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Rather than a fully realized character, the Queen is a stock figure whom audiences will recognize as the classic wicked stepmother of fantasy and romance. As with other representatives of this stock figure, the Queen presents a kindly mask that conceals her evil plans. Despite appearing to support the marriage between Imogen and Posthumus, she is secretly bent on ensuring that her stepdaughter should marry her entitled clod of a son, Cloten. She plans to kill Imogen once the marriage is finalized, thereby removing her from the family picture and making Cloten Cymbeline’s only heir. It’s notable that the only character the Queen seems to fool is the king. When the messenger announces her deathbed confession, a shocked Cymbeline supposes that her physical beauty and honeyed words made him “[think] her like her seeming” (5.5.77). The fact that others had long seen through “her seeming” speaks as ill of the king as it does well of others. The court doctor, for instance, correctly suspected the Queen’s interest in poisons was bound with bad intentions. Likewise, Imogen knew from the beginning that the Queen’s apparent kindness was nothing but “dissembling courtesy” (1.1.98). That the Queen is so easily thwarted throughout the play suggests that Shakespeare deploys this stock figure in a somewhat ironic way.
