payment page
Feints and Counterfeits
Much of the plot of Cymbeline is driven by a complex series of feints and counterfeits in which characters deceive each other as well as themselves. For instance, the Queen feigns care and support for Imogen and Posthumus while secretly plotting their downfall. This plot involves her attempt to kill Imogen with a poison that she passes off as a restorative medicine. Yet the “poison” is itself a counterfeit: it is in fact a harmless sleeping draught concocted by the distrustful doctor, Cornelius. Other deceits abound. We have Iachimo’s plot to enter Imogen’s private chamber concealed in a trunk that he pretends is filled with treasure. Iachimo then uses the stolen bracelet to feign sexual conquest of Imogen. Posthumus’s rage at the news of his beloved’s pilfered chastity leads him to instruct Pisanio to kill her. But Pisanio feigns her death and send her off in disguise as a counterfeit boy. She ends up lost in the Welsh wilderness, where she meets her brothers, who are themselves counterfeit rustics living in the mountains, ignorant of their true identities. These, along with the play’s many other feints and counterfeits, are eventually revealed, leading to death for some (e.g., Cloten, the Queen) and joyous reconciliation for the rest.
Containers
Cymbeline features containers of various sizes and functions. First are the smaller-sized containers. There is Iachimo’s trunk, a powerful symbol of sexual knowledge that the devious Italian uses to steal his way into Imogen’s private chamber. The evidence Iachimo collects from rummaging around in Imogen’s room enables him, as he suggestively puts it, to convince Posthumus that “I have picked the lock and ta’en / The treasure of her honor” (2.2.45–46). Another small container that figures prominently in the play is the Queen’s box, where she places the sleeping draught that she believes to be a deadly poison and which she tells Pisanio is medicine. Like Iachimo’s trunk, the Queen’s box seems benign but is filled with bad intentions. Also like the trunk, the box is symbolically linked to deception, since the elixir is not what it seems. Other spaces of containment in the play relate to larger spaces, and particularly Imogen’s chamber and the Welsh mountain cave. Imogen’s chamber at once symbolizes her protected chastity as well as her sexual curiosity, decorated as it is with images of figures associated with each (e.g., the bathing Diana, Cleopatra). The cave is likewise a space of protection, both for the disoriented Imogen and her long-lost brothers, Guiderius and Arviragus.
Tree Imagery
Tree imagery is evoked at several key moments in the play. Initially, tree imagery arises in relation to threat. Recounting the moment she and Posthumus were about to share a parting kiss, Imogen describes how Cymbeline blustered into the room and “like the tyrannous breathing of the north / [Shook] all our buds from growing” (1.3.43–44). Later, Belarius echoes Imogen’s image when describing his exile from Cymbeline’s court. He describes himself as “a tree / Whose boughs did bend with fruit. But in one night / A storm or robbery . . . / Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves” (3.3.65–68). The barren tree thus becomes a symbol of rupture and dispersion. But the play also promises reconciliation and reunion. Jupiter’s riddling oracle predicts good things that will come for both Posthumus and Britain when the “lopped branches” of a “stately cedar” are finally “jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow” (5.4.143–45). The lopped branches turn out to be Cymbeline’s lost sons, who are eventually reunited with their father, “the lofty cedar” (5.5.552). Parallel to this reunion is the one between Imogen and Posthumus, the latter of whom will tearfully proclaim as he embraces his beloved, “Hang there like fruit, my soul, / Till the tree die” (5.5.313–14).
