DRAMATIS PERSONE

CYMBELINE, king of Britain.

CLOTEN, son to the Queen by a former husband.

POSTHUMUS LEONATUS, a gentleman, husband to Imogen. BELARIUS, a banished lord, disguised under the name of

Morgan.

GUIDERIUS,

ARVIRAGUS,

sons to Cymbeline, disguised under the names of Polydore and Cadwal, supposed sons to Morgan.

PHILARIO, friend to Posthumus,

IACHIMO, friend to Philario.

}

Italians.

CAIUS LUCIUS, general of the Roman forces.

PISANIO, servant to Posthumus.

CORNELIUS, a physician.

A Roman Captain.

Two British Captains.

A Frenchman, friend to Philario.

Two Lords of Cymbeline's court.

Two Gentlemen of the same.

Two Gaolers.

Queen, wife to Cymbeline.

IMOGEN, daughter to Cymbeline by a former queen.

HELEN, a lady attending on Imogen.

Lords, Ladies, Roman Senators, Tribunes, a Soothsayer, a Dutchman, a Spaniard, Musicians, Officers, Captains, Soldiers, Messengers, and other attendants.

Apparitions.

SCENE: Britain; Rome.

Dramatis Persona. This was

first added by Rowe.

Posthumus. This is regularly accented Posthúmus.

INTRODUCTION

CYMBELINE was first printed in the Folio of 1623, where it occurs as the last of the 'Tragedies,' closing the volume. The acts and scenes are marked, but there is no list of the persons. The drama seems from the first to have fallen into a relative neglect, from which, in spite of the incomparable charm of certain portions, it has never decisively emerged. It was not, like the kindred Tempest and Winter's Tale, performed at the royal wedding festivities of 1613. With the exception of a single court performance in 1633, there is hardly one recorded allusion to it before the Restoration, and it survived that event only to become the subject of an infamous travesty by Thomas Huffey, who (less scrupulous than Iachimo) dared to sully the purity of Imogen. In our own century it has captivated readers rather than audiences. Its beautiful extravagance commended it to the Romantic school, and it helped to furnish forth the plot of Coleridge's Zapolya (1817).

The downward limit of the composition of Cymbeline is fixed with approximate certainty by the record of a performance of it at the Globe in Dr. Simon Forman's Book of Plaies and Notes thereof for common Policie. The half-dozen manuscript pages thus ambitiously entitled contain, as

has been previously noticed, epitomes of three Shakespearean dramas witnessed by him. The performance of Cymbeline is not dated, but the others all fall in 1610-11, and there is little doubt that the diary was begun, as well as ended, in these few months, the last of his life. He died in August

1611.

Cymbeline was probably a new play when Forman saw it. All the remaining evidence either confirms, or is consistent with, this view. Fletcher's beautiful Philaster betrays the impression made upon him by this the most Fletcherian of Shakespeare's plays in numerous detailed touches, and particularly in the character and fortunes of the maiden page, Euphrasia; but it cannot be shown to be earlier than 1610-11. Malone characteristically held that Cymbeline must have been contemporary with Lear and Macbeth on the ground that all three are founded on Holinshed; and Mr. Fleay has applied this argument, with little mitigation of its nakedness, to prove that the quasihistorical portion was written in 1606, some three years before it was turned to account as a framework for the Romance of Imogen. The answer to this is, that the story of Cymbeline's wars with Rome might serve to furnish forth a History or the background of a romantic comedy, but is entirely devoid of the elements of tragic conflict. To suppose even this portion of the play to be contemporary with Macbeth and Lear is to save the continuity of Shakespeare's reading at the cost of the continuity of his art.

Several striking parallels of expression, it is true, connect Cymbeline with Macbeth; but these happen to occur not in the political portion, but in the romance-in the bed-chamber scene, where the sleep betrayed by Iachimo might naturally call up reminiscences of the equally 'innocent' sleep 'murder'd'

by Macbeth.

The stride of the ravishing Tarquin (Macbeth, ii. 1. 55; Cymbeline, ii. 2. 12) and the unconsciously ironical praise of sleep (Macbeth, ii. 2. 38; Cymbeline, ii. 2. 11) were appropriate enough to each situation.2 Parallels, moreover, as striking can be found to a much earlier play. Imogen, like Hamlet, is 'craven'd' by the 'prohibition so divine against selfslaughter' (iii.4.78). And the internal evidence connects Cymbeline very closely with The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, neither of which can be dated before 1610.

Cymbeline is, notwithstanding its title, the story of Imogen and Posthumus. In its main outlines it was at least three centuries old. French romancers and playwrights of the thirteenth century had told a story substantially the same: a husband boasts of his wife's constancy, is challenged to lay a wager on it, is fraudulently convinced that his wager is lost, and plans a peremptory vengeance upon his wife. She, however, eludes it, and finally after many adventures discovers and exposes the betrayer. This is the subject of the romances of La Violette by Gilbert de Montreuil (c. 1220) and the Count of Poitiers. In two points tradition fluctuated: the nature of the deception, and the after-history of the husband and wife. Both romances smooth the challenger's path by giving him the aid of the lady's waiting-woman. In the one she enables him to look at her mistress in the bath, and to note

sur sa destre mamelote

Le semblant d'une violette;

in the other she furnishes him with the more material tokens a ring, a lock of hair, a scrap of samite

1 Cf. also iii. 4. 60 f. with Ham. i.

2 Cf. also the kindred delicacy of colouring in the 'lac'd with

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blue of heaven's own tinct' (Cymb, ii. 2. 22, 23) and Duncan's silver skin laced with his golden blood (Macb. ii. 3. 118). I.

dress. In both the wife is carried off into the woods, where she eludes the intended vengeance, but undergoes other adventures. A further step is marked by the Miracle de Nostre Dame. Here the scene of the wager is for the first time laid in Rome. The deception is aided by a sleeping-draught administered by the maid to her mistress; while the challenger, like Iachimo, tries to gain his point with the lady by insinuating scandal about her husband.1

Most of these points, but not quite all, were woven by Boccaccio into his history of Bernabo of Genoa. It is the ninth of the tales told on the second day of the Decameron, when the discourse was of men who 'from positions of peril found beyond their hope a happy deliverance.' The scene is here transferred from feudal to bourgeois society. Bernabo is a merchant of Genoa; Ambrogiulo, the challenger, a merchant of Piacenza. Unlike his counterparts in the romances, Ambrogiulo does not even seek an interview with the lady, Zinevra, but, having convinced himself by inquiries that he could not fairly win the wager, resorts at once to stratagem. In this the female ally still plays a part, but a less important one. At his instigation a poor woman frequently employed in the house entrusts a chest to Zinevra's keeping during a few days' absence. Ambrogiulo thus gains secret access to Zinevra's chamber, where, while she sleeps, he notes the pictures and furniture, and a mole with a tuft of golden hairs beneath her left breast. After three days' waiting the woman returns, and he is released. Bernabo, convinced by Ambrogiulo's story of his success, sets out for his home, but commissions a servant to carry out his vengeance, by escorting his wife as if to meet him, and slaying her on the road. Arrived in a 'very 1 Cf. abstracts in Hazlitt, Shakspere's Library, ii. 179.