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Summary
Back at Cymbeline’s court, the disappearance of the Queen’s son, Cloten, has stricken her with a wasting fever. Cymbeline threatens Pisanio with torture in an attempt to find out to where Imogen has fled, but the Roman invasion of Britain intervenes, and Cymbeline must prepare his army to meet the new threat. Meanwhile, Guiderius, Arviragus, and Belarius hear armies moving through the wilderness. Belarius wants to lie low, since he is afraid that some of the Britons may recognize him from his days at court. His adoptive sons, however, are eager to fight, and they insist on going down to assist Cymbeline’s forces.
Posthumus returns to Britain, having been conscripted into the Roman forces. He has received a bloody handkerchief from Pisanio, ostensibly a token of Imogen’s death, and he is overcome with remorse, resolving that, “’Tis enough / That, Britain, I have killed thy mistress. Peace, / I’ll give no wound to thee” (5.1.19–21). He takes off his Roman uniform and dresses himself as a British peasant for the battle.
During the battle, Iachimo, fighting on the side of the Romans, loses his sword in a duel with the disguised Posthumus. Left alone, he expresses his remorse for having lied about Imogen’s faithlessness. Meanwhile, the battle goes badly for the British until the sudden arrival of Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus. They save Cymbeline from capture and turn the tide of war, leading to the Romans’ defeat. Caius Lucius is taken prisoner, as is Posthumus, who, although he fought for the victorious Britons, is trying to punish himself for his supposed murder of Imogen and so has quickly changed back into Roman garb in order to be captured. He is thrown into a British stockade and falls asleep while contemplating death.
As he sleeps, a collection of spirits ascends from the netherworld and gathers around him. They are Posthumus’s dead ancestors: his father, who died before he was born; his mother, who died in childbirth; and his two brothers, both of whom died in other wars. These ghosts plea for Jupiter, the king of the gods, to take pity on their descendant and restore his fortunes. After a time, Jupiter himself descends from the heavens, surrounded by thunder and lightning and riding on the back of an eagle. He berates the spirits for troubling him, but he grudgingly agrees to bring about happiness for Posthumus and instructs them to place a tablet near his sleeping body. All the supernatural creatures then depart. Posthumus awakens feeling strangely refreshed, and he finds the tablet on the ground beside him; it contains a riddling oracle that he is unable to interpret. The jailer comes to take him to be hanged, but then a messenger arrives, summoning Posthumus to stand before Cymbeline.
Analysis
With Cloten already dead, now his wicked mother’s time has come as well. Her reported illness is the last we hear of her before her death in the play’s final scene. The action of the play now draws all the characters into the swirl of battle, including Guiderius and Arviragus, who see the war as an excellent opportunity to escape from the Welsh mountains. The noble heroism implied by their desire to set off for war eventually convinces their reluctant father to follow them into battle. Iachimo and Posthumus also reappear, having been conveniently drafted out of Renaissance Italy and into the Roman army. Iachimo feels his first pangs of remorse, suggesting, much to the audience’s satisfaction, that he was not so bad after all, and that Shakespeare means to spare his life. Posthumus is also remorseful, but his speech before the battle is unlikely to draw much sympathy. Although he has, thankfully, realized the immorality of having his wife murdered, he persists in believing that she was unfaithful to him. Thus, while he has recovered his sense of perspective, he has yet to display the trust, gentleness, and soundness of judgment that would make him worthy of such an exemplary wife as Imogen.
The battle occurs in a scene heavy with stage directions and remarkably thin on dialogue compared with other Shakespearean battles. Scant, too, are the trumpets (“Alarums”) that one normally finds in such scenes. Their absence may result from the fact that Shakespeare was writing for the smaller, indoor stage at the Blackfriars Theater rather than the famous Globe Theater. Instead of allowing the battle to unfold before the audience’s eyes, Shakespeare relies heavily on long speeches by Posthumus. He gives a detailed description of the events that turned the tide of war in Britain’s favor. He especially emphasizes the near-miraculous work of “an ancient soldier” (5.3.18; i.e., Belarius) and “two striplings” (22; i.e., Arviragus and Guiderius) to clear a path for the Britons, which sent the Romans into retreat. At times, Posthumus’s lengthy description comes to sound like a historian’s account rather than a soldier’s narrower perspective on a battle that has just ended. But regardless of how the action itself is communicated, the crucial role played by Belarius and the two unwitting princes functions as a necessary preliminary to the general reconciliation in the play’s last scene.
After the battle, with Posthumus having punished himself—and rightly so, one feels—by allowing himself to be taken prisoner, we are treated to what may be the most critically derided scene in all of Shakespeare: the appearance of Jupiter over the sleeping Posthumus. This scene represents the height of the play’s absurdity, made yet more bizarre by the ghosts of Posthumus’s ancestors, who deliver their speeches in a ridiculous rhyming doggerel. Indeed, the style of verse here is of such a quality that several critics have used this scene as evidence to suggest that Shakespeare did not actually author Cymbeline on his own, but that portions of it were penned by inferior collaborators. Yet from a different perspective, it’s possible to imagine that Shakespeare himself was fully aware of the scene’s absurdity. After all, there are several other moments in the play when his characters seem to voice cheeky admissions of the play’s numerous improbabilities. Regardless, the scene’s more ridiculous qualities are redeemed by the appearance of the mordant Jailer, who, coming for the condemned man the next morning, exhibits a rather delightful gallows humor. He is an excellent minor character whose thoughtful musings on death offer a compelling counterpoint to the preposterous Jupiter.
