Howard, J.E.

(2008)
Introduction to Cymbeline, King of Britain
in Greenblatt, S. (ed.) (2008)
The Norton Shakespeare Based on the Oxford Edition, Second Edition,
New York: W.W. Norton,
pp. 2963-2972.

Toward the end of Cymbeline, one of the chief characters, Posthumus Leonatus, awakens from a
dream vision to find a tablet on his chest, left there by Jupiter, king of the gods. In the dream,
Jupiter had promised that the tablet would explain Posthumuss future fortunes. But when
Posthumus reads the writing on the tablet, it is incomprehensible to him:
Tis still a dream, or else such stuff as madmen
Tongue, ...
Or senseless speaking, or a speaking such
As sense cannot untie.
Yet he concludes: Be what it is, / The action of my life is like it (5.5.238-42). By his own
estimation, Posthumuss life is a senseless riddle. His immediate circumstances perhaps warrant
such a conclusion. When Jupiter appears to him, Posthumus, a Briton crucial to his countrys
recent defeat of Rome, has subsequently disguised himself as a Roman and been put in a British
prison. Posthumus deliberately sought his own capture and death because of the guilt he felt for
having wrongly commanded the death of his virtuous wife, Innogen, the British Kings daughter,
falsely accused of sexual infidelity. Unbeknownst to him, however, Innogen, not dead but also
disguised as a Roman boy named Fidele, is likewise among those held captive by the Britons.
Such plot complexities are typical of Cymbeline, leading not only Posthumus, but also
theatre-goers, to find it a baffling muddle. In this play, an inordinate number of characters assume
disguises, have more than one name, dont know who their real parents are, or find themselves
unable to decipher the complicated events around them. In one of the plays most famous (or
infamous) scenes, Innogen, travelling in a pages disguise to find Posthumus, wakes up from a
drug-induced sleep to find herself lying beside the body of a headless man dressed in her
husbands clothing. The man is really Cloten, Posthumuss rival for Innogens hand and the
wicked son of Innogens evil step-mother. Seeing the headless body, Innogen breaks into a lament
for the man she believes to be her husband. Her grief is genuine and affecting, but it is prompted
by a profound misreading of the object before her.

The improbabilities and complexities of Cymbelines plot have given some critics pause,
as has the freedom with which times and places are handled. Ostensibly set in Roman Britain at
the time of Christs birth (which, according to the chronicles, occurred during the reign of
Cymbeline), the play also contains scenes that appear to take place in contemporary sixteenthcentury Italy. It is in this modern Italy, for example, that Posthumus is tricked into believing that
Innogen is sexually unfaithful to him. Reacting to the plays unusual features, the eighteenthcentury critic Samuel Johnson complained:
This play has many just sentiments, some natural dialogues, and some pleasing scenes,
but they are obtained at the expense of much incongruity. To remark the folly of the fiction, the
absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the
impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste
criticism upon unresisting
imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too
gross for aggravation.
This response, however, may say more about Johnsons neoclassical tastes than about the ultimate
value of Shakespeares play. In Cymbeline, the complexity of the actions seems deliberate rather
than inadvertent or unskilful. It creates in the audience both a longing for clarity and control and
an anxiety that the play may afford neither. The pleasure of the final act, therefore, stems from the
relief experienced whenafter the dizzying whirl of events, reversals, revelations, and disguises
peace descends, all identities revealed and all riddles expounded. The sense of wonder produced
by this miraculous untangling of complicated events is one of the signal effects of Shakespeares
late plays: amazement that after astonishing suffering can come new hope, after labyrinthine
confusions the solace of questions answered.
This feature of the play is one of the reasons why in modern criticism Cymbeline is
usually called a romance or sometimes a tragicomedy, even though in the First Folio of 1623 it
was grouped with the tragedies, probably because it dramatises serious historical matter taken
from the reign of an early Briton King. Like other plays written late in Shakespeares career,
however, such as The Winters Tale, Pericles, and The Tempest, Cymbeline does not end
tragically. Rather, it ultimately emphasises the transformation of suffering into joy. While verging
on tragedy, each of these plays wins through to a bittersweet conclusion in which shattered
families are reconstituted and plot complexities untangledbut always at a cost. Mistakes have
consequences in these plays. Sons die; years are lost in exile and wandering; women suffer from
unjust slander. If, in the end, good fortune returns to the sufferers, it does not cancel their former
pain but provides a miraculous contrast to it.
The date of Cymbeline is uncertain, although it is usually given as 1606 or 1610. Scholars
differ as to whether it preceded or followed The Winters Tale. We know that it was in
performance by 1611, because Simon Forman, a London doctor and astrologer, wrote about seeing
it, probably between April 20 and April 30 of that year. It is not clear whether he saw the play at
the Globe, the outdoor theatre that Shakespeares company used after 1599, or at Blackfriars, the
indoor theatre that they also began to use in 1608. The spectacular scenic effects possible in
staging this play, such as the descent of Jupiter on the back of an eagle in Act 5, may have been
designed with the more elaborate technical capacities of the Blackfriars venue in mind. Some

critics have tried to date the play by relating it to the investiture of Henry, King Jamess oldest son,
as Prince of Wales in 1610, since a number of the key scenes of the play take place in Wales. We
have no record of a court performance of the play until 1634, however, when it was played before
King Charles, who liked it. Other critics have tried to determine the plays relationship to
Beaumont and Fletchers popular tragicomedy Philaster, usually dated 1609, to which Cymbeline
bears some resemblance. But even though the two plays are related, it is not clear which
influenced the other.
Whatever its exact date, Cymbeline belongs to Shakespeares late period, and because of
its setting it allowed Shakespeare simultaneously to address his long-standing interests both in
British and in Roman history. The play intertwines three plot lines and draws on a variety of
source materials. The main plot involved Innogen, the daughter and apparently the only living heir
of Cymbeline, King of Britain, and her thwarted attempts to love with her chosen husband,
Posthumus. Angry that Innogen loves a man of lesser social rank than herself and that she has not
married Cloten, his second wifes son, Cymbeline banishes Posthumus from Britain. Posthumus
goes to Italy, where he wagers in his wifes chastity with the villain Giacomo, who ultimately
makes Posthumus believe Innogen unfaithful. Whether the love of Innogen and Posthumus can be
restored is one of the key questions of this plot. This wager story draws on two sources:
Boccacios Decameron, a series of prose tales first translated into English in 1620 but available in
a French translation in the sixteenth century, and Frederick of Jennen, an English translation of a
German version of the same story.
A second plot strand deals with Britains relationship with Rome, especially Romes
demand that the Britons pay the tribute pledged to Julius Caesar upon his conquest of the isle. For
this part of the story, Shakespeare drew primarily on the brief account of Cymbelines reign in
Raphael Holinsheds Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (second edition, 1587).
Cymbeline was King when the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar ushered in the famous time of
peace known as the Pax Romana. In most of the sources, it was Cymbelines son Guiderius who
refused to pay Rome tribute. Shakespeare modified the story, however, so that Cymbeline, urged
on by his Queen and her son, is the one who withholds the tribute and provokes a Roman invasion.
The third plotline has to do with two sons of Cymbeline, stolen from their nursery by a
wrongly defamed courtier, Belarius, who raises them in the mountains of Wales. By chance, their
sister Innogen, disguised as a boy, stumbles upon their mountain cave on her flight from her
fathers court in pursuit of Posthumus. Near this cave, Cloten, wearing Posthumuss clothes, is
killed by one of these sons; also near this cave, Innogen awakes from her sleep to find herself
beside the headless body. For the play to reach its resolution, Cymbelines sons must be reunited
with their father. This reunion occurs, but only after the sons play a decisive role in the final battle
against the Roman invaders. Their heroic actions in this battle are modelled on quite another part
of Holinshed, The History of Scotland, which recounts the story of a farmer named Hay and his
two sons, who routed Danish invaders at the Battle of Luncarty in about 976 C.E.
From these complex and diverse materials, Shakespeare wove a play whose rich
allusiveness has invited many kinds of tropical interpretations. One line of criticism has focused
on Cymbelines relationship to events and ideas connected to the reign of King James I. James was
interested in linking imperial Rome and the Roman Emperors to modern Britain and to his own

kingship. He had himself painted crowned with laurel leaves, in the Roman manner, and had coins
stamped with his laurel-crowned profile. Like Augustus Caesar, James presented himself as the
great peacemaker after Elizabeths reluctant involvement in wars in Ireland and in defending the
Protestant countries of the Continent against Catholic powers, especially Spain. Moreover, just as
Augustus ruled over a vast empire, James aspired to united Scotland and England (along with the
already incorporated Wales) into a single entity with one church and one set of laws. His project
failed, but he exerted much effort in promoting this union during the first years of his reign.
Cymbeline uncannily echoes some of Jamess preoccupations. Sometimes called Shakespeares
last Roman play, Cymbeline dramatises ancient Britains attempts to come to terms with imperial
Rome. Names of Roman godsparticularly Diana, Apollo, and Jupiterabound (Jupiter alone is
mentioned over thirty times); and figures from Roman mythology and history, such as Tarquin,
Philomela, and Aeneas, are often evoked. The plays title character, like James, is a British
monarch respectful of Rome, even when asserting his independence in the matter of the tribute.
The final word of the play, spoken by the King, is peace. The analogies between the play and the
Stuart court, however, have their limits. Cymbeline is also a King duped by his wicked Queen and
her doltish sonhardly a compliment to James and the royal family if events in the play are seen
literally to mirror their circumstances.
Other allusions expand the plays possible range of meanings. Much is made, for
example, of Milford Haven, the port in southern Wales where the Romans come ashore for their
invasion of England. This port was famous to Shakespeares audience as the place where Henry
Richmond landed in 1485 to begin his assault on the forces of Richard III. Having defeated
Richard, Richmond was crowned Henry VII, first of the Tudor Kings; Henrys daughter Margaret
married James IV of Scotland, grandfather to the James who assumed the English throne in 1603.
When the Roman land at Milford Haven, they in effect precipitate a transformation of the
kingdom, much as Henry Richmond was to do 1500 years later. At the time of their arrival,
Cymbeline believes his two sons dead, and his daughter and Cloten have both fled the court.
Britain is without an heir. But through the battle with the Romans, the lost sons of Cymbeline are
discovered and the kingdom renewed. So, too, James fancied himself an agent of renewal, a
second Henry VII arriving from Scotland to unite the whole island under his rule.
Wales itself is an important symbolic location in this play. Although officially
incorporated into England in 1530s, Wales remained distinct, often stigmatised as rude and
uncivilised. The Welsh language, banned from use in public contexts, was taken to symbolise the
barbarity of this borderland region. On the other hand, in some narratives, Wales was also the
place from which the legitimate rulers of England sprang. The storied surrounding the mythical
King Arthur give him a Welsh origin, and traditionally the eldest son of the British monarch was
(and still is) given the title Prince of Wales. In Cymbeline, Wales is imagined as a harsh pastoral
landscape in which Belarius and the Kings sons live in a cave, hunt the food they eat, and have
little contact with other human beings. These sons, Guiderius and Arviragus, frequently complain
that they know nothing of the world and its customs and manners. But Wales shelters these sons as
they grow to manhood and protects them from the vices of court life. In fact, as is traditional in
pastoral literature, the Welsh scenes contain a good deal of anti-court satire. In the plays spatial
and symbolic economies, Wales is the place where true British manhood is preserved. In part, the

Welsh material can be seen as a compliment to Prince Henry, who was a staunch champion of the
Protestant cause in Europe and showed every promise of being a more martial figure than his
peace-loving father.
There can be little doubt that Cymbeline works with material imbued with a new kind of
significance under the reign of James. Yet it may be a mistake to tie the play too closely to the
royal family or to particular events. The play doesnt just reflect the world around it; it transforms
the materials from that world into a powerful imaginative and ideological structure. In the largest
sense, Cymbeline works to define both Britain and proper British manhood by constructing a
complex narrative about national origins. The wager plot, with its story of sexual slander and
threatened rape, is central to the narrative, not only because Innogen often seems to stand for
Britain itself (she is several times addressed as Britain, and she bears the name of the wife of
Brute, the legendary ancient King of Britain), but also because the realignment if gender relations
plays crucial role in the renewal of Britain and in the plays turn from tragedy to comedy.
Strikingly, this play about Britains past never mentions the word England. In the
history plays written in the 1590s, the reverse tends to be true: Britain is seldom employed,
England is invoked with great frequency. There are several reasons for Shakespeares choice in
this later play. He is, of course, deliberately evoking the world of the ancient Britons, the early
inhabitants of the island who provide the starting point for his creation of a fictive national past. At
the same time, he is to some extent reflecting, and helping to create, the Stuart monarchs sense of
the entity over which he ruled. James, after all, was not an Englander in the same way Elizabeth
had been. He was a Scotsman who spoke with an accent and aspired to bring the entire island into
a new political alignment.
Setting the play in the reign of Cymbeline allowed Shakespeare to imagine a primitive
Britain that was also the cosmopolitan heir to the westward movement of empire. The treatment of
Rome is particularly interesting in Cymbeline. Partly, the Romans are figured as an invading force,
threatening the island. Yet the British characters most eager to repel the Romans and to treat them
as an enemy are the evil Queen and her evil son. Cymbeline himself, while defending Britains
right to live free under its own laws, is more disposed to come to terms with his great opponents
and invariably treats them with respect. There is, in fact, a pronounced tension in the play between
Britains desires to defeat the Romans and to emulate them. This tension is managed in part
through the splitting of the Romans into the noble figure of Lucius and the devilish figure of
Giacomo, who in his deceit and misogyny embodies sixteenth-century stereotypes concerning the
villainous Italian.
When Giacomo comes to Britain to test Innogens fidelity, he fails in his initial attempt to
portray Posthumus as a philanderer upon whom Innogen should seek revenge. He then proceeds
more secretly; he has himself conveyed in a trunk into her bedroom, from which he issues in the
dead of night to survey her sleeping body and the contents of her room. His stealthy act is framed
by references to infamous acts of rape. As he steps from the trunk, Giacomo compares himself to
Tarquin, the Roman tyrant who raped Lucrece (a story told in Shakespeares lengthy poem The
Rape of Lucrece, written in the 1590s). Furthermore, the book that Innogen had been reading when
she fell asleep is opened to the story of Tereus, who raped Philomela and cut out her tongue.
Although Giacomo does not literally rape Innogen, he violates the privacy of her body with his

peering eyes and rapes her honour by lying successfully to Posthumus about her infidelity. At one
level, Innogen is Britain, threatened by a skilful invader. Giacomo penetrates Innogens
bedchamber, and later he penetrates the ear of Posthumus with his poisonous slander.
In the plays denouement, the threat of foreign penetration is graphically repelled when
Belarius and the sons of Cymbeline come from the Welsh mountains, joined by the Romans to
flight and instilling courage in the British. The vulnerable narrow lane is this barricaded against
outsiders by the sons of Cymbeline crying, Stand, stand (5.5.28). The moment has gendered and
sexual overtones. A vulnerable and feminised Britain is protected from invasion by the swords of
virile young men whose cry, Stand, means both to hold ones ground and to have an erection.
This event proves pivotal, lending itself equally well to aphorism and to Posthumuss mocking
rhyme: Two boys, an old man twice a boy, a lane, / Preserved the Britons, was the Romans bane
(5.5.57-58). In the plays symbolic economy, the threat of penetration initiated by Giacomo is this
repulsed by Innogens long-lost brothers, and in the final scene Giacomo kneels to Posthumus,
asking his forgivenessthe Italian subdued by the Briton.
Something quite different occurs with Lucius, the Roman military leader, who embodies
the laudable virtues of ancient Rome rather than the hideous vices of sixteenth-century Italy, Even
though the Roman army is defeated, Cymbeline decides to resume paying tribute, and in his final
speech the King says: let / A Roman and a British ensign wave / Friendly together (5.6.479-81).
This rapprochement of warring powers is ratified by one of the plays several mysterious visions.
Before the battle, a Roman soothsayer told Lucius what the gods had revealed to him:
I saw Joves bird, the Roman eagle, winged
From the spongy south to this part of the west,
There vanished in the sunbeams; which portends,
Unless my sins abuse my divination,
Success to th Roman host.
(4.2.350-54)
In this play, not even soothsayers have perfect interpretive skills. The outcome of the battle
requires some revisions in the exegesis of the vision. After the battle, the soothsayer says:
For the Roman eagle,
From south to west on wing soaring aloft,
Lessened herself, and in the beams oth sun
So vanished; which foreshowed our princely eagle
Th imperial Caesar should again unite
His favour with the radiant Cymbeline,
Which shines here in the west.
(5.6.470-76)
Conquest has been transformed into concord as the Roman eagle and the British sun merge and as
Cymbeline celebrates this peace within the temple of Jupiter.
In stressing the final union of Britain and Rome, the plays conclusion makes Britain the

heir of Romes imperial legacy even as Britain proclaims the integrity of her own land, laws, and
customs. In the early modern periods, the course of empire was thought to move westward. When
Troy fell, the Trojan hero Aeneas bore his father on his back from the fires of the burning city and
eventually fulfilled his destiny by establishing a soothsayers vision, the Roman eagle journeys
even farther west, renewing itself, as eagles were believed to do, by enduring the burning fires of
Britains sun to purge away old feathers in preparation for the growth of new.
The plays culminating vision of a Britain separate unto itself but also the cosmopolitan
heir of an imperial tradition is anticipated in the actions of Innogen and Posthumus. In the final
act, both are partly Roman in their dress and sympathies. Posthumus Leonatus comes to Britain in
the company of the Italian gentry, but then dresses as a British peasant and fights with Belarius in
the narrow lane before reassuming his Italian garb. Innogen is present at the battle as page to
Lucius, the Roman general who had found her weeping over the headless corpse of Cloten. In the
final moments of reconciliation, Cymbelines daughter and her husband stand before the British
King in foreign clothes. Innogen, moreover, earlier makes a telling speech about Britains place in
the world when discussing with a trusted servant where she would love after Posthumus has come
to believe her unchaste. Her fathers court, with Cloten present, she finds unthinkable. She then
asks:
Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,
Are they not but in Britain? Ith worlds volume
Our Britain seems as of it but not int,
In a great pool a swans nest.
(3.4.136-39)
Innogen nicely captures the plays most complex view of Britain. Eschewing an insular patriotism
associated with Cloten and the Queen, she recognises a vast world beyond the shores of Britain.
Punning on the double meaning of volume as expanse or book, Innogen suggests Britains
partial separation from a larger entity. Britain is a little part of a bigger expanse, a page detached
from a large book, or a swans nest in a great pool. As the image of the swans nest suggests,
Britain remains the special seat of grace and beauty. But it is also connected to something larger
than itself. There are other pages in the volume to which, even if detached, Britain belongs.
The play, then, seems to be negotiating a new vision of the nation suited for the Stuart
moment, a vision resulting from the richly suggestive concatenation of discursive traditions that
Shakespeare brought together in this play. Reaching back into the chronicle materials of ancient
Britain, he provides a genealogy for modern Britain that (1) insists on the integrity and freedom of
the island kingdom but (2) presents it as purgedlargely through the efforts of the Kings Welsh
sonsof the corruptions of modern court life as embodied in figures such as Giacomo or Cloten,
and (3) aligns Britain with the cosmopolitan values of Rome, positioning the island kingdom as the
appropriate heir of Roman greatness: both warlike and peace-loving.
The renewed Britain has a fourth striking characteristic, and that is its decidedly
masculine coloration. The wager plot makes plain the role of gender in configuring British
national identity. Consider first the changing fortunes of Innogen. At the beginning of the play, she

is a beloved and important figure in her fathers court. Cymbelines only living heir, the Princess is
also strong-willed and decisive. She chooses Posthumus for her husband even though he has little
money and is not of royal birth. By the end of the play, Innogen has been displaced from the
succession by her two rediscovered brothers; she has also been ordered killed by her husband,
threatened with rape, knocked unconscious by a drug she believes to be medicine, and struck by
her husband when, in her pages attire, she steps forward to reveal her identity to him in the last
scene. Though cross-dressed for much of the second half of the play, she does not, like Portia in
The Merchant of Venice and Rosalind in As You Like It, use that disguise aggressively to shape her
own destiny. Rather, burdened by the knowledge that her husband unjustly and inexplicably
desires her death, Innogen grows less powerful and more passive as the play progresses. Her
decline can be summarised in the pun on heir and air. Innogen begins as the former and ends as
the latter. The mysterious tablet laid on Posthumuss breast contained a riddling prophecy:
Whenas a lions whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a
piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches which, being dead
many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus
end his miseries, Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty (5.5.232-37). When the
soothsayer finally entangles this riddle, he declares Posthumus Leonatus to be the lions offspring;
Cymbeline the cedar tree; his lost sons the lopped branches; and Innogen the tender air, because
tender air in Latin translates as mollis aer, which (by a stretch of the imagination) derives from
mulier, Latin for wife. When Posthumus is embraced by the tender air (no longer heir), his
miseries will cease. Apparently because she is now less important to the succession, Innogen is
allowed to love with her chosen husband, his masculinity affirmed by his pivotal role in the British
victory over the Roman forces.
Victorian critics loved Innogen, idealising her as a paragon of selfless and long-suffering
woman hood. For example, the Princess never protests her demotion from the position of heir
apparent; in fact, she says that she considers finding her brothers worth the loss of the kingdom.
To many contemporary critics, however, her role in the plays narrative of nation is a troubling
one. Britain renews itself as women are disempowered or disappear. Cymbelines Queen is an
embodiment of hypocritical viciousness (Shakespeare does not even bother to give her a name),
and her son, a figure whose father is never mentioned or seen, bears a taint. The plays happy
resolution occurs only after all traced of this Queen and her offspring have been erased. When
finally united with his children, Cymbeline articulates the fantasy of having himself given birth to
all three: O, what am I? / A mother to the birth of three? Neer mother / Rejoiced deliverance
more (5.6.369-71). This is the dream of androgenesis, reproduction without union with women.
Much earlier in the play, Posthumus, believing himself cuckolded by Innogen, voices a
similar wish: Is there no way for men to be, but women / Must be half-workers? (2.5.1-2). In one
of the most deeply misogynist speeches in the Shakespeare canon, Posthumus then blames all the
vices of the world on the womans part (line 20)on woman herself and on that part of woman
lodged in man, Eves mark upon the human race. This mistaken projection onto woman of
responsibility for evil may partly explain Cymbelines fantasy of androgenesis and also why, in
the last scene, no persons apparelled as women are to be seen (Innogen is still dressed as a page).
The happy union of Britain and Rome and Wales is overwhelmingly a union of men.

The plays own counterpoint to its exclusion of women from public power is its
demonization of the slanderous Giacomo and its depiction of Posthumuss gradual recovery of
faith in Innogen. When Posthumus receives a bloody cloth signifying (falsely) that his order to
murder Innogen has been fulfilled, he is overcome with remorse and berates husbands like himself
for murdering their wives for wrying but a little (5.1.5). At this point, Posthumus still believes
his wife to have been sexually unfaithful to him, yet he castigates himself for having ordered her
punished. Hid words form a remarkable exception to the more usual patriarchal assumption that
female chastity is the primary marker of a womans value and virtue and that loss of chastity is an
unforgiveable crime. Critics differ as to how much weight to assign this speech. Posthumus makes
it when he believes Innogen to be dead; and generally it is easier to forgive the dead than the
living. By the time he is finally reconciled to the living, breathing woman, Giacomos lies have
been exposed and Posthumus takes to himself a wide whose chastity is not in question.
The play, however, overtly punishes violence against women when the evil Cloten, who
had fantasised raping Innogen, is beheaded, and it punishes misogynous lies when Giacomo must
submit to Posthumus in the final scene. Posthumus, who has formerly himself believed slander
against Innogen and had attempted to have her killed, repents and becomes the plays image of the
proper husband. After Posthumuss performance in battle and when Innogen is no longer heir
apparent, Cymbeline withdraws his objections to Posthumuss union with her. Nevertheless,
Innogens formerly dominant position in that marriage now seems to belong to Posthumus, with
Jupiter himself providing the warrant for this reversal. In prison, Posthumus has a dream that not
only reconnects him to his familial origins but also provides an image of his own future family. As
he sleeps, Posthumuss two warlike brothers and his warlike father appear to him. The father is
described as leading in his hand an ancient matron, his wife, and mother to Posthumus (stage
direction following 5.5.123). After this dream, sent by Jupiter, Posthumus recovers his true
identity as Innogens husband and Britains warrior hero. As he assumes his position in the
honoured line of Leonati men, the place marked for Innogen is that of Roman/ British wife, led in
his hand. In its narratives of nation, Cymbeline seems able to reprove the most virulent forms of
misogyny only when it simultaneously removes women from public power, transforms them into
chaste, domesticated wives, and reaffirms the dominance of husbands.
Samuel Johnson was right when he said that Cymbeline is a lay with many incongruities
of time, place, and circumstance. And yet it is not an incoherent play but rather one that richly
interweaves the history of the nation with the stories of the figures who take up their positions in
the nation. What is eerie about Cymbeline is that its characters often understand so little about
what is happening to them, and yet each appears to play out the part assigned to him or her by
some higher power: Jupiter, destiny, time. In this regard, Cymbeline is of a piece with
Shakespeares other romances, plays in which a higher power often seems to steer all boats to
shire and reunited long-served families. But fictions of inevitability can be deceiving. One should
remember that the soothsayer had to revise his interpretation of his vision of the eagle and the sun
to make his narrative square with events as they actually happened. And to decipher Posthumuss
tablet, he could make the prophecy tally with the facts only by means of a tortuous transformation
of tender air into wife. This might suggest that in this play, at least, the higher powers
determine less than they appear to do; rather, the forms taken by family, nation, and empire are in

some measure the result of human efforts, interventions, and narratives. Shakespeares play is one
such narrative. The resolution of its complex plot may invite relieved assent to its culminating
vision, but the very artifice of that resolution also reveals its contingency, suggesting that there is
nothing either natural or inevitable about the familial and political arrangements that are repeatedly
contested and reordered in this tragicomic play.

JEAN E. HOWARD