Cymbeline

Cymbeline Shakespeare's romance was first printed in the First Folio (1623), with the title ‘ The Tragedie of Cymbeline’. The play is usually dated 1609–10, mainly on stylistic grounds. The historical part is based on Holinshed's Chronicles. The wager plot derives from Boccaccio's Decameron, perhaps indirectly through a pamphlet of 1560, Frederick of Jennen. The Belarius story may come from an anonymous play, printed in 1589, The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune. The authenticity of the vision scene (V. iv) has often been questioned, but is nowadays generally defended.

Simon Forman, who died in 1611, recorded seeing a performance without saying when, and the play was presented at Court in 1634. An adaptation by Thomas D'Urfey, The Injured Princess or The Fatal Wager, was written about 1673 and held the stage. Shakespeare's play was revived in 1746. David Garrick put on a revised version in 1761, and frequently played Posthumus, a role later taken by John Philip Kemble, with Mrs Siddons as a notable Imogen.

Imogen's name is in doubt. Holinshed and Forman call her ‘Innogen’, as does the Oxford edition. The character was idealized by nineteenth-century readers and audiences. Swinburne said that ‘in Imogen we find half-glorified already the immortal godhead of womanhood’, and Tennyson (who is said to have died with a copy of the play open on his lap) shared his opinion. The most distinguished representatives of the role after Mrs Siddons were Helena Faucit and Ellen Terry.

Twentieth-century productions have had limited success. Bernard Shaw, who wrote fascinating letters to Ellen Terry about her preparation to play Imogen, also wrote his own version of the last act, which has occasionally been performed. Peggy Ashcroft played Imogen at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1957, and Vanessa Redgrave in 1962. A considerably shortened version at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1974 had Susan Fleetwood as an affecting Imogen. Bill Alexander directed an emotionally strong production at The Other Place (Stratford, 1987), and Peter Hall staged the play in a season of late plays ( National Theatre, 1988). Adrian Noble's 1997 production at Stratford-upon-Avon gave the play an oriental setting.

Cymbeline is a fantasy, highly elaborated in both style and action, experimental in its technique, which achieves some brilliant effects but is challenging both structurally and stylistically. The song ‘Hark, hark, the lark’ has become independently famous in Schubert's setting, and the dirge (‘Fear no more the heat o'th' sun’) is also well known apart from the rest of the play.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) on Shakespeare's simplicities; from Life and Works, ed. Hallam, Lord Tennyson, 1898
There are three repartees in Shakespeare which always bring tears to my eyes from their simplicity. And in The Winter's Tale, when Florizel takes Perdita's hand to lead her to the dance, and says, ‘So turtles pair that never mean to part,’ and the little Perdita answers, giving her hand to Florizel, ‘I'll swear for 'em.’ And in Cymbeline, when Imogen in tender rebuke says to her husband:‘Why did you throw your wedded lady from you?
Think that you are upon a rock; and now,
Throw me again!’
and Posthumus does not ask forgiveness, but answers, kissing her: ‘Hang there like fruit, my soul,
Till the tree die.’