In part 1, I mentioned a few plays that different aspects of Cymbeline reminded me of, and I keep thinking about the play in pairs. For example, Cymbeline is a strange title. The play is mostly not about Cymbeline. It’s a bit like Julius Caesar is mostly about Brutus. But I always thought Julius Caesar is titled Julius Caesar because he’s more famous. Is that the same reason for Cymbeline? Cymbeline is more about Imogen and Posthumus. There was a production of Cymbeline by Shakespeare’s Globe in London which was re-titled Imogen.
Say we call it Posthumus and Imogen, and compare it with Romeo and Juliet, where two lovers are separated and brought back at the end of the play.
A small aside. Juliet is famously 14. Emma Smith says there are only a small number of Shakespeare characters whose age is given to us explicitly. Juliet is an obvious example. Do you notice the ones in King Lear if you’ve been reading it? Lear says he’s ‘fourscore and upward’, meaning over eighty, and, interestingly, Lear asks Kent very specifically ‘how old art thou?’ ‘I have years on my back forty-eight’. That got me thinking about Imogen’s age. Shakespeare doesn’t tell us. But the two gentlemen in Act 1 Scene 1 say that the two sons were stolen when the older one was three and it happened ‘some 20 years’ ago. So if the eldest brother is 23, the oldest Imogen can be is 21. Maybe she’s 18. Maybe younger. I wonder if that affects how you see her and what she’s been through?
Back to comparing Posthumus and Imogen with Romeo and Juliet, the most significant difference is that Posthumus and Imogen have a happy ending, and they live, whereas Romeo and Juliet die and the story ends in tragedy. I used to think Shakespeare’s plots are complicated, but after Cymbeline, Romeo and Juliet’s story is pretty straightforward, all they want is to love and live. What they’re fighting against is opposing families and bad timing. Posthumus and Imogen not only fight against opposing families, there’s Cloten who tries to rape her, there’s Iachimo who almost rapes her, there’s her husband who tries to kill her, there’s the queen who also tries to kill her, she has to wander around alone in Welsh mountains, she gets sick, she gets poisoned and buried alive with a headless bloody corpse, she goes through a war. And miraculously, THEY end up the fortunate couple who lived happily ever after. The ending is so improbable it’s almost unbelievable.
Tragedy with a happy ending?
Cymbeline is listed as a tragedy in the First Folio. I find that interesting. Now it’s often classified as one of Shakespeare’s romances, along with Pericles, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. It feels like a tragedy. The journey that Imogen and Posthumus go through, separately, has plunged them to the depths, so deep that their happy ending does not quite make up for it.
Compare it with a comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, which also features a made-up accusation against the woman’s innocence which results in the man’s jealousy and the woman’s apparent death. I often forget this dark episode happens in such a bright sunny comedy. Hero is framed and falsely accused by a villain, her fiancé Claudio believes the false evidence and abandons her. Hero is advised to pretend to be dead; The villain is exposed; Claudio regrets and grieves. And in the end Hero is NOT dead and forgives Claudio. You can swap Hero with Imogen, then it’ll describe the plot of Cymbeline. Why is Much Ado nowhere near as despairing and dark? Obviously we spend the majority of the time watching the funny couple Benedict and Beatrice, Claudio and Hero are the secondary couple. Hero’s near tragedy serves the purpose of making Beatrice’s relationship stronger. The second reason is, Hero has Beatrice, who would risk her own happiness for her best friend, whereas Imogen has no one. Imogen is Shakespeare’s Anne Eliot. So how does Cymbeline with the tragic shape come to a happy ending? There’s no Dogberry; but the villain curiously has a change of heart for no obvious reason. The last time we saw Iachimo was when he convinced Posthumus that he had picked the lock and taken the treasure of Imogen’s honour. That was in Act 2 Scene 4, we looked at it in part 1. Now two acts later, in Act 5 Scene 2, Iachimo is fighting against Britain as part of the Roman army.
IACHIMO
The heaviness and guilt within my bosom
Takes off my manhood. I have belied a lady,
The Princess of this country, and the air on’t
Revengingly enfeebles me… (A5S2)
His sense of guilt is so strong that when he’s confronted, he spills out the whole thing.
IACHIMO
I am glad to be constrain’d to utter that
Which torments me to conceal. By villainy
I got this ring… (A5S5)
Compare it with another comedy, Twelth Night, which features a woman in disguise for love. She’s without family or friends, washed ashore on a foreign land. Why do we not fear for the lonely Viola? Because there’s never a hint of sexual violence. Viola either gets her lord or she doesn’t get her lord; but either way she’s safe under the protection of the man she loves. And we know her twin brother Sebastian will put the triangle into the right shape and all will work out in the end. In contrast, Cymbeline is full of hints of sexual violence. How does Cymbeline with the tragic shape come to a happy ending?
It’s helpful to compare it with Othello which is almost identical in its sexual jealousy caused by slander which leads to murder. Othello is a tragedy that ends with the death of Othello’s innocent wife, Desdemona. Why does Cymbeline not end in the death of Imogen? Like Othello, where the husband does the murder. Or like the Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare’s long narrative poem, where the wife commits suicide. Again how does Cymbeline with the tragic shape come to a happy ending? The husband doesn’t manage the murder, because Pisanio the servant refuses to obey the wicked order and the wife doesn’t commit suicide because curiously, the rape does not happen, twice! The two things, the potential murder and suicide come together in this case. After hearing Posthumus’ accusation, Imogen attempts suicide by the hand of Pisanio:
IMOGEN
Prithee dispatch.
The lamb entreats the butcher. Where’s thy knife?
Thou art too slow to do thy master’s bidding,
When I desire it too. (A3S4)
The death is prevented because Pisanio wouldn’t follow the order of either his master or mistress. Instead, he gives her a way to live.
I said earlier Imogen and Posthumus go through traumatic events on their personal journey. For Imogen the most horrendous experience is to wake up next to a headless body. Another Shakespeare heroine has gone through a similar experience:
JULIET
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? There’s a fearful point!
Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where for this many hundred years the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are pack’d,
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort—
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad.
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears,
And madly play with my forefathers’ joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains? (A4S3 R&J)
Here’s the immense courage of Juliet. She’s frightened with the horror in her imagination. She imagines she’d wake up in the tomb next to the bloody rotten body of Tybalt, surrounded by the white skulls and skeletons of all her ancestors. She’ll suffocate and scream and go mad. But she does it anyway,
JULIET
Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, here’s drink! I drink to thee. (A4S3 R&J)
How irrational is love! But how strong is love. Would you do this for someone you love? Juliet is a solitary heroine the same way Imogen is. However, worse for Imogen, what Juliet goes through in her imagination, Imogen lives through in reality. The tragedy is prevented again: Juliet wakes up to the dead body of Romeo in her arms; When Imogen wakes up, she thinks it’s the dead body of her Posthumus lying next to her. But because by divine providence, her husband is still alive and her brother has cut down the would be rapist.
I guess what I’ve been trying to do for the last few minutes is to work out why Cymbeline feels more like a tragedy than a comedy, even with all the miraculous coincidences, the changes of heart and the happy ending with poetic justice for all the good people and general pardon and forgiveness for the undeserved ones. If we imagine King Lear exactly as it is but with a happy ending, similar to what Nahum Tate did in the late 17th century, Lear is restored to the throne and Cordelia lives, can we say King Lear becomes a comedy? I don’t think so.
The faithful servants & good court
One of the key factors to make the happy ending of this tragedy possible is the character of the servants collectively. As I mentioned in part 1, there is a sense that the court can tell right from wrong, a good man from a bad.
FIRST GENTLEMAN
… She’s wedded;
Her husband banish’d; she imprison’d. All
Is outward sorrow…
The King is sad, Cloten is sad, the Queen is sad too…
FIRST GENTLEMAN
But not a courtier,
Although they wear their faces to the bent
Of the King’s looks, hath a heart that is not
Glad at the thing they scowl at. (A1S1)
There is not one courtier who isn’t glad about the match, even though they arrange their faces into sadness appropriately to please the king. Because…
FIRST GENTLEMAN
He that hath miss’d the Princess is a thing
Too bad for bad report [this is Cloten]; and he that hath her [Posthumus]—
I mean that married her, alack, good man!
And therefore banish’d—is a creature such
As, to seek through the regions of the earth
For one his like, there would be something failing
In him that should compare. I do not think
So fair an outward and such stuff within
Endows a man but he. (A1S1)
As the representatives of the court, we see two servants in action. When the Queen asks Doctor Cornelius for poison, he says,
CORNELIUS
I do not like her [that’s very direct and bold]. She doth think she has
Strange ling’ring poisons. I do know her spirit,
And will not trust one of her malice with
A drug of such damn’d nature. (A1S5)
He doesn’t trust her with poisons, so he gives her something else.
CORNELIUS
… She is fooled
With a most false effect, and I the truer
So to be false with her. (A1S5)
The Queen immediatley proves the doctor’s concern legit by giving the poison to Pisanio as magic healing potion, as a bribe. Pisanio, like Cornelius, knows the Queen’s true motive is to separate Imogen and Posthumus. He says,
PISANIO
But when to my good lord I prove untrue
I’ll choke myself: there’s all I’ll do for you. (A1S5)
I’ll not take your bribe and be disloyal to my good lord Posthumus. I’ll not work for you, I’d rather choke myself.
In A3S6 Pisanio says about Cloten
PISANIO
Thou bidd’st me to my loss, for true to thee
Were to prove false, which I will never be,
To him that is most true. (A3S6)
Notice both Pisanio and Cornelius keep repeating the word and its variation ‘true’, ‘truer’ and ‘untrue’. What is it to be true and loyal? Does it mean you’d never lie, as in truthful? Interestingly, here are two servants who are true, even though they tell lies and disobey orders sometimes. The Queen asks Cornelius for poison but he does not obey her order because she’s wicked and cannot be trusted with deadly poison. When Cloten asks where Imogen has gone, Pisanio hides the full story. When the King asks him where Imogen has gone, he says he doesn’t know. He even lies blatantly to his own master to say that he has carried out the order of murder when he hasn’t. “Wherein I am false I am honest; not true, to be true. (Pisanio, A4S4)” The court can tell good from evil. The servants do not obey orders and submit to authority blindly. If either Cornelius or Pisanio had followed the order, Imogen would have been dead. It’s a wonderful contrast to the obedient but wicked servant in King Lear. The loyal and good Kent especially hates servants who obey like dogs without distinguishing right from wrong.
KENT
That such a slave as this should wear a sword,
Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these,
Like rats, oft bite the holy cords a-twain
Which are too intrince t’unloose; smooth every passion
That in the natures of their lords rebel;
Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods;
Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters,
Knowing naught, like dogs, but following. (A2S2)
In the last scene of Cymbeline, Cornelius plays the key role of kicking off the big reveals. Like two bookends, the court comes together again to play the jury and the judge, with a lot of oohs and ahs in the audio production I listened to.
There are many other interesting things I noticed, for example, the contrast between within and without; In a very similar way to King Lear, people’s clothing stands out to me; Another one is the locked things, Imogen’s room and her chastity, Imogen’s brothers’ lives locked away from the world, Posthumus’ physical shackles and the ones on his conscious. I didn’t rate Posthumus highly, but then to my surprise, I had a change of opinion about Posthumus. I’ll end with a soliloque of his. I don’t have time to talk about all these interesting things. Please share with us if you have any theories about those, or if you noticed anything else interesting. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
POSTHUMUS
Most welcome, bondage! for thou art a way,
I think, to liberty. Yet am I better
Than one that’s sick o’ th’ gout, since he had rather
Groan so in perpe’tuity than be cur’d
By th’ sure physician death, who is the key
T’ unbar these locks. My conscience, thou art fetter’d
More than my shanks and wrists; you good gods, give me
The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,
Then, free for ever! Is’t enough I am sorry?
So children temporal fathers do appease;
Gods are more full of mercy. Must I repent,
I cannot do it better than in gyves,
Desir’d more than constrain’d. To satisfy,
If of my freedom ’tis the main part, take
No stricter render of me than my all.
I know you are more clement than vile men,
Who of their broken debtors take a third,
A sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive again
On their abatement; that’s not my desire.
For Imogen’s dear life take mine; and though
’Tis not so dear, yet ’tis a life; you coin’d it.
’Tween man and man they weigh not every stamp;
Though light, take pieces for the figure’s sake;
You rather mine, being yours. And so, great pow’rs,
If you will take this audit, take this life,
And cancel these cold bonds.
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