Cymbeline

Summary

Cymbeline, written about 1609-1610 and seen at the Globe by the astrologer-physician Simon Forman before his death in 1611, is one of Shakespeare's late romances, though the First Folio of 1623 printed it last among the tragedies. It is set in ancient Britain under King Cymbeline (the historical Cunobelinus), who in the play's chronology reigns in the time of Augustus Caesar, and it braids together three stories: a slandered wife, two lost princes, and a quarrel with Rome over tribute. Imogen, Cymbeline's only remaining child, has secretly married Posthumus Leonatus, a gentleman of no fortune raised at court, instead of Cloten, the boorish son of her stepmother the Queen. Cymbeline banishes Posthumus. In Rome he boasts of his wife's chastity, and the Italian Iachimo wagers that he can seduce her. Rebuffed at court, Iachimo has himself carried into Imogen's bedchamber in a trunk, notes the room and a mole on her breast while she sleeps, steals the bracelet Posthumus gave her, and returns to claim his winnings. Posthumus believes him, rails against all women, and writes to his servant Pisanio ordering him to kill Imogen at Milford Haven in Wales. Pisanio cannot do it. He shows Imogen the letter, dresses her as a youth, and gives her a box the Queen had handed him as a restorative. The Queen had in fact asked her physician Cornelius for poison, but he, distrusting her, gave her a drug that only counterfeits death. Lost in the Welsh hills, Imogen, now calling herself Fidele, is taken in by Belarius, a banished lord, and two young men she does not know are her brothers, Guiderius and Arviragus, whom Belarius stole from Cymbeline in infancy. Cloten, pursuing Imogen in Posthumus's clothes, quarrels with Guiderius and is beheaded. Imogen swallows the drug, is found apparently dead, and is laid beside Cloten's headless body while the brothers sing 'Fear no more the heat o' th' sun'. She wakes, takes the corpse for her husband, and joins the Roman general Lucius as his page. Rome invades over the unpaid tribute. Posthumus, repentant though he still believes Imogen guilty, fights for Britain disguised as a peasant, and with Belarius and the princes turns the battle; then he lets himself be imprisoned as a Roman, prays for death, and sees in a dream his dead family and Jupiter descending on an eagle, who leaves him a cryptic tablet. In the long final scene the Queen's death and confession are reported, Iachimo confesses, identities are revealed one after another, the lost princes are restored, Posthumus pardons Iachimo, and Cymbeline, though victorious, agrees to pay the tribute. 'Pardon's the word to all.' The play mixes court intrigue, pastoral, battle, theophany and comedy of recognition in a way some critics have found deliberately extravagant. It rewards attention to forgiveness, to faithful service that disobeys a wicked command, and to a peace sealed not by conquest but by reconciliation.

Top Lessons

• Iachimo's inventory: evidence that is true and false at once

  Everything Iachimo reports to Posthumus is accurate: the tapestry, the chimney-piece, the bracelet, the mole. The conclusion he draws is a lie. The trunk scene lets students watch a deceiver gather true details to prove a false charge, and Posthumus's quick surrender shows what happens when a man trusts appearances over his knowledge of a person's character. Pisanio's speech on slander, 'whose edge is sharper than the sword', names the harm.

• Pisanio and Cornelius: faithful disobedience

  Two servants refuse wicked commands. Cornelius, asked for poison by the Queen, gives her a harmless sleeping drug; Pisanio, ordered to murder Imogen, protects her instead. Posthumus later learns the lesson himself: 'Every good servant does not all commands; / No bond but to do just ones.' The play honours loyalty that serves a master's true good rather than his passing will, a principle with clear roots in Christian teaching on obedience and conscience.

• Nature and nurture in the Welsh cave

  Guiderius and Arviragus have been raised as hunters, yet Belarius marvels at the 'invisible instinct' of royalty in them. The cave scenes set the simplicity of the mountains against the flattery of court, but they do not idealise wildness: the brothers long to see the world, and Guiderius beheads Cloten without a pause. Students can weigh what upbringing shapes, what birth gives, and what each person must still choose.

• 'Fear no more the heat o' th' sun': a dirge for one who is not dead

  The brothers' song over Fidele is among Shakespeare's most quoted lyrics: the dead are beyond heat, winter, tyranny and labour, and all, 'golden lads and girls', come to dust. Its beauty is heightened by dramatic irony, since the audience knows Fidele is drugged and alive. The scene invites close reading of form (alternating stanzas, plain monosyllables, refrain) and reflection on how the play leads through apparent death to restoration.

• 'Pardon's the word to all': repentance, forgiveness and peace

  Posthumus repents in prison before he knows Imogen is innocent, offering his life and asking whether sorrow is enough. In the last scene he spares Iachimo; Cymbeline, though he has won the battle, pays the tribute and makes peace with Rome. Shakespeare's chronicle sources place Cymbeline's reign in the age of Augustus and the birth of Christ, and some readers see the closing universal peace as alluding to it, though the play never names Christ. The ending shows forgiveness as costly and freely given, not a denial that wrong was done.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Cymbeline is one of Shakespeare's most useful plays for the history of medicine and medical ethics. The court physician Cornelius is asked by the Queen, his former pupil in distilling and preserving, for slow poisons she says she will test on animals; he warns that such trials will harden her heart, suspects her motives, and substitutes a drug whose effect is only 'the locking up the spirits a time', an early stage portrait of a doctor who refuses to become an instrument of murder and does so by deception. The resulting death-like sleep drives the fourth act. Imogen calls herself 'heart-sick', and Belarius judges that Fidele died of melancholy. The Queen falls into 'a fever' and 'a madness' at her son's absence and dies 'with horror, madly dying', confessing her plan to poison the King with a slow 'mortal mineral'. Posthumus calls death 'the sure physician' and in prison has a vision he cannot distinguish from dream. Retrospective readings of the Queen's madness or Imogen's melancholy are interpretive; the play presents them in the humoral and moral terms of its own time.

• Act 1, Scene 6 (Gutenberg numbering; Act 1, Scene 5 in most modern editions)

  The Queen receives 'poisonous compounds' from Cornelius and proposes to test them on animals; Cornelius warns her and, aside, reveals that he has given her a drug that only counterfeits death. She then gives the box to Pisanio as a cordial that has saved the King's life.

• Act 2, Scene 2

  Iachimo invokes sleep as the 'ape of death' while Imogen sleeps; the scene's image of a sleeper as a funeral monument foreshadows her later apparent death.

• Act 4, Scene 2

  Imogen, 'heart-sick', swallows the drug and is found apparently dead; Belarius attributes the death to melancholy; the dirge names 'physic' among the things that come to dust; she wakes believing she is dreaming and finds the headless body.

• Act 4, Scene 3

  Cymbeline reports that the Queen lies in a fever and a madness at the absence of her son, in danger of her life.

• Act 5, Scene 4

  Posthumus in prison welcomes death as 'the sure physician' who frees one sick of the gout, then sees in sleep his family's ghosts and Jupiter.

• Act 5, Scene 5

  Cornelius reports the Queen's mad death and confession, including a slow mineral poison meant for the King, and explains the sleeping drug; Cymbeline reflects that medicine may prolong life but death seizes the doctor too.