Strikingly, though, this spectator’s enthusiasm peters out toward the end: the closing reunions and the descent of Jupiter in Posthumus’ dream do not merit a mention. The long and outlandish final scene is extremely difficult to stage effectively: it has sometimes been played as parody, is often heavily cut, and has even been comprehensively rewritten (by George Bernard Shaw).
In the movement of the action from court to country,
Cymbeline
has a structure similar to the more popular and better-known
Winter’s Tale
. The two plays were probably written within a year of each other. The similarities are abundant. A man is falsely led to believe in his wife’s infidelity, with the result that his powers of reasoning are distorted and his language collapses into crabbed, dense invective against female wiles:
Is there no way for men to be, but women
Must be half-workers? We are all bastards,
And that most venerable man, which I
Did call my father, was I know not where
When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools
Made me a counterfeit …
…
… for there’s no motion
That tends to vice in man, but I affirm
It is the woman’s part: be it lying, note it,
The woman’s: flattering, hers: deceiving, hers:
Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers: revenges, hers:
Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
Nice longing, slanders, mutability,
All faults that may be named, nay, that hell knows,
Why, hers, in part or all …
In fact, throughout Shakespeare’s works, most of these vices and faults are to be found in the men’s parts, not the women’s. It is the woman—Marina, Perdita, Innogen—who restores harmony.
In
Cymbeline
, as in
The Winter’s Tale
, she does so in combination with the forces of nature. The febrile air of court intrigue is cleared when we move outdoors and encounter princes disguised as shepherds. It is perhaps in
Cymbeline
that Shakespeare’s art of natural observation is at its most acute. The supposedly dead Fidele is apostrophized with the phrase “The azured harebell, like thy veins.” The color and structure of the harebell does precisely resemble those of human veins. Then there is Belarius speaking of how his two adopted sons show princely natures even as they are dressed as shepherds:
O thou goddess,
Thou divine Nature, thou thyself thou blazon’st
In these two princely boys! They are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing below the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,
Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud’st wind,
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And make him stoop to th’vale …
The wind has the capacity not to move a violet but to flatten a mountain pine: Shakespeare likes that paradox.
The association of Innogen with nature goes back to the bedroom scene. The key token of recognition, the mole on her breast, is “cinque-spotted: like the crimson drops / I’th’bottom of a cowslip.” Is there any other English poet save the country laborer John Clare who could have created such a simile, who has such an eye as acute as Shakespeare’s for the intricacies of natural history and the apt metaphorical application of them to human encounters?
THE CRITICS DEBATE
Perhaps more than any other Shakespearean play,
Cymbeline
has polarized critics and audiences in their judgments on its quality as a work of art. Yet despite an uneven critical heritage, the twentieth century going into the early twenty-first has seen a massive resurgence in its popularity on both page and stage, and recent criticism now widely accepts it as a masterwork that no longer needs to be explained away or apologized for.
Historically, critics have been divided over the play’s mixed genre, improbable plot, characterization, moral texture, difficult language, bifurcated political position, and contrived ending. Dr. Johnson’s view, in his 1765 edition of Shakespeare, is typical:
This play has many just sentiments, some natural dialogues and some pleasing
In the movement of the action from court to country,
Cymbeline
has a structure similar to the more popular and better-known
Winter’s Tale
. The two plays were probably written within a year of each other. The similarities are abundant. A man is falsely led to believe in his wife’s infidelity, with the result that his powers of reasoning are distorted and his language collapses into crabbed, dense invective against female wiles:
Is there no way for men to be, but women
Must be half-workers? We are all bastards,
And that most venerable man, which I
Did call my father, was I know not where
When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools
Made me a counterfeit …
…
… for there’s no motion
That tends to vice in man, but I affirm
It is the woman’s part: be it lying, note it,
The woman’s: flattering, hers: deceiving, hers:
Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers: revenges, hers:
Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
Nice longing, slanders, mutability,
All faults that may be named, nay, that hell knows,
Why, hers, in part or all …
In fact, throughout Shakespeare’s works, most of these vices and faults are to be found in the men’s parts, not the women’s. It is the woman—Marina, Perdita, Innogen—who restores harmony.
In
Cymbeline
, as in
The Winter’s Tale
, she does so in combination with the forces of nature. The febrile air of court intrigue is cleared when we move outdoors and encounter princes disguised as shepherds. It is perhaps in
Cymbeline
that Shakespeare’s art of natural observation is at its most acute. The supposedly dead Fidele is apostrophized with the phrase “The azured harebell, like thy veins.” The color and structure of the harebell does precisely resemble those of human veins. Then there is Belarius speaking of how his two adopted sons show princely natures even as they are dressed as shepherds:
O thou goddess,
Thou divine Nature, thou thyself thou blazon’st
In these two princely boys! They are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing below the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,
Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud’st wind,
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And make him stoop to th’vale …
The wind has the capacity not to move a violet but to flatten a mountain pine: Shakespeare likes that paradox.
The association of Innogen with nature goes back to the bedroom scene. The key token of recognition, the mole on her breast, is “cinque-spotted: like the crimson drops / I’th’bottom of a cowslip.” Is there any other English poet save the country laborer John Clare who could have created such a simile, who has such an eye as acute as Shakespeare’s for the intricacies of natural history and the apt metaphorical application of them to human encounters?
THE CRITICS DEBATE
Perhaps more than any other Shakespearean play,
Cymbeline
has polarized critics and audiences in their judgments on its quality as a work of art. Yet despite an uneven critical heritage, the twentieth century going into the early twenty-first has seen a massive resurgence in its popularity on both page and stage, and recent criticism now widely accepts it as a masterwork that no longer needs to be explained away or apologized for.
Historically, critics have been divided over the play’s mixed genre, improbable plot, characterization, moral texture, difficult language, bifurcated political position, and contrived ending. Dr. Johnson’s view, in his 1765 edition of Shakespeare, is typical:
This play has many just sentiments, some natural dialogues and some pleasing
Similar Books
