Information about Cymbeline

This article is about Shakespeare's play. For the mythical British king, see Cunobelinus. See also Cymbaline (disambiguation).

The Tragedy of Cymbeline, King of Britain is a play by William Shakespeare. Critics often put it in a grouping called Shakespeare's Late Romances along with Pericles, Prince of Tyre, The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale. Although it was grouped with the tragedies in the First Folio, it is almost universally accorded a place in the comedies today. To use modern terminology, the play is, like most of Shakespeare's later plays, probably best described as a "tragi-comedy", a form that was quickly gaining popularity in the early seventeenth century.

Sources

Cymbeline is loosely based on an authentic British ruler, Cunobelinus. Shakespeare took a tale told by Geoffrey of Monmouth and then added many additional ideas and sub-plots. Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare notes the interesting similarities between the stepmother / daughter / stepson part of the plot and the actual or supposed circumstances of the Roman Emperor Augustus. Iachimo's wager and his hiding in a chest to gather details of Imogen's room has its origins in story II.9 of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron.^[1] But most of the play is newly invented by Shakespeare.

Date and text

"Cymbeline" cannot be precisely dated for numerous reasons. The Yale Shakespeare edition suggests the presence of a collaborator during the writing of this play, and certainly some scenes (Act III scene 7 and Act V scene 2) may strike the reader as less characteristic of Shakespeare than the rest of the play. The play has a relationship with Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding, a tragicomedy that Beaumont and Fletcher wrote ca. 1609-10, which tends to support this dating around 1609, though it is not clear which play preceded the other.^[2] The King, Cymbeline himself, is based on a British chieftain, Cunobelinus, who reigned before the time of the Roman invasion. Though once held in very high regard, Cymbeline has lost popularity over the past century. Some have held that, written late in Shakespeare's career, the play was an instance of Shakespeare amusing himself, spinning absurd tales with no serious intent.^[3] Both William Hazlitt and John Keats numbered it among their favorite plays. The play is sometimes referred to as a "problem play", as it focuses on a character confronting a specific moral or social concern.

Regarding the name of Imogen, the editors of the Oxford and Norton Shakespeare believe this to be a misspelling of Innogen, and draws several comparisons between this play and Much Ado About Nothing in which a ghost character named Innogen was supposed to be Leonato's wife (of course, Posthumus is also known by the epithet, "Leonatus", the Latin form of the Italian name in the other play).

Performance

Only one early performance is recorded with certainty:^[4] it occurred on Wednesday night, Jan. 1, 1634, at Court. (It was "well-liked" by Charles I.) The play was not published before its inclusion in the First Folio in 1623. In the Restoration era, Thomas D'Urfey staged an adaptation of Cymbeline, titled The Injur'd Princess, or The Fatal Wager. John Rich staged the play with his company at Lincoln's Inn Fields; the performance was not long-remembered, as Rich's company was less famous for its work with Shakespeare than for its pantomimes and spectacles. Theophilus Cibber revived Shakespeare's text in 1758. In November 1761, David Garrick returned to a more-or-less original text, with good success: Posthumus became one of his star roles.^[5] Garrick rearranged some scenes; in particular, he shortened Imogen's burial scene and the entire fifth act, omitting the dream of Posthumus. This production was highly praised.

The play entered the Romantic era with John Philip Kemble's company in 1801.^[6] Kemble's productions made use of lavish spectacle and scenery; one critic noted that during the bedroom scene, the bed was so large that Iachimo all but needed a ladder to view Imogen in her sleep.^[7] Kemble added a dance to the Cloten's comic wooing of Imogen. In 1827, his brother Charles mounted an antiquarian production at Covent Garden; it featured costumes designed after the descriptions of the ancient British by such writers as Julius Caesar and Diodorus Siculus.

William Charles Macready mounted the play several times between 1837 and 1842.^[8] At the Theatre Royal, Marylebone, an epicene production was staged with Mary Warner, Fanny Vining, Anna Cora Mowatt, and Edward Loomis Davenport.

In 1864, as part of the celebrations of Shakespeare's birth, Samuel Phelps performed the title role at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Helen Faucit returned to the stage for this performance.

The play was also one of Ellen Terry's last performances, with Henry Irving at the Lyceum in 1896. Terry's performance was widely praised, though Irving was judged an indifferent Iachimo. Like Garrick, Irving removed the dream of Posthumus; he also curtailed Iachimo's remorse and attempted to render Cloten's character consistent. A review in the Athenaeum compared this trimmed version to pastoral comedies such as As You Like It. The set design, overseen by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, was lavish and advertised as historically accurate, though the reviewer for the time complained of such anachronisms as gold crowns and printed books as props.^[9]

Similarly lavish but less successful was Margaret Mather's production in New York in 1897. The sets and publicity cost $40,000, but Mather was judged too emotional and undisciplined to succeed in a fairly cerebral role.

Barry Vincent Jackson staged a modern-dress production for the Birmingham Rep in 1923, two years before his influential modern-dress Hamlet.^[10] Walter Nugent Monck brought his Maddermarket Theatre production to Stratford in 1946, inaugurating the post-war tradition of the play.

London saw two productions in the 1956 season. Michael Benthall directed the less successful production, at the Old Vic. The set design by Audrey Cruddas was notably minimal, with only a few essential props. She relied instead on a variety of lighting effects to reinforce mood; actors seemed to come out of darkness and return to darkness. Barbara Jefford was criticized as too cold and formal for Imogen; Leon Gluckman played Posthumus, Derek Godfrey Iachimo, and Derek Francis Cymbeline. Following Victorian practice, Benthall drastically shortened the last act.^[11]

By contrast, Peter Hall's production at the Shakespeare Memorial presented nearly the entire play, including the long-neglected dream scene (although a golden eagle designed for Jupiter turned out too heavy for the stage machinery and was not used).^[12] Hall presented the play as a distant fairy tale, with stylized performances. The production received favorable reviews, both for Hall's conception and, especially, for Peggy Ashcroft's Imogen.^[13] Richard Johnson played Posthumus, and Robert Harris Cymbeline. Iachimo was played by Geoffrey Keen, whose father Malcolm had played Iachimo with Ashcroft at the Old Vic in 1932.^[14]

Hall's approach attempted to unify the play's diversity by means of a fairy-tale topos. The next major Royal Shakespeare Company production, in 1962, went in the opposite direction. Working on a set draped with heavy white sheets, director William Gaskill employed Brechtian alienation effects, to mixed critical reviews. Bernard Levin complained that the bare set deprived the play of necessary scenic splendor.^[15] The acting, however, was widely praised. Vanessa Redgrave as Imogen was often compared favorably to Ashcroft; Eric Porter was a success as Iachimo, as was Clive Swift as Cloten. Patrick Allen was Posthumus, and Tom Fleming played the title role.

A decade later, John Barton's 1974 production for the RSC (with assistance from Clifford Williams) featured Sebastian Shaw in the title role, Tim Pigott-Smith as Posthumus, Ian Richardson as Iachimo, and Susan Fleetwood as Imogen. Charles Keating was Cloten. As with contemporary productions of Pericles, this one used a narrator (Cornelius) to signal changes in mood and treatment to the audience. Robert Speaight disliked the set design, which he called too minimal, but he approved the acting.^[16]

In 1980, David Jones revived the play for the RSC; the production was in general a disappointment, although Judi Dench as Imogen received reviews that rivalled Ashcroft's. Ben Kingsley played Iachimo; Roger Rees was Posthumus.

At the Stratford Festival, the play was directed in 1970 by Jean Gascon and in 1987 by Robin Phillips. The latter production, which was marked by much-approved scenic complexity, featured Colm Feore as Iachimo, and Martha Burns as Imogen. The play was again at Stratford in 2005, directed by David Latham. A large medieval tapestry unified the fairly simple stage design and underscored Latham's fairy-tale inspired direction.

At the new Globe Theatre in 2001, a cast of six (including Abigail Thaw, Mark Rylance, and Richard Hope) used extensive doubling for the play. The cast wore identical costumes even when in disguise, allowing for particular comic effects related to doubling (as when Cloten attempts to disguise himself as Posthumus.)^[17]

The play is rarely performed. However, there have been some well-received major productions of it, such as 1998's Public Theatre production in New York City directed by Andrei Serban.

Synopsis

Posthumus, a man of low birth but exceeding personal merit, has secretly married Imogen, daughter of King Cymbeline. Cymbeline, angered at this subversion of his will, banishes Posthumus from the kingdom. His faithful servant Pisanio remains.

Iachimo (or "Little Iago"), a soldier in the Roman army, makes a bet with Posthumus that he can tempt Imogen to commit adultery. The falsely besmirched Imogen, warned by Posthumus' faithful servant Pisanio, fakes her death to weather the reverberations of this trick (as Hero does in Much Ado About Nothing), and makes her way to Milford Haven on the West Coast of Britain. There she befriends "Polydore" and "Cadwell," who, unbeknownst to her, are really Guiderius and Arviragus, her own brothers.

Two British noblemen swore false oaths charging that Belarius had conspired with the ancient Romans, which led Cymbeline to banish him twenty years before the action of the play. Belarius kidnapped Cymbeline's young sons in retaliation, to hinder him from having heirs to the throne. The sons were raised by the nurse Euriphile, whom they called mother and took her for such.

Some have taken the convoluted plot as evidence of the play's parodic origins. In Act V Scene IV, "Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt," then commands an untangled plot and goes back up.

At the play's resolution, virtually the entire cast comes forth one at a time to add a piece to the puzzle. Cornelius, the court doctor, arrives to dazzle everyone with news that the Queen, Imogen's stepmother, is dead, reporting that with her last breath she confessed her wicked deeds: she never loved old Cymbeline, she unsuccessfully attempted to have Imogen poisoned by Pisanio (without Pisanio's knowledge), and she was ambitious to poison Cymbeline so Cloten, her own son, could assume the throne.

Cymbeline concludes with an oration to the gods, declares peace and friendship between Britain and Rome, and great feasting in Lud's Town (London), concluding "Never was a war did cease, / Ere bloody hands were washed, with such a peace."

Adaptations and cultural references

The play was adapted by Thomas d'Urfey as The Injured Princess, or, the Fatal Wager; this version was produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, presumably by the united King's Company and Duke's Company, in 1682.^[18] The play changes some names and details, and adds a subplot, typical of the Restoration, in which a virtuous waiting-woman escapes the traps laid by Cloten. D'Urfey also changes Pisanio's character so that he at once believes in Imogen's (Eugenia, in D'Urfey's play) guilt. For his part, D'Urfey's Posthumus is ready to accept that his wife might have been untrue, as she is young and beautiful.^[19] Some details of this alteration survived in productions at least until the middle of the century.

William Hawkins revised the play again in 1759. His was among the last of the heavy revisions designed to bring the play in line with Aristotelean unities. He cut the Queen, reduced the action to two places (the court and a forest in Wales).^[20] The dirge "With fairest flowers..." was set to music by Thomas Arne.^[21]

Nearer the end of the century, Henry Brooke wrote an adaptation which was apparantly never staged.^[22] His version eliminates the brothers altogether as part of a notable enhancement of Posthumus' role in the play.

George Bernard Shaw took aim at what he saw as the defects of the final act in his 1937 Cymbeline Refinished; as early as 1896, he had complained about the absurdities of the play to Ellen Terry, then preparing to act Imogen.

Probably the most famous verses in the play come from the funeral song of Act IV, Scene 2, which begins:

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.

These last two lines appear to have inspired T. S. Eliot; in Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier (in Five-Finger Exercises), he writes:

Pollicle dogs and cats all must

Jellicle dogs and cats must

Like undertakers, come to dust.

The first two lines of the song appear in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. The lines, which turn Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts to the trauma of the First World War, are at once an elegiac dirge and a profoundly dignified declaration of endurance. The song provides a major organizational motif for the novel.

References

External links

• Cymbeline - searchable, indexed e-text
• Cymbeline - Full text at M.I.T.
• Cymbeline - Scene indexed play
• Cymbeline - HTML version.
• Cymbeline - plain text from Project Gutenberg
• Cymbeline - different plain text edition

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