in Twelfth Night) disguises herself as a boy, and her journey to Milford Haven continues on that basis.
So, is this play plot-heavy enough for you yet? But wait, I prithee; for verily, there is yet more. It turns out that, twenty years before the main action of Cymbeline, King of Britain, the kingly title character (whose royal judgement is often questionable) unjustly suspected Belarius, one of his noblemen, of treason. Belarius fled the court, and took with him Cymbeline’s sons Arviragus and Guiderius. Unaware of their true identity, and long thought to be dead by everyone at court, Guiderius and Arviragus have been brought up as sons by Belarius, and the three live humbly, as hunters, in the area around � wait for it, wait for it � Milford Haven, in Wales!
Coincidence, that force that ne’er stands still,
Resolveth many a play by Master Will.
Imogen, now disguised as a boy named “Fidele,� finds a welcome home with Belarius, Arviragus, and Guiderius, all of whom are charmed by her “boyish� good looks. Belarius describes Imogen/”Fidele� as “By Jupiter, an angel! Or, if not,/An earthly paragon. Behold divineness/No elder than a boy.�
There is still, seemingly, a potential danger for Imogen. Cymbeline’s treacherous queen, like Claudius in Hamlet, had sought to prepare poison as a backup plan; she gave to Pisanio the potion that she had prepared, claiming that it was a tonic. Fortunately, the court physician, one Cornelius, had suspected the Queen of treachery, and had made the “poison� into a harmless potion that induces nothing more than a deep sleep. Yet when a headache-stricken Imogen asks Pisanio for the potion, takes it, and falls asleep, everyone assumes that she has died, and a sorrowful Arviragus offers moving words of mourning:
With fairest flowers,
Whilst summer lasts and I live here, Fidele,
I’ll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack
The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins.
Posthumus, meanwhile, has made his own way to Milford Haven, and has been captured in the context of a Roman-British war that has broken out over the nonpayment-of-tribute issue. Sentenced to hang, Posthumus must endure not only the fears of impending death but also the company of an unnecessarily jolly jailer who is given to dime-store philosophizing like this prosaic little tribute to the hangman’s rope: “O, the charity of a penny cord! It sums up thousands in a trice.�
Yet “Fear no more the heat o� the sun,/Nor the furious winter’s rages�; for Cymbeline, King of Britain is a romance, not a tragedy. Cloten, plotting a particularly grotesque revenge against both Imogen and Posthumus, will get his comeuppance; so will the treacherous and conniving Queen. And, as if to draw attention to how hard he is working to give the audience a happy ending, Shakespeare has Jupiter � the king of the Roman gods himself � put in an appearance toward play’s end, in a deliberate and quite literal example of deus ex machina that may remind readers of the moment when Hymen, the Greek god of marriage, appears to bless the happy couples at the end of As You Like It.
Cymbeline, King of Britain holds an unusual place among Shakespeare's plays. It is, with King Lear, one of only two Shakespeare plays set in ancient, pre-Norman Conquest Britain -- in contrast with nine plays about English history (Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV, Henry V, the three parts of Henry VI, Richard III, and Henry VIII). Moreover, as you may already have gathered, Shakespeare’s romances can be something of an acquired taste.
If you prefer the generic purity of the Bard’s comedies, histories, and tragedies, then a play like Cymbeline, King of Britain may not be for you. But the play continues to make itself part of the Shakespearean conversation � as when filmmaker Michael Almereyda adapted Cymbeline for the screen in 2014, with a contemporary setting (the Britons are a Sons of Anarchy-style motorcycle gang, the Romans are corrupt police officers) and a talented cast that includes Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich, John Leguizamo, Dakota Johnson, Bill Pullman, and Delroy Lindo. Cymbeline unquestionably gives the reader the chance to experience something different in a Shakespeare play.
November 2, 2015
No one dies, a guy named Posthumus marries the king’s daughter without permission, and then Jupiter comes down from heaven and shouts at people what the hell is going on.
June 7, 2021
Huge misunderstandings, horrible villains, and a true heroine. (I really liked Imogen. Too bad the love of her life is a huge dolt. )
February 25, 2023
3.5 stars
This started out promising, but by the end, it was so convoluted and twisted around on itself to bring all the pieces together that I couldn't suspend disbelief anymore.
Curious, a bit, that this is titled Cymbeline since he's not in it as much as you'd expect, though he is the driving motivator for all the events that take place. He wasn't a bad king, per se, just a bit hasty in banishing people - his daughter's husband, for instance - and he was stuck in a bad marriage. Say what you want about Henry VIII, but he knew how to get himself out of marriages, lol.
Posthumus (that used to be a name?! I kept waiting for him to die and be recognized posthumously, but alas.) does a stupid thing and pays for it, for awhile, but then gets everything back in the end, darn it. I really liked Imogen, and I wanted a better outcome for her, but I guess she's happy to get back her idiot husband who . There really were slim pickings for women back in the day, weren't there? 🤦🏻♀� I guess he was a better option to Cloten, who gave slime a new meaning.
This started out promising, but by the end, it was so convoluted and twisted around on itself to bring all the pieces together that I couldn't suspend disbelief anymore.
Curious, a bit, that this is titled Cymbeline since he's not in it as much as you'd expect, though he is the driving motivator for all the events that take place. He wasn't a bad king, per se, just a bit hasty in banishing people - his daughter's husband, for instance - and he was stuck in a bad marriage. Say what you want about Henry VIII, but he knew how to get himself out of marriages, lol.
Posthumus (that used to be a name?! I kept waiting for him to die and be recognized posthumously, but alas.) does a stupid thing and pays for it, for awhile, but then gets everything back in the end, darn it. I really liked Imogen, and I wanted a better outcome for her, but I guess she's happy to get back her idiot husband who . There really were slim pickings for women back in the day, weren't there? 🤦🏻♀� I guess he was a better option to Cloten, who gave slime a new meaning.
November 7, 2022
واقعاً نفهمیدم چرا به این اثر میگ� تراژدی!
November 21, 2019
This is a zany play. Shakespeare seems to have taken all of the contrived plot devices from all of his plays and stuffed them into one: cross-dressing, mistaken identity, an foolish wager, an abrupt confession, even a potion that makes someone fall into a death-like sleep—and this list is just a smattering. The whole thing just seems like an exercise in byzantine construction.
This is generally one of the odd aspects of Shakespeare: while in his characters Shakespeare is capable of startling realism, in his plots he is capable of incredible artificiality. And, of course, the two often go hand in hand. It is, for example, impossible to believe that Posthumous is as noble as everybody says he is, considering that his first impulse upon hearing of Imogen’s supposed infidelity is to have her murdered. Nor is it easy to believe that such a supposedly wise man would engage in such a foolish and even childish bet about his wife’s chastity. But such things are necessary in order to keep the cogs of this play in motion.
In the finest of Shakespeare’s plays, the great protagonists stand out precisely for seeming not to fit into this world of plot mechanics. In plot of Hamlet is a simple revenge tragedy, yet the man Hamlet is infinitely more interesting than his story. But increasingly in these late plays Shakespeare’s characters are lacking in the personality that made them stand out from the thin world of the stage. The great exception in this play is Imogen, who is a fully-conceived and charming personality. For the rest, their reactions are overdetermined by their roles.
The manifest implausibility of this play—as well as its many unlikeable characters—might have made it less enjoyable. But it offers, as a compensating pleasure, a kind of anarchic joy. Shakespeare has thrown all pretense to the wind, and wants only to take us on a wild ride. The many moments of apparent self-parody (Shakespeare travestying his earlier plays) only add to the fun. But perhaps this sort of fun is not entirely wholesome.
This is generally one of the odd aspects of Shakespeare: while in his characters Shakespeare is capable of startling realism, in his plots he is capable of incredible artificiality. And, of course, the two often go hand in hand. It is, for example, impossible to believe that Posthumous is as noble as everybody says he is, considering that his first impulse upon hearing of Imogen’s supposed infidelity is to have her murdered. Nor is it easy to believe that such a supposedly wise man would engage in such a foolish and even childish bet about his wife’s chastity. But such things are necessary in order to keep the cogs of this play in motion.
In the finest of Shakespeare’s plays, the great protagonists stand out precisely for seeming not to fit into this world of plot mechanics. In plot of Hamlet is a simple revenge tragedy, yet the man Hamlet is infinitely more interesting than his story. But increasingly in these late plays Shakespeare’s characters are lacking in the personality that made them stand out from the thin world of the stage. The great exception in this play is Imogen, who is a fully-conceived and charming personality. For the rest, their reactions are overdetermined by their roles.
The manifest implausibility of this play—as well as its many unlikeable characters—might have made it less enjoyable. But it offers, as a compensating pleasure, a kind of anarchic joy. Shakespeare has thrown all pretense to the wind, and wants only to take us on a wild ride. The many moments of apparent self-parody (Shakespeare travestying his earlier plays) only add to the fun. But perhaps this sort of fun is not entirely wholesome.
October 8, 2016
For some reason, this read like a very odd, dystopian retelling of Snow White, with equal shares of witty one-liners and deep, soul-searching soliloquies.
The two things that confuse me most about this play are:
First, the fact that it is called 'Cymbeline'. King Cymbeline spends most of the play being a bit of a lump, while Imogen, Pisanio, Posthumus and Iachimo do many interesting things--being exiled, going into hiding, accidentally poisoning each other (but not fatally, thank heavens).
and second, the fact that Posthumus is named 'Posthumus'. It is a very odd name. (granted, Posthumus is an odd hero...so perhaps it fits).
Overall, this is probably my favorite Shakespeare play yet. There's so much raw adventure in it; an odd mix of history, legend, and fairy tale. Iachimo was an excellent and oddly relatable villain, in spite of himself. I really loved the themes of regret and repentance running through heroes and villains alike, and the general willingness to forgive that colored the whole last act-like a tragedy play with a comedy ending.
The two things that confuse me most about this play are:
First, the fact that it is called 'Cymbeline'. King Cymbeline spends most of the play being a bit of a lump, while Imogen, Pisanio, Posthumus and Iachimo do many interesting things--being exiled, going into hiding, accidentally poisoning each other (but not fatally, thank heavens).
and second, the fact that Posthumus is named 'Posthumus'. It is a very odd name. (granted, Posthumus is an odd hero...so perhaps it fits).
Overall, this is probably my favorite Shakespeare play yet. There's so much raw adventure in it; an odd mix of history, legend, and fairy tale. Iachimo was an excellent and oddly relatable villain, in spite of himself. I really loved the themes of regret and repentance running through heroes and villains alike, and the general willingness to forgive that colored the whole last act-like a tragedy play with a comedy ending.
November 5, 2017
Well that was fairly crazy! Convoluted plotting, humourous scenes reminiscent of the major comedies, preposterous coincidences reminiscent of Pericles, potions a la Romeo and Juliet or Much Ado About Nothing, girls dressed as boys like...almost every other Shakespeare play...reversals of fortune, repentant confessions, name a non-Tragic Shakespeare trope it's probably in here and it's all pretty daft. Nevertheless the last two Acts are fun if you can tolerate the silliness and just see how Shakespeare manages to resolve all the disparate and knottily tangled plot threads.
I have the feeling Shakespeare was in a hurry to get some of the late romances down on paper and up on stage and less concerned with deep characterisation or even witticism or puns than in most of the earlier work. He was probably a very busy man, by then, not just a playwright and bit-part player but a shareholder in a Royally sponsored stage company, with all that entailed.
I have the feeling Shakespeare was in a hurry to get some of the late romances down on paper and up on stage and less concerned with deep characterisation or even witticism or puns than in most of the earlier work. He was probably a very busy man, by then, not just a playwright and bit-part player but a shareholder in a Royally sponsored stage company, with all that entailed.
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September 17, 2024Quite different from the other Shakespeare I’ve read. Very plot driven! I enjoyed this buddy read with Jo so much and hope to write more.
October 16, 2023
Ovo ima sve šta volim kod Šekspira. Mešanje komedije i tragedije. Prikaz sledi.
November 2, 2024
ایموژن، فیدل(وفادار) بود اما تو چی پوستوموس؟
پیچشه� و بعد ساله� به هم رسیدنها� جالبی دارن نمایشنامهها� شکسپیر. توی این نمایشنامه پای ژوپیتر هم کشید وسط😂
پیچشه� و بعد ساله� به هم رسیدنها� جالبی دارن نمایشنامهها� شکسپیر. توی این نمایشنامه پای ژوپیتر هم کشید وسط😂
March 4, 2018
My favorite Shakespeare to date. The female lead was an absolute delight.
June 26, 2021
this isn't a play it's 30 shakespearean tropes in a trenchcoat. everything happens so much.
March 27, 2025
I love this play! It is cracking. What a yarn. I can’t agree with the bad hype that it is one of Shakespeare’s failures. The story is great. The characters are extremely compelling. And I love its sheer absurdism and self-parodic brilliance: Posthumus nobly atoning for his mistakes only to assault Imogen by accident at the end (idiot); King Cymbeline submitting to the Romans despite fighting a war not to (LOL - he just blames his indecision on the evil Queen!); the Roman gods descending on Posthumus when he is imprisoned; the Jailer’s lovably quirky enjoy-life philosophy; the long lost brothers saying to the disguised Imogen “if only we were brothers…� (very unsubtly); the fact that all the ludicrously entangled plot details come together at the end in this long exposition of stuff we already know�
It’s wild! And yet I’m here for it. Something about it is just so compelling. In terms of Shakespeare’s more experimental later plays, this is so, so, so much better, in my view, than Antony and Cleopatra.
Northrop Frye joked that the play should be called Much Ado About Everything: it’s like a compendium of Shakespeare’s greatest hits. I agree! It’s like a potent cocktail of Romeo and Juliet (interrupted love; deathly potions; young blood-boiled horny men driving the action), Othello (jealousy; false reports of infidelity; schemers with similar names), King Lear (the banished daughter), Measure for Measure (a female character constantly having to bat off horny men), Twelfth Night (female cross-dressing), Much Ado About Nothing (identity confusion), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (character mixups and people falling in love with the wrong people) - the list goes on. There’s even a dash of Falstaff in the Jailer’s one and only monologue. One likes to think that this is Shakespeare mixing up his previous literary tropes in one sprawling epic. Whether this is a deliberate, self-loathing parody, as Harold Bloom suggested, or whether it is genuinely heartfelt but just a tad implausible - that is down to individual judgement.
I lean more towards the latter if you get me on the right day. Sometimes I find Bloom's reading a bit cynical. The play can be read more sincerely than he gives it credit for! Unlike Othello, Lear, and most of the comedies, this play lays bare all of the men's faults and has them atone for them very sincerely and honestly. Everything is laid out on the table very honestly. And the paying of the tribute makes slightly more sense in the context of the Queen's death and Lucius's kind treatment of Imogen - the play privileges forgiveness and redemption.
Jean E. Howard has written about this play’s treatment of Britain and patriotism. It is a hard riddle to decipher; in some ways, the play does see Britain as a far greater alternative to the likes of Italy. In other ways, it is almost anti-patriotic (4.2.33-5). Imogen is relieved at the end that she no longer has to worry about royalty. She is more pleased to have her brothers and her husband back. Her concerns are just family-oriented. She hates the royal, patriotic court. This is symbolised in the film version with Imogen and Posthumus motorbiking away on their own at the end. Away from the King and away from court.
Speaking of - Imogen is a fantastic character. Not for her chastity and innocence, as the Victorians said (yuck), but for her sheer rhetorical smoothness. My favourite scene is when she is sparring with Iachimo:
“You do seem to know
Something of me, or what concerns me. Pray you,
Since doubting things go ill often hurts more
Than to be sure they do - for certainties
Either are past remedies, or, timely knowing,
The remedy then born - discover to me
What both you spur and stop.�
If only Othello had taken that advice. And then:
“If this be true -
As I have such a heart that both mine ears
Must not in haste abuse…� - in other words, don’t believe everything you’re told!
“If [Cymbeline] think it fit
A saucy stranger in his court to mart
As in a Romish stew, and to expound
His beastly mind to us, he hath a court
He little cares for, and a daughter who
He respects not at all.�
Hell yes! What a comeback. Iachimo, you’re letting the side down - Iago is rolling in his grave at your inefficacy. Imogen wins hands down.
It’s wild! And yet I’m here for it. Something about it is just so compelling. In terms of Shakespeare’s more experimental later plays, this is so, so, so much better, in my view, than Antony and Cleopatra.
Northrop Frye joked that the play should be called Much Ado About Everything: it’s like a compendium of Shakespeare’s greatest hits. I agree! It’s like a potent cocktail of Romeo and Juliet (interrupted love; deathly potions; young blood-boiled horny men driving the action), Othello (jealousy; false reports of infidelity; schemers with similar names), King Lear (the banished daughter), Measure for Measure (a female character constantly having to bat off horny men), Twelfth Night (female cross-dressing), Much Ado About Nothing (identity confusion), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (character mixups and people falling in love with the wrong people) - the list goes on. There’s even a dash of Falstaff in the Jailer’s one and only monologue. One likes to think that this is Shakespeare mixing up his previous literary tropes in one sprawling epic. Whether this is a deliberate, self-loathing parody, as Harold Bloom suggested, or whether it is genuinely heartfelt but just a tad implausible - that is down to individual judgement.
I lean more towards the latter if you get me on the right day. Sometimes I find Bloom's reading a bit cynical. The play can be read more sincerely than he gives it credit for! Unlike Othello, Lear, and most of the comedies, this play lays bare all of the men's faults and has them atone for them very sincerely and honestly. Everything is laid out on the table very honestly. And the paying of the tribute makes slightly more sense in the context of the Queen's death and Lucius's kind treatment of Imogen - the play privileges forgiveness and redemption.
Jean E. Howard has written about this play’s treatment of Britain and patriotism. It is a hard riddle to decipher; in some ways, the play does see Britain as a far greater alternative to the likes of Italy. In other ways, it is almost anti-patriotic (4.2.33-5). Imogen is relieved at the end that she no longer has to worry about royalty. She is more pleased to have her brothers and her husband back. Her concerns are just family-oriented. She hates the royal, patriotic court. This is symbolised in the film version with Imogen and Posthumus motorbiking away on their own at the end. Away from the King and away from court.
Speaking of - Imogen is a fantastic character. Not for her chastity and innocence, as the Victorians said (yuck), but for her sheer rhetorical smoothness. My favourite scene is when she is sparring with Iachimo:
“You do seem to know
Something of me, or what concerns me. Pray you,
Since doubting things go ill often hurts more
Than to be sure they do - for certainties
Either are past remedies, or, timely knowing,
The remedy then born - discover to me
What both you spur and stop.�
If only Othello had taken that advice. And then:
“If this be true -
As I have such a heart that both mine ears
Must not in haste abuse…� - in other words, don’t believe everything you’re told!
“If [Cymbeline] think it fit
A saucy stranger in his court to mart
As in a Romish stew, and to expound
His beastly mind to us, he hath a court
He little cares for, and a daughter who
He respects not at all.�
Hell yes! What a comeback. Iachimo, you’re letting the side down - Iago is rolling in his grave at your inefficacy. Imogen wins hands down.
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