Michael:

The first scene of Cymbeline is pure exposition of the situation of Imogen, daughter of the king, Cymbeline, and of her two brothers, not yet named, who were stolen from court twenty years ago. We learn she is mistress, actually the recently married wife, of Posthumus Leonatus. It’s a serviceable if rather clunky exposition dialogue and continued into the succeeding appearance of the Queen, Posthumus, and and Imogen. From the queen we learn that the king is offended by the the marriage, and the queen insists she is an exception to stepmothers and their advocate with the king. But Imogen casts doubt on this and we learn that Posthumus is to be separated from her by a voyage to Rome. They exchange favors, she a ring to him and he a bracelet to her before Cymbeline comes in and commands P. away. We learn from P.’s servant Pisanio that the queen’s son, Cloten (but not yet named) drew a sword on P. as he left, but no harm was done before they were parted.

In the next scene we meet the smelly Cloten, who apparently sweated a good deal from the encounter. The asides of the two lords indicate that no one has much regard for Cloten. Then a scene between Imogen and Pisanio about P.’s departure which mostly expresses her love for him.

Next a scene in prose, in Rome, but we are not told this explicitly, with Iachimo, P.’s servant Filario, a Frenchman, and two silent others. When P. comes in there are some perfunctory introductions, then we learn that there had been some guy-talk about which country’s women were most virtuous, sort of reverse locker-room chat. P. had insisted on the fidelity of his mistress, and Iachimo expresses a cynical doubt. There ensues an argument between them, which Filario attempts to quell in several interventions. But finally a bet is made, which again Filario attempts to forestall, on the fidelity of P.’s mistress/wife, and Iachimo will try to seduce her. Clearly P. is trapping himself.

The queen’s character is clearly defined in the next scene with Cornelius, the doctor, from whom she tries to secure poison. Why, we’re not told, but she says she wants to try them out on animals. In various asides we’ve learned she’s indeed a wicked stepmother and not be trusted. And Cornelius doesn’t trust her but gives her something that will sedate but not kill. Pisanio comes in as the doctor lets us know the innocuous nature of the medicines, she leaves the box with the instruction to Pisanio that the contents are medicinal. He leaves and she indicates she wants to poison everyone around Imogen, especially Posthumus, and her as well if she won’t give in to her son.

While Imogen is lamenting her abandoned state, she learns that Iachimo has come from Rome and will speak with her. He delivers a letter of introduction from P., and he begins his Iago-like temptation, lauding her beauty and blaming P. for his licentious neglect of her in his life in Rome. He creates a false story of P.’s infidelities — and in language that’s frequently tangled and obscure. When he finally suggests that she should revenge herself and allow him to accomplish this, she calls Pisanio and expresses her outrage at Iachimo. At that point he turns and says he was just testing her and rejoices in her constancy and praises P. But he has a chest of valuable stuff for the emperor and would like to keep it with her for safekeeping overnight. The plot thickens.

Except for Iachimo’s language, the play is rather straightforward so far. The queen is clearly a sister of Lady Macbeth, and Iachimo a version of Iago and just as insidious in his temptation. So far nothing more about the two princes who were stolen twenty years ago.

Dusty:

Before I read your comments, I made some notes, including “clunky exposition” to describe the opening of 1.1, precisely the phrase you used. What makes it almost comic is that the First Gent knows everything and the Second Gent knows nothing. Maybe SG has been out of town for a while. Or is Shakespeare parodying himself? I too had noted to myself that the Queen reminds us a lot of Lady Macbeth and Iachimo of Iago, especially when he serves up innuendoes about Imogen’s chastity. (The Queen is so quickly and completely identified as a wicked stepmother that, so I imagine, she would twirl her mustache if she had one. Shakespeare seems to have no interest in exploring her.) I would add that Cymbeline occasionally sounds like Lear when he speaks angrily to Cordelia or, later, in 2.4, when he threatens vaguely that “I’ll do something.” (That reminded me of Lear when he sounds off: “I will do such things/, What they are yet I know not, but they shall be/ The terrors of the earth.”) Shakespeare is going to have to rehabilitate Cymbeline before this play is done. In the first two acts we don’t know anything good about him.

You’re right to note that after that initial reference to Cymbeline’s lost sons, we hear nothing of them for a long time. That tends to deter us from thinking about the problem of succession in the kingdom: the king’s two male heirs are gone and maybe dead, and his only heir is a daughter. And she has just married a gentleman commoner. Who is the legal successor, and could it/should it be Cloten? (Stepsons sometimes succeeded Roman emperors.)

We don’t know very much about Posthumous Leonatus, though 1st Gent thinks very highly of him. Why should he accept Iachimo’s locker-room (I like that term) wager? Why should he think it appropriate to subject Imogen to a seduction-test? Do we think less of P. L. for that?

As critics note, Iachimo seems like a “stage Italian” who has been transported from the Renaissance to ancient Britain. He’s a minor-league Iago (I don’t think his malignity is motiveless), rather quickly disarmed by Imogen, and he has to back-pedal. But I wonder why Imogen wasn’t more wary, and why she so quickly agreed to accept his chest of jewels, esp. when it turns out to be a large trunk. And she is asked to keep it in her bedroom!

Dusty:

As Act 2 opens we get more of Cloten the clumsy bully/coward. I see why Shakespeare might want the First Lord to make obsequious responses to Cloten but I don’t see why he needs the Second Lord to make a series of sardonic asides. The audience already sees that Cloten is a clod. Maybe the point is that everybody at court sees it too.

The second scene, when Iachimo climbs out of the trunk, recalls Othello and the sleeping Desdemona. In 2.3 Cloten seems to derive a juvenile pleasure out of uttering the word “penetrate” to describe the way music works on people. And he lays it on pretty thick: “penetrate her with your fingering . . . with tongue too.” Can it really be Cloten who, as my footnote suggests, might sing “Hark, hark, the lark . . .’? Imogen disposes of Cloten as easily as she did Iachimo.

2.4, set in Rome after some gap of time, reminds us that we are in the land of “romance.” The stolen love-token reminds us of handkerchiefs and rings in Othello, Merchant of Venice, and All’s Well. And it makes me wonder why Shakespeare should refer back to his earlier plays so often. Is it a way of suggesting to the audience that from this point forward things could go either way, either toward tragedy or toward comedy? Leonatus Posthumus responds the way Othello does, but more credulously, maybe because Iachimo has produced the “ocular proof” — the bracelet and then the description of the mole under Imogen’s breast. And in 2.5 Posthumus gets a soliloquy — isn’t it the first one in the play? — in which he lets fly with vile misogynistic rant, reminding me of Adam’s rant in Bk. 10 of Paradise Lost. When he exclaims “O, Vengeance, vengeance!,” is he meant to be a parody of a revenger in The Spanish Tragedy or The Revenger’s Tragedy? Or does he remind us of Hamlet, especially when he sputters about revenge? Or of Lear, who, just before he says he “will do such things,” says “I will have such revenges on you both . . .”?

Michael:

Cymbeline seems to want to contain a version of Othello, even though Posthumus seems even less cautious than Othello. But his murderous reaction to what he hears from the tempter recapitulates the tragedy. What enlarges his reaction is a kind of total misogyny at 2.5. Yes, like Adam in PL 10, which is set against that simple one-line response of Eve.

Michael:

In 3.1 it’s interesting that all speak blank verse but Cloten. I wonder if Jacobeans were meant to hear this onstage. Lucius is a gracious, if laconic, diplomat.

In 3.2 Pisanio is less credulous than his master, and his refusal to tell Imogen what he has received puts him on the right side of things. Her loyalty and love to Postumus is further characterized in her eagerness to get to Milford Haven.

Finally we get to the missing sons of Cymbeline in 3.3. Belarius sounds as if he’s been hanging out with Duke Senior in AYLI. And he’s even more inclined to talk about his content with the simple life. The boys are understandably less taken by his lesson, and we get some exposition in his response about his former life with Cymbeline and his bitterness at a false accusation of having been a double agent. But when the boys take off for the hunting, Belarius discloses that he’s a kidnapper. But it appears we’re supposed to have a positive sense of his kidnapping and that Cymbeline is the one to blame for the loss of the boys as toddlers because he unjustly banished Belarius. This is odd. It appears to mean that we’re to see the simple, humble life in Wales as a reasonable replacement for life at court and the kidnapping as a proper response to B’s banishment.

3.4 starts the two plots converging. Now that Pisanio has got Imogen free of the court on the way to Milford Haven he discloses to her the letter to him from Posthumus. She’s devastated of course, and because she’s been reading Vergil she associates Posthumus with Aeneas and Sinon. Her response is to take on the Othello-like desire for her death and begs Pisanio to kill her. She takes his letters from her bosom and throws them away. Pisanio of course is unwilling to kill Imogen and proposes a plan to have her disguise herself as a man and go to Milford Haven and go with Lucius to Rome. At the end of the scene he gives her some remedy against seasickness.

3.5 Meanwhile back at the court, things unfold. Lucius is sent off. And Imogen is missed and no one can find her. Cloten seems to have learned to speak verse in the scene, though he doesn’t have much to say. But then further on he’s back in prose as he responds to Posthumus’ letter to Pisanio. It’s not clear exactly why, but Cloten wants some clothes of Posthumus as he goes off to Milford Haven, where he intends to rape her when dressed as Posthumus. He also says he’s forgotten to ask Pisanio something just as he’s gone off, but it’s not clear what that is. He does ask Pisanio, when he returns with the clothes, how long it’s been since Imogen when off.

Turns out in 3.6 that Imogen’s disguise as a man isn’t easy, and she’s hungry and weary. But she finds a cave or a hovel, draws her sword and enters it. But surprise, surprise, it turns out to be the dwelling of Belarius, Avarigus, and Guidarius, who are fagged out from hunting. B. discovers Imogen, who then emerges and swears she was going to pay for what she was about to take. The boys are much taken with her and claim her (in disguise) as a brother, which of course she, now he, is. And she, now he, is happy to become a companion to them.

The very short 3.7, in Rome, seems to defer the war of the Romans against the Britons.

Dusty:

Yes, it’s noticeable that Cloten speaks in prose in 3.1, which perhaps suggests that he is cruder, of a different class or nature. But in 3.5, as you note, he speaks blank verse. Is the blank verse meant to suggest that he is, after all, of the same nature as Cymbeline and the Queen, i.e., evil.

It’s a bit surprising that we now get a third plot line, Rome vs. Britain, to add to the other two, Imogen and Posthumus Leonatus, and the Queen’s plot to make Cloten king. Why didn’t we hear about this earlier?

In 3.2 is Pisanio, in refusing to follow the foolish orders of his master, a bit like Kent in Lear?

I too thought of As You Like It in 3.3., when Belisarius moralizes on court vs. country life. As in AYLI the characters first meet at the court, then separate, and ultimately reunite in the country (the mountains of Wales rather than the Forest of Arden).

Why does it take Shakespeare so long to introduce the king’s lost sons? When we first hear of them, we assume they will eventually turn up in the play. Maybe Shakespeare is counting on our expectation.

Has Shakespeare taken on too much plot material that’s only loosely related? There are a number of separate actions. The King banishes Leonatus. The Queen plots to have her son made king. Iachimo has won his bet, and as an unintended consequence Leonatus now plots to murder Imogen. Cloten lusts after Imogen and plots to kill Leonatus and rape Imogen. Belisarius (another banished man) has been harboring Cymbeline’s sons for 20 years. Pisanio counterplots. All of these individual plots are now going on against the backdrop of impending war between Rome and Britain. (Compare the two plots in Lear set against the backdrop of war with Frande.)

In 3.5 why does Cloten imagine that Pisanio would loyally serve him?
In 3.5 and 3.6 three different characters have soliloquies in quick succession, Cloten, Pisanio, and Imogen. Is each of these speeches meant to be understood as a character thinking through what he/she is going to do, and being overheard by the audience? Or is this a sign that Shakespeare has changed his dramatic mode, some new kind of play? Or is it a sign of dramatic weakness? Does Shakespeare just need to move the action along but lack the time to have these thoughts come out in the course of conversation?

3.6 amuses the audience, who know the kids are all related, but the kids don’t know it yet. Shakespeare doesn’t seem to think he needs to devote much time to this scene, in which an intruder is quickly welcomed as a brother. (By 4.2 Arviragus already “loves” Fidele.)

Is 3.7 designed to suggest that the war is being deferred, or that Lucius is being put in charge? I think war is coming.

Dusty:

In Act 4 several of the plot lines — Cloten pursuing Imogen and Leonatus, the two princes, Lucius and the Roman invasion — converge or merge at Milford Haven. If this is going to turn out to be a tragedy, then the audience must hope that the testy Cymbeline is defeated by the Romans, and that Leonatus gets punished for his ugly misogyny and loss of faith in Imogen — i.e., is killed. But if it’s going to be a comedy, then somehow both Cymbeline and Leonatus have to recognize their errors and reform themselves, to deserve being reunited with Imogen (who, as Fidele, remains faithful to Leonatus).

Again Shakespeare assigns soliloquies and asides, and does so more frequently and to more characters than in earlier plays: another soliloquy from Cloten in 4.1, from Belisarius in 4.2, and from Pisanio in 4.3.

4.2 is the longest scene in the play to this point, more than 400 lines. Imogen again takes a nap, the second time in the play. During her first sleep Iachimo visually inspects her body, and in this second one, it’s assumed she is dead. But it’s just a sleeping potion, left over from Friar Laurence’s pharmacopeia in Romeo and Juliet (yet another occasion in which Shakespeare reuses bits of his own plays). Fidele’s “death” provides an occasion for a beautiful funeral song, lamenting that golden lads and lasses must turn to dust. Again there is a disconnect between a lovely song and the occasion: “Hark, hark, the lark” accompanies Cloten’s attempted assault, and “Fear no more” is sung (or is it spoken?) to a body that we know is not dead. Maybe this is a cue that we should expect a comic ending.

Shakespeare’s song apparently inspired William Collins to add a third, that seems inspired by the words of Arviragus leading up to “Fear no more,” when he says “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. . .[and then he goes on to a little flower catalog: primrose, harebell, eglantine, ruddock].” Collins’ song, “To fair Fidele’s grassy tomb/ Soft maids and village hinds shall bring/Each opening sweet of earliest bloom,/ And rifle all the breathing spring . . .,” was thought good enough, and Shakespearean enough, to be printed with Cymbeline in the late 18th century.

But comedy, if that is what is coming, is mixed with gory violence: Cloten and Guiderius exit fighting and Guiderius comes back with Cloten’s head. (This shocking bit comes from Macbeth.) This sets up a second crucial misperception coming immediately after the belief that Fidele is dead: that the headless body is that of Leonatus rather than Cloten.

There’s a lot of doubling in the play: Iachimo and Cloten both imagine raping Imogen; she sleeps twice; two good men banished; two misperceptions; two lovely songs; two princes (why two?); Cloten dressed in Leonatus’s garments.

4.3 hints that Cymbeline regrets the loss of Imogen, but he does not yet seem rehabilitated. And in 4.4 the lost princes plot and the Rome vs. Britain war plot connect. I found Belisarius’s speeches very knotty, and needed help from my editor’s many glossing footnotes to untangle them.

Over to you, to explain how this is all going to be resolved.

Michael:

I’ve been dealing with altered names in the Norton Shakespeare, Innogene for Imogen, Giacomo for Iachimo, and Belarius for Belisarius, but have been trying to “normalize” them to the more usual textual norm. But I’ve hitherto given Belarius instead of Belisarius, so I’ll try to conform.

The reason for Cloten’s wanting Posthumus’ clothes is not terribly clear, though it’s obvious that this will be an important plot device after Guidarius kills and decapitates him. He initially says that because Imogen once said she values P’s garments over Cloten’s body, it would good revenge to rape and kill her in those garments. Well, okay, it’s a motivation, if thin. I’ll bet Cloten’s head was a recycling of Macbeth’s on the Globe stage.

It’s always perilous to accept even benign drugs in Shakespeare, and the fact that Imogen/Fidele does so sets up the expectation we see fulfilled at 4.195. The song they sing over Imogen is one of the loveliest in the plays. The note in the Norton says that the actors playing two brothers were not good singers, so the lines about speaking the lines were added. But in the folio, the passage is marked “Song.” I once heard, perhaps in a lecture, that “chimney sweeper” was in Warwickshire dialect a name for dandelion seeds (or “clocks” as they’re called in contemporary British usage), so the “golden” of the lads and girls can refer also to the flower as well as the youths, and the chimney sweeper is both the flower gone to seed and the dusty boy who cleans chimneys. Apparently neither Imogen nor Cloten are buried, so the former can wake up and see Cloten’s headless body and recognize Posthumus’ clothes.

Yes, there’s a lot of plot complication, more maybe than any other of Sh’s plays. This may explain, by reaction, the relative straightforwardness of Winter’s Tale with that fourth act where almost nothing plot-related happens. Still, I think the interweaving eventually works. We don’t know exactly why Posthumus repents and gives up his Italian identity at the beginning of Act 5, especially after his virulent misogyny earlier. Of course we haven’t seen him since the end of Act 2, so maybe he’s had time to think things over. (Maybe I’m more willing to forgive plot complication as I’ve been reading Le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which must be the most complicated plot and set of characters ever.)

Michael:

5.1 has him switching identity from Italian to a Briton peasant. In his soliloquy he seems to address the audience, “You married ones,” and seems to ask forgiveness for wives “wrying but a little.” But in blaming Pisanio for following his commands he notes the fortune that the gods have not punished or taken vengeance on him. Hence his change of clothes and identity?

And not only this, but Iachino also repents in a soliloquy after a skirmish with Posthumus. Clearly the play is headed toward comedy rather than tragedy. In the following alarums and excursions Cymbeline is taken, then freed by the Welsh contingent, plus Posthumus. Posthumus gives a soliloquy description of the battle, while he’s confined by jailers.

At this point the play becomes masque-like, and the vision that follows must be Posthumus’ dream, music and the appearance of his father and mother and two brothers. The tablet that Jupiter lays on Posthumus is in riddling prose, but suggests that there will be resolution.

When we turn back to Posthumus and his jailer, the latter’s rather comic banter seems to echo the song of Guidarius and Averigus, now “Fear no more tavern bills.” Death will deliver him from drinking too much and paying for it. The jailer here sees a version of the hangman in Measure. Posthumus’s eagerness for death seems a fitting response to his believing the worst of Imogen, a part of his penance for that.

5.6 is a long scene that unties all the knots of the plot. I count about two dozen specific plot details that are sorted out by the end of the scene. This might seem comic (in the modern sense), but I don’t think it’s meant to sound so. Nearly everyone is on stage, either at the beginning of the scene or entering at l. 68. It could be played as comic, but I think that would be a mistake. The scene is long and proceeds slowly, ultimately uniting all the characters in the royal party. And all the characters on stage are part of some misapprehension, so we can see them embracing one another as the errors are uncovered and set right. Iachimo has the longest speeches, beginning at l. 140 and continuing to 220. Twice Cymbeline introduces lines that suggest impatience, like the lines in Tempest that punctuate Prospero’s exposition, “Come to the matter” and “Nay, nay, to the purpose.”

As Posthumus is lamenting the lost (as he thinks) Imogen, she comes forward in her Fidele disguise for the expected recognition, but he doesn’t recognize her and strikes her down. Pisanio says P. never killed her until now. So for a moment we think the play has turned tragic. But then she comes to in Pisanio’s embrace, and then reprehends him for the would-be poison he gave her that he had from the queen. Which brings Cornelius forth to explain the “poison.” Which brings Belisarius and the two boys forth to acknowledge their mistake in thinking her dead. Which calls forth Posthumus’ recognition of Imogen, then Cymbeline’s, who must report on the queen’s death, which calls forth Pisanio, who acknowledges giving Cloten Posthumus’ clothes, which brings forward Guidarius, who acknowledges killing Cloten. Dizzying! Cymbeline is ready to bring the law down on Guidarius, until Belisarius insists on Guidarius’ identity. Perhaps the most potentially comic moment here is when Belisarius, the old kidnapper, insists he be paid for bringing up the royal sons. Talk about chutzpah! He still has to explain their identity to Cymbeline, whose reaction suggests the emotion in Belisarius’ speech. The boys are introduced to Cymbeline in their real names, and the mole on Guidarius’ neck has the usual romance function of confirming identity.

What next? Well, Imogen must acknowledge her two brothers and they her. Wait! Who was the unknown soldier who stood with the two boys and the old man, in the lane. Cymbeline says he would have graced the thanksgiving of the king. Funny you should ask, in effect, says Posthumus, I’m he! Then Iachimo must acknowledge himself to Posthumus, who feels he must forgive him.

All that’s left is for the soothsayer to read the tablet that Jupiter gave Posthumus and explain it with some etymologizing. So everything has fallen into place. What to make of it? Is there something in the reconciliation of Britain with Rome? It’s certainly a neater play than Pericles. And too neat? I think the final scene allows enough scope for good actors to make it all seem emotionally satisfying — and plausible in its implausibility. As the denouement proceeds in the final scene, there isn’t time for objection, and our objection would spoil it all. Is it taking us part way to WT and Tempest?

What think you? I’ve never seen it on stage, but I think it’s stage-worthy and would love to see it done.

Dusty:

In the long final scene (484 lines) everybody is brought together in one place, all secrets are revealed, villains confess, and everybody is pardoned. (And Britain and Rome, having just fought a bloody battle, are now allies!) I like your account of the way everything is resolved (and dissolved?) in comedy.

But what a strange ending to a strange act! Again we have soliloquies in each of the first four scenes, from Leonatus, Iachimo, Leonatus again in both 5.3. and 5.4, and even the jailer. It’s as if Shakespeare has decided to have various characters reveal themselves directly to the audience rather than indirectly through dialogue with other characters on stage.

And he shifts from dramedy into dream vision (Leonatus’s family) and then into masque, with the descent of Jupiter. The change in dramatic mode is also reflected in the change of verse, from blank verse into fourteeners, and thence into quatrains. This scene in 5.4 could be the climax of the play in a lesser dramatist’s hands. (And as you say the tablet in effect signals to the audience that we will subsequently get the “interpretation.”) And then Shakespeare tops it with the comic jailer. (And we haven’t even got to 5.5 yet.)

It’s all a bit unreal. Maybe Shakespeare, in this romance mode, does not feel he needs to make the repentance of Leonatus and that of Iachimo seem psychologically plausible. Both repentances are suddenly and concisely revealed in soliloquy.

In the final scene we get the distribution of rewards (and the reported punishment of the Queen). So everybody gets his just deserts, whether or not he deserves them: “Pardon’s the word to all.” The long finale is operatic: a huge ensemble scene in which the bad guys confess, secrets are revealed, and recognitions made. Families are reunited, Imogen with Leonatus, Imogen with Cymbeline, Cymbeline with his sons, Imogen with her new “brothers,” Cymbeline with Belisarius. As you suggest, it’s a linked series of discoveries and delights. It’s very gratifying to the audience, and thus “comic” in the old sense: I found myself smiling as one discovery followed another in the way I smile at the end of a Mozart or Rossini opera. I think you’re right to say that it is “emotionally satisfying,” and could be a great success on the stage if handled well.

It’s a stroke of comic genius on Shakespeare’s part to seed the text with a couple of details that require explanation in the finale of the finale: the “fourth man in a silly habit” in 5.3 who turns out to be Leonatus in 5.5, and the mysterious “tablet” in 5.4 that has to be explained by the Soothsayer in 5.5, who then caps himself by explaining the omen that appeared earlier to Lucius. When Cymbeline says, in response to the Soothsayer’s explanation, “This hath some seeming,” I think he should say it with an ironic smile on his face, reflecting Shakespeare’s and the audience’s sense that this is all a bit improbable but we’ll take it.

It ends the way the other romances end, with harmony, peace, reunion, forgiveness. But I think the ingenious unraveling of the complexities and the presence of so many characters who get reunited with each other make it all seem like pure comedy.