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FIRST GENTLEMAN
He had two sons—if this be worth your hearing,
Mark it—the eldest of them at three years old,
I’ th’ swathing clothes the other, from their nursery
Were stol’n, and to this hour no guess in knowledge
Which way they went.
SECOND GENTLEMAN How long is this ago?
FIRST GENTLEMAN Some twenty years.
SECOND GENTLEMAN That a king’s children should be so conveyed,
So slackly guarded, and the search so slow
That could not trace them!
FIRST GENTLEMAN Howsoe’er ’tis strange,
Or that the negligence may well be laughed at,
Yet is it true, sir. (1.1.65–77)
This exchange between two gentlemen in the play’s opening scene may not initially appear all that significant. After all, it seems primarily to serve the conventional purpose of providing the audience with necessary background information. The gentlemen are discussing how the king once had two sons, but they were kidnapped twenty years prior, never to be heard from again. The most immediate implication of this exchange is that Imogen is the king’s sole remaining heir. As a princess who’s set to inherit the throne, Imogen should not have expected to make a love match. Rather, her marriage would most likely be a matter of political strategy. The fact that she betrays her father’s wishes and secretly marries Posthumus instead of Cloten therefore provides sufficient grounds for Cymbeline’s anger. The other implication here is a matter of foreshadowing. In typical Shakespearean style, a seemingly minor observation at the play’s beginning will inevitably turn out to have a major role. Thus, the reference to stolen princes who have been missing for twenty years will doubtless figure into the plot.
Aside from its implications about the plot, this exchange also offers a tacit acknowledgment of the play’s numerous improbabilities. The First Gentleman’s final statement here is comic in its open reference to the absurdity of the plot of the disappeared princes: “Howsoe’er ’tis strange, / Or that the negligence may well be laughed at, / Yet is it true, sir.” With these words, Shakespeare offers a tongue-in-cheek admission of how obviously—indeed, absurdly—fictional the events of his quasi-historical play are. The comedy of the fiction is made yet more deliciously ironic by the First Gentlemen’s straight-faced assertion of fact. From this point on, the play will incorporate various references to the play’s own fictionality, often ironically underscoring how events are too strange to be believed. For instance, after learning about the Queen’s wickedness followed almost immediately by the parallel confessions of Iachimo and Posthumus as well as Imogen’s self-revelation, the king utters in bewilderment: “Does the world go round?” (5.5.273). Then, of course, there is the extreme improbability of the play’s more explicitly fantastical elements, including Posthumus’s family rising from the dead and the god Jupiter descending from the sky. Shakespeare seems to be delighting in the pure fiction of it all.
Profane fellow,
Wert thou the son of Jupiter and no more
But what thou art besides, thou wert too base
To be his groom. Thou wert dignified enough,
Even to the point of envy, if ’twere made
Comparative for your virtues to be styled
The under-hangman of his kingdom and hated
For being preferred so well. (2.3.142–49)
Imogen addresses these harsh lines to the oafish Cloten, who has just shown up at her chamber door with a host of musicians, hoping to seduce her now that Posthumus has been exiled from Britain. Despite being otherwise even-tempered, she refuses to suffer this fool and tells him in no uncertain terms that she will never prefer him to Posthumus. The strength of her words here and elsewhere in the scene has important implications for the play’s plot. The shock Cloten suffers in response to her plainspoken rejection will lead him to leave court and pursue the lovers, intending to kill Posthumus and then rape Imogen in her dead beloved’s own “mean’st garment” (2.3.152). Of course, Cloten being the incompetent clod he is, his pursuit will end in his death (by beheading), and his disappearance from court will in turn lead to the Queen’s illness and eventual death.
But just as this speech of Imogen’s turns out to have far-reaching consequences in terms of the plot, it’s also important to note how her language echoes key themes and motifs in the play. Most significant is how her explicit comparison between Cloten and Posthumus posits a hierarchy of value in which Cloten proves “too base / To be [Posthumus’s] groom.” Significantly, this evaluation is a revaluation. As a lower-born orphan, Posthumus only has noble status because the king adopted him as a ward of his court. His tenuous position helps explain the outrage that unfolds when he secretly marries Imogen, an act that may be interpreted as a bid for upward mobility. Whereas Posthumus marries his way into the royal family, Cloten is already the king’s legal stepson and, presumably, the child of a previous royal match. (We don’t know who Cloten’s biological father is, but it seems reasonable to assume that his mother was born to the nobility.) By revaluing Posthumus as worthier than the highborn Cloten, Imogen also speaks to the play’s concern with the challenge of proper valuation. Also notable, though less significant, is Imogen’s reference to Jupiter, whose naming here is one of many in the play to foreshadow the Roman thunder god’s later appearance.
You must know,
Till the injurious Romans did extort
This tribute from us, we were free. Caesar’s ambition,
Which swelled so much that it did almost stretch
The sides o’ th’ world, against all color here
Did put the yoke upon ’s, which to shake off
Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon
Ourselves to be. (3.1.49–56)
Cymbeline delivers this speech to Lucius Caius to justify his decision not to pay the annual tribute that ensures Britain’s safety as a province of the Roman Empire. His speech openly criticizes the ambition of the Roman emperor, the imperial nature of which has evidently made his lust for power “[swell] so much that it did almost stretch / The sides o’ th’ world.” The king resists this logic of imperial expansion here, just as, later in this same scene, he will indicate Britain’s solidarity with “the Pannonians and Dalmatians” (3.1.79), two peoples who are also actively combatting Rome’s imperial influence. He affects this bravado to proclaim Britain’s independent spirit, but also to explain why his nation is willing to come to blows with Rome. Adopting rhetoric that modern audiences might liken to the anticolonial discourse of the mid-twentieth century, Cymbeline asserts that Britain must become “warlike” in order to “shake off” the imperial “yoke.”
As noble as Cymbeline’s sentiments may be, it’s important to note that they are the result of his Queen’s wicked influence. Indeed, it is the Queen who opens this political scene with a vociferous argument in favor of independence. She admits that the emperor holds some sway over Britain, but she denies his claim to full authority: “A kind of conquest / Caesar made here, but made not here his brag / Of ‘came, and saw, and overcame’” (3.1.25–27). Following her lengthy speech to Lucius, Cloten joins in to support his mother’s vision: “Come, there’s no more tribute to be paid. Our kingdom is stronger than it was at that time, and . . . there is no more such Caesars” (3.1.37–39). Only after both mother and son have had their say does Cymbeline join the conversation and speak on behalf of Britain’s independence. As king, his words are the ones that hold official power. Even so, they enact his wife’s policy—a policy that ultimately leads to war. By some miracle, the British end up winning that war, but when the Queen dies and Cymbeline realizes the extent of her influence over his politics, he seeks a new balance of power by restoring the tribute after all.
Fear no more the heat o’ th’ 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. (4.2.331–36)
In the wake of the apparent death of “Fidele,” the Welshmen give her a moving burial. The ritual ends with a moving scene in which Guiderius and Arviragus take turns intoning verses over their late companion’s body. The passage quoted here is the first part of the dirge-like burial song they sing. These lines are famous, and justly so, as they open one of the loveliest lyrics in all of Shakespeare’s plays. Their song is notable for its invocation of summer and winter, the harshness of which “Fidele” will no longer have to suffer now that he’s (apparently) past all suffering. As with other Shakespeare plays that invoke the pastoral tradition, this one contains numerous references to the seasons—and especially to unseasonality. For instance, when speaking to Pisanio, Imogen blames the failure of her parting kiss to Posthumus on the untimeliness of her father’s blustering entrance: “ere I could / Give him that parting kiss which I had set / Betwixt two charming words, comes in my father, / And like the tyrannous breathing of the north / Shakes all our buds from growing” (1.3.40–44). In this regard, these lines sung by Guiderius offer a gentle corrective to Cymbeline’s cruelty.
Additionally, it’s worth underscoring how these opening lines also feature obscure references to flowers. On the surface, the song seems to insist that highborn and lowborn alike must ultimately face their mortality and “come to dust.” However, in Shakespeare’s time, the terms “golden lads” and “chimney-sweepers” were also both common names for one of the most notoriously proliferating plants: dandelions. Beneath the surface meaning of mortality and death, then, lies an image of life and rebirth implied in the scattering of dandelion seeds. Combined with the references to leaving behind the harshness of the hardest seasons, these references to flowers imply the coming of spring renewal—a sense that foreshadows the apparent resurrection of “Fidele” as well as the numerous reunions and reconciliations at the play’s end. Such are the natural rhythms that, in this otherwise so unnaturally—even supernaturally—plotted play, will finally bring familial, social, and political renewal.
Whenas a lion’s whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow, then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty. (5.4.141–47; repeated verbatim in 5.5.531–38)
Such is the text inscribed on tablet that the Roman thunder god, Jupiter, delivers for Posthumus in the scene where he descends from the heavens. When Posthumus awakens from his slumber to find the tablet nearby, he can’t make any sense of the oracle written there. We must therefore wait until the final moments of the play for the riddle to be deciphered. After all the concealed identities have been revealed, confessions of wrongdoing made, and forgiveness granted, Posthumus brings Jupiter’s tablet forward and calls upon the Roman Soothsayer to interpret the oracle. After reading the text aloud, the Soothsayer unspools its meaning. First, he uses Posthumus’s family name, Leonatus, to identify him as the “lion’s whelp.” He also uses a somewhat dubious etymology to identify Imogen as the “piece of tender air.” Thus, the Soothsayer has solved the first part of the oracle, which has predicted Posthumus’s surprise reunion with his beloved. Next, he identifies “the lofty cedar” as “royal Cymbeline” (5.5.552). The lopped branches mentioned in the oracle therefore represent the king’s long-lost sons, Guiderius and Arviragus. Despite being “for many years thought dead, [they] are now revived, / To the majestic cedar joined” (5.5.555–56).
Although the Soothsayer capably deciphers the hidden meanings of the riddle, the oracle’s larger significance for the play as a whole remains unstated. By linking Posthumus’s fate to that of Britain, the oracle reflects the simultaneous resolution of the play’s two central plots: the “personal” plot about Imogen and Posthumus as well as the royal family, and the “political” plot about Britain’s status in relation to Rome. The lovers’ reunion leads directly to the royal family’s reunion, which in turn strengthens the British throne. And considering that Britain has just won its war with Rome, the renewed strength of the throne means that the island’s future independence is assured. In this way, Shakespeare subtly uses the family romance at the heart of the play to suggest that this moment represents something of a national founding myth for Britain. Such a founding myth is of course entirely ahistorical, since Britain remained a part of Rome until the fifth century. And indeed, Cymbeline ends with the king deciding to resume paying tribute to the empire. Even so, the play asserts a fierce spirit of independence that, at the time of its original composition and performance, would no doubt have been rapturously applauded.
