CHAPTER XIII CYMBELINE CYMBELINE is rather a short, concise, and dramatic story; very vivid and full of life and action, in short, a novelette rather than a play. It must have been exceedingly difficult to stage, even in the early days of the drama, when the audience were much less exacting than they are now in the matter of representation, and were satisfied with but a very slight approximation to reality in the artistic setting, scenery, and surroundings, demanded by the play. In Shakespeare's time, as has been observed, the unities of time and space in the drama were frequently disregarded altogether, appropriate setting was equally neglected, and all sorts of clumsy makeshifts and expedients had to be resorted to. The words, the action, and the acting were everything; fidelity in staging was largely and almost inevitably neglected, as the playwrights and stage - managers of those days had not the long experience of these, and were wanting in the wealth of upholstery and mechanical contrivance which are always ready to hand and available in these, to the managers of very second-rate and provincial performances. But even now to stage, with fidelity and effect, such a piece as Cymbeline would tax the resources of the most experienced to the uttermost. Wars and battles are proverbially difficult subjects to cope with and handle satisfactorily on the stage, and when we are confronted with Roman legions contending with the barbarian hordes of a British king off the wild coast of Milford Haven, the difficulty of adequate reproduction would be still further enhanced. The difficulties attaching to the scene in which Imogen meets her brothers in the outlaw's cave, might be more readily overcome, but the descent of Jove from heaven on an eagle could not be so easily disposed of. The aeroplane doubtless might be successfully utilised for the occasion, but a bemuffled and begoggled aviator descending from the skies in the very inartistic construction of a modern airship would, to say the least of it, hardly inspire the audience with that awe and reverence that should be due and forthcoming from mortal man, when he finds himself unexpectedly in the presence of the greatest of the gods. The names of Cymbeline and of his two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus, appear in the old chronicle, and Cymbeline, the successor of Caswallan, can readily be identified with the Cynobelin of history. The account which Iachimo gives in the play of the decorations and fittings of Imogen's bedroom may at first sight appear incongruous with the times. Shakespeare might, through the mouth of Iachimo, be describing the boudoir of some contemporary lady of Italy, rather than the bed-chamber of a barbarian princess, but it must be remembered that the Britons, through their commerce with Gaul, must have derived some tincture of Roman civilisation, and the gold coin that was struck in honour of Cynobelin bears witness to the fact. According to Collier, some of the chief incidents of the plot are to be found in French, Italian, and English. A novel by Boccacio has many corresponding features, but there the villain, instead of being forgiven as he is here, is punished by being anointed with honey, and exposed in the sun to flies, wasps, and mosquitoes, which eat the flesh from his bones. Collier, moreover, informs us that a certain man named Forman, an astrologer, who was present at, and saw the piece acted, about the year 1611, gives the following succinct, though rather incomplete and erratic account of the plot of Cymbeline in his "Booke of Plaies and Notes" thereof: "Remember, also, the story of Cymbeline, King of England in Lucius' time, how Lucius came from Octavius Cæsar for tribute, and being denied, after sent Lucius with a great army of soldiers, who landed at Milford Haven, and after were vanquished by Cymbeline, and Lucius taken prisoner; and all by means of three outlaws, of the which two of them were the sons of Cymbeline, stolen from him when they were but two years old by an old man whom Cymbeline banished; and he kept them as his own sons twenty years with him in a cave; and how one of them slew Cloten, that was the Queen's son, going to Milford Haven to seek the love of Imogen, the King's daughter, whom he had banished also for loving his daughter." "And how the Italian that came from her love, conveyed himself into a chest and said it was a chest of plate sent from her love and others to be presented to the King. And in the deepest of the night, she being asleep, he opened the chest and came forth of it, and viewed her in her bed and the marks of her body, and took away her bracelet, and afterwards accused her of adultery to her love. And in the end, how he came with the Romans into England, and was taken prisoner, and after revealed to Imogen, who had turned herself into man's apparel, and fled to meet her love at Milford Haven, and chanced to fall on the cave in the woods, where her two brothers were, and how by eating a sleeping charm they thought she had been dead, and laid her in the woods and the body of Cloten by her, in her love's apparel that he left behind him, and how she was found by Lucius." Imogen, one of the most artless and tender of Shakespeare's women, is the heroine and central figure of the piece; all the other characters seem created to subserve her for good or evil, to test her metal, to contribute to her misfortunes, or to strengthen and sustain her with devotion and affection. She is one of those women who, notwithstanding her physical beauty, men love, not so much after the flesh as after the spirit. She has a heart quick and ardent; there is nothing grand or massive in her, and she is what would be called in these days "a plucky woman." She is called chaste as Dian, and sometimes held up as a paragon of virtue. But her virtue was never greatly tried, for by nature she was neither sensual nor passionate. Iachimo's attempt on her chastity was done with a purpose, and was neither sincere nor sustained. She must have been a frail woman indeed to have succumbed, at a first interview, to a yellow-visaged Italian, a complete stranger to herself. Cloten's love for her was, in its way, persistent and sincere, but Cloten was a brute and a boor, and Imogen hated the very sight of him. What makes her the attractive figure that she is, is her gentleness, and the spirited way in which she meets her misfortunes, and with the aid and support of the devoted Pisanio, surmounts them all, and is reunited in the end to her husband and lover Posthumus. Shakespeare is somewhat inconsistent in his portrayal of the character of Posthumus. There never was such a man! "First Gent. He is a creature such As, to seek through the regions of the earth So fair an outward, and such stuff within, Endows a man but he. Second Gent. You speak him far. First Gent. I do extend him, sir, within himself; His measure duly." Indeed, so much was Posthumus thought of, not only in earth, but in heaven, that it is necessary for Jupiter himself to descend and to intervene in a dream on his behalf. His behaviour towards Imogen throws a curious sidelight on the manners of the period, and may be traced to Italian influence. It never seems to strike Shakespeare that it was, to say the least of it, unbecoming in a soldier and a gentleman that Posthumus should make a heavy bet with a complete stranger and a foreigner on his wife's chastity and powers of resistance. But this is what he makes Posthumus do. In this respect, at any rate, Posthumus was worse than Iachimo. Posthumus, whatever may have been his domestic virtues and qualities as a soldier, must have been somewhat of a fool, and credulous and impetuous in the extreme. He was as eager to embrace suspicion as Othello himself. He lends a willing and ready ear to the trumped-up story of Iachimo, and trusts him of whom he knew nothing before his wife whom he |