CYMBELINE.
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CYMBELINE is one of the most delightful of
Shakespear's historical plays. It may be considered
as a dramatic romance, in which the
most striking parts of the story are thrown into
the form of a dialogue, and the intermediate
circumstances are explained by the different
speakers, as occasion renders it necessary. The
action is less concentrated in consequence; but
the interest becomes more aerial and refined
from the principle of perspective introduced into
the subject by the imaginary changes of scene
as well as by the length of time it occupies. The
reading of this play is like going a journey with
some uncertain object at the end of it, and in
which the suspense is kept up and heightened by
the long intervals between each action. Though
the events are scattered over such an extent of
surface, and relate to such a variety of characters,
yet the links which bind the different interests
of the story together are never entirely
broken. The most straggling and seemingly
casual incidents are contrived in such a manner
as to lead at last to the most complete developement
of the catastrophe. The ease and
conscious unconcern with which this is effected
only makes the skill more wonderful. The business
of the plot evidently thickens in the last
act: the story moves forward with increasing
rapidity at every step; its various ramifications
are drawn from the most distant points to the
same centre; the principal characters are brought
together, and placed in very critical situations;
and the fate of almost every person in the drama
is made to depend on the solution of a single
circumstance--the answer of Iachimo to the
question of Imogen respecting the obtaining of
the ring from Posthumus. Dr. Johnson is of
opinion that Shakespear was generally inattentive
to the winding up of his plots. We think
the contrary is true; and we might cite in proof
of this remark not only the present play, but
the conclusion of Lear, of Romeo and Juliet,
of Macbeth, of Othello, even of Hamlet, and of
other plays of less moment, in which the last act
is crowded with decisive events brought about
by natural and striking means.
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The pathos in CYMBELINE is not violent or
tragical, but of the most pleasing and amiable
kind. A certain tender gloom o'erspreads the
whole. Posthumus is the ostensible hero of
the piece, but its greatest charm is the character
of Imogen. Posthumus is only interesting
from the interest she takes in him, and she
is only interesting herself from her tenderness
and constancy to her husband. It is the peculiar
characteristic of Shakespear's heroines, that
they seem to exist only in their attachment to
others. They are pure abstractions of the affections.
We think as little of their persons as
they do themselves, because we are let into the
secrets of their hearts, which are more important.
We are too much interested in their affairs to
stop to look at their faces, except by stealth and
at intervals. No one ever hit the true perfection
of the female character, the sense of weakness
leaning on the strength of its affections for
support, so well as Shakespear--no one ever so
well painted natural tenderness free from affectation
and disguise--no one else ever so well
showed how delicacy and timidity, when driven
to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant;
for the romance of his heroines (in which they
abound) is only an excess of the habitual prejudices
of their sex, scrupulous of being false
to their vows, truant to their affections, and
taught by the force of feeling when to forego
the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His
women were in this respect exquisite logicians;
for there is nothing so logical as passion. They
knew their own minds exactly; and only followed
up a favourite idea, which they had
sworn to with their tongues, and which was
engraven on their hearts, into its untoward consequences.
They were the prettiest little set of
martyrs and confessors on record.--Cibber, in
speaking of the early English stage, accounts for
the want of prominence and theatrical display
in Shakespear's female characters from the circumstance,
that women in those days were not
allowed to play the parts of women, which made
it necessary to keep them a good deal in the
back-ground. Does not this state of manners
itself, which prevented their exhibiting themselves
in public, and confined them to the relations
and charities of domestic life, afford a truer
explanation of the matter? His women are
certainly very unlike stage-heroines; the reverse
of tragedy-queens.
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We have almost as great an affection for Imogen
as she had for Posthumus; and she deserves
it better. Of all Shakespear's women she is
perhaps the most tender and the most artless.
Her incredulity in the opening scene with Iachimo,
as to her husband's infidelity, is much the
same as Desdemona's backwardness to believe
Othello's jealousy. Her answer to the most
distressing part of the picture is only, "My
lord, I fear, has forgot Britain." Her readiness
to pardon Iachimo's false imputations and his
designs against herself, is a good lesson to
prudes; and may shew that where there is a
real attachment to virtue, it has no need to
bolster itself up with an outrageous or affected
antipathy to vice. The scene in which Pisanio
gives Imogen his master's letter, accusing her of
incontinency on the treacherous suggestions of
Iachimo, is as touching as it is possible for any
thing to be:--
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"Pisanio. What cheer, Madam?
Imogen. False to his bed! What is it to be false?
To lie in watch there, and to think on him?
To weep 'twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge nature,
Too break it with a fearful dream of him,
And cry myself awake? That's false to's beds is it?
Pisanio. Alas, good lady!
Imogen. I false? thy conscience witness, Iachimo,
Thou didst accuse him of incontinency,
Thou then look'dst like a villain: now methinks,
Thy favour's good enough. Some Jay of Italy,
Whose mother was her painting, hath betrayed him:
Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion,
And for I am richer than to hang by th' walls,
I must be ript; to pieces with me. Oh,
Men's vows are women's traitors. All good seeming
By thy revolt, oh husband, shall be thought
Put on for villainy: not born where't grows,
But worn a bait for ladies.
Pisanio. Good Madam, hear me--
Imogen. Talk thy tongue weary, speak:
I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear,
Therein false struck, can take no greater wound,
Nor tent to bottom that."----
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When Pisanio, who had been charged to kill
his mistress, puts her in a way to live, she says,
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"Why, good fellow,
What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live?
Or in my life what comfort, when I am
Dead to my husband?"
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Yet when he advises her to disguise herself
in boy's clothes, and suggests "a course pretty
and full in view," by which she may "happily
be near the residence of Posthumus," she exclaims,
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"Oh, for such means,
Though peril to my modesty, not death on't,
I would adventure."
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And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences,
tells her she must change
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----"Fear and niceness,
The handmaids of all women, or more truly,
Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage,
Ready in gibes, quick answer'd, saucy, and
As quarrellous as the weasel"----
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she interrupts him hastily:--
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"Nay, be brief;
I see into thy end, and am almost
A man already."
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In her journey thus disguised to Milford-Haven,
she loses her guide and her way; and
unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully,--
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----"My dear Lord,
Thou art one of the false ones; now I think on thee,
My hunger's gone; but even before, I was
At point to sink for food."
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She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead
body of Posthumus, and engages herself as a
footboy to serve a Roman officer, when she has
done all due obsequies to him whom she calls
her former master----
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----"And when
With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha' strew'd his grave,
And on it said a century of pray'rs,
Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep and sigh,
And leaving so his service, follow you,
So please you entertain me."
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Now this is the very religion of love. She all
along relies little on her personal charms, which
she fears may have been eclipsed by some painted
Jay of Italy; she relies on her merit, and her
merit is in the depth of her love, her truth and
constancy. Our admiration of her beauty is
excited with as little consciousness as possible
on her part. There are two delicious descriptions
given of her, one when she is asleep, and
one when she is supposed dead. Arviragus
thus addresses her--
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----"With fairest flowers,
While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack
the flow'r that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins, no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander,
Out-sweeten'd not thy breath."
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The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when
he steals into her bed-chamber:--
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----"Cytherea,
How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! Fresh lily,
And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch--
But kiss, one kiss--'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' th' taper
Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids
To see th' enclosed lights now canopied
Under the windows, white and azure, laced
With blue of Heav'ns own tinct--on her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip."
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There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of
this last image, a rich surfeit of the fancy,--as
that well-known passage beginning, "Me of my
lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me
oft forbearance," sets a keener edge upon it by
the inimitable picture of modesty and self-denial.
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The character of Cloten, the conceited, booby
lord, and rejected lover of Imogen, though not
very agreeable in itself, and at present obsolete,
is drawn with great humour and knowledge of
character. The description which Imogen gives
of his unwelcome addresses to her--"Whose
love-suit hath been to me as fearful as a siege"--is
enough to cure the most ridiculous lover of
his folly. It is remarkable that though Cloten
makes so poor a figure in love, he is described
as assuming an air of consequence as the Queen's
son in a council of state, and with all the absurdity
of his person and manners, is not without
shrewdness in his observations. So true is it
that folly is as often owing to a want of proper
sentiments as to a want of understanding! The
exclamation of the ancient critic, Oh Menander
and Nature, which of you copied from the
other! would not be misapplied to Shakespear.
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The other characters in this play are represented
with great truth and accuracy, and as it
happens in most of the author's works, there is
not only the utmost keeping in each separate
character; but in the casting of the different
parts, and their relation to one another, there
is an affinity and harmony, like what we may
observe in the gradations of colour in a picture.
The striking and powerful contrasts in which
Shakespear abounds could not escape observation;
but the use he makes of the principle of
analogy to reconcile the greatest diversities of
character and to maintain a continuity of feeling
throughout, has not been sufficiently attended
to. In CYMBELINE, for instance, the principal
interest arises out of the unalterable fidelity of
Imogen to her husband under the most trying
circumstances. Now the other parts of the picture
are filled up with subordinate examples of
the same feeling, variously modified by different
situations, and applied to the purposes of
virtue or vice. The plot is aided by the amorous
importunities of Cloten, by the tragical
determination of Iachimo to conceal the defeat
of his project by a daring imposture: the faithful
attachment of Pisanio to his mistress is an
affecting accompaniment to the whole; the
obstinate adherence to his purpose in Bellarius,
who keeps the fate of the young princes so long
a secret in resentment for the ungrateful return
to his former services, the incorrigible wickedness
of the Queen, and even the blind uxorious
confidence of Cymbeline, are all so many lines
of the same story, tending to the same point.
The effect of this coincidence is rather felt than
observed; and as the impression exists unconsciously
in the mind of the reader, so it probably
arose in the same manner in the mind of the
author, not from design, but from the force of
natural association, a particular train of feeling
suggesting different inflections of the same predominant
principle, melting into, and strengthening
one another, like chords in music.
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The characters of Bellarius, Guiderius, and
Arviragus, and the romantic scenes in which
they appear, are a fine relief to the intrigues and
artificial refinements of the court from which
they are banished. Nothing can surpass the
wildness and simplicity of the descriptions of
the mountain life they lead. They follow the
business of huntsmen, not of shepherds; and
this is in keeping with the spirit of adventure
and uncertainty in the rest of the story, and with
the scenes in which they are afterwards called
on to act. How admirably the youthful fire and
impatience to emerge from their obscurity in
the young princes is opposed to the cooler calculations
and prudent resignation of their more
experienced counsellor! How well the disadvantages
of knowledge and of ignorance, of solitude
and society, are placed against each other!
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"Guiderius. Out of your proof you speak: we poor unfledg'd
Have never wing'd from view o' th' nest; nor know not
What air's from home. Haply this life is best,
If quiet life is best; sweeter to you
That have a sharper known; well corresponding
With your stiff age: but unto us it is
A cell of ignorance; travelling a-bed,
A prison for a debtor, that not dares
To stride a limit.
Arviragus. What should we speak of
When we are old as you? When we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December! How,
In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse
The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing.
We are beastly; subtle as the fox for prey,
Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat:
Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage
We make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird,
And sing our be bondage freely."
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The answer of Bellarius to this expostulation
is hardly satisfactory; for nothing can be an answer
to hope, or the passion of the mind for
unknown good, but experience.--The forest of
Arden in As you like it can alone compare with
the mountain in scenes in CYMBELINE: yet how
different the contemplative quiet of the one from
the enterprising boldness and precarious mode of
subsistence in the other! Shakespear not only
lets us into the minds of his characters, but
gives a tone and colour to the scenes he describes
from the feelings of their imaginary inhabitants.
He at the same time preserves the
utmost propriety of action and passion, and gives
all their local accompaniments. If he was equal
to the greatest things, he was not above an
attention to the smallest. Thus the gallant
sportsmen in CYMBELINE have to encounter
the abrupt declivities of hill and valley: Touchstone
and Audrey jog along a level path. The
deer in CYMBELINE are only regarded as objects
of prey, "The game's a-foot," &c.--with Jaques
they are fine subjects to moralize upon at leisure,
"under the shade of melancholy boughs."
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We cannot take leave of this play, which is
a favourite with us, without noticing some occasional
touches of natural piety and morality.
We may allude here to the opening of the scene
in which Bellarius instructs the young princes
to pay their orisons to heaven:
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----"See, Boys! this gate
Instructs you how t' adore the Heav'ns; and bows you
To morning's holy office.
Guiderius. Hail, Heav'n!
Arviragus. Hail, Heav'n!
Bellarius. Now for our mountain-sport, up to you hill."
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What a grace and unaffected spirit of piety
breathes in this passage! In like manner, one
of the brothers says to the other, when about to
perform the funeral rites to Fidele,
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"Nay, Cadwall, we must lay his head to the east;
My Father hath a reason for't."
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Shakespear's morality is introduced in the
same simple, unobtrusive manner. Imogen will
not let her companions stay away from the
chase to attend her when sick, and gives her
reason for it--
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"Stick to your journal course; the breach of custom
Is breach of all!"
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When the Queen attempts to disguise her motives
for procuring the poison from Cornelius, by
saying she means to try its effects on "creatures
not worth the hanging," his answer conveys at
once a tacit reproof of her hypocrisy, and a useful
lesson of humanity--
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----"Your Highness
Shall from thin practice but make hard your heart."
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