| Cymbeline |
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Period written: 1609-1610
First known performance: 1610 Posthumous, a man of low birth but exceeding personal merit, has secretly married Imogen, daughter of King Cymbeline. Cymbeline, angered at this subversion of his will, banishes Posthumous from the kingdom. His faithful servant Pisanio remains. Iachimo (or "Little Iago"), a soldier in the Roman army, makes a bet with Posthumous that he can tempt Imogen to commit adultery. The falsely besmirched Imogen, warned by Posthumus' faithful servant Pisanio, fakes her death to weather the reverberations of this trick (as Hero does in Much Ado About Nothing), and makes her way to Milford Haven on the West Coast of Britain. There she befriends "Polydore" and "Cadwell," who, unbeknownst to her, are really Guiderrius and Arviragus, her own brothers. Two British noblemen swore false oaths charging that Belarius had conspired with the ancient Romans, which led Cymbeline to banish him twenty years before the action of the play. Belarius kidnapped Cymbeline's young sons in retaliation, to hinder him from having heirs to the throne. The sons were raised by the nurse Euriphile, whom they called mother and took her for such. Some have taken the convoluted plot as evidence of the play's parodic origins. In Act V Scene IV "Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt," then commands an untangled plot and goes back up. At the play's resolution, virtually the entire cast comes forth one at a time to add a piece to the puzzle. Cornelius, the court doctor, arrives to dazzle everyone with news that the Queen, Imogen's stepmother, is dead, reporting that with her last breath she confessed her wicked deeds: she never loved old Cymbeline, she had Imogen poisoned by Pisanio (without Pisanio's knowledge), and she was ambitious to poison Cymbeline so Cloten, her own son, could assume the throne. Cymbeline concludes with an oration to the gods, declares peace and friendship betwixt Britain and Rome, and great feasting in Lud's Town (London), concluding "Never was a war did cease, / Ere bloody hands were washed, with such a peace." Discuss this play in our forums.
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