This Golden Chance
I went out to the park in Cupertino last night and saw a preview of the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s new production of Cymbeline. A lovely night in California, a nice Shakespeare romance to mull over in the evening hours. I had no idea what I was getting into.
Cymbeline is…challenging. It is the third-longest Shakepeare play (the performance I saw cut it considerably). It was originally classified as a tragedy, even though none of the main characters dies. It flits from musical interludes to visual spectacle to combat to…the kitchen sink, really. It has all of the great Shakespeare tropes, so much so that some critics consider the play to be a self-parody.
Used without permission, but Mya is obviously a genius and I hope will understand.
In Hollywood parlance it’s Othello meets A Midsummer Night’s Dream, meets Romeo and Juliet, with some Julies Caesar thrown in. This leads us into what Emma Smith calls a “strange post-tragic landscape of possibilities.” Like its close contemporary, The Tempest, the mood swings are pronounced.
Cymbeline is not considered one of the greatest Shakespeare plays, but it is first rate. The Royal Shakespeare Company put it on this year, with director Greg Doran accepting it as his final production. “I always knew it was a sort of dark fairy tale with some absurd plot twists, and all the rest of it,” he said. “But somehow, when you play it with the sort of psychological intensity and the emotional truth which the actors are now bringing to it, it becomes really intense as an experience, really moving.”
Some say the plot is complex, but I’m not sure there is a plot. Cymbeline is more a dreamscape - a series of moments and images - that gradually progresses to an improbable but deeply challenging conclusion. For his production, Doran discarded the five-act convention (Shakespeare never used it anyway), and focused on the three main episodes: the wager, Wales, and the war.
In each of these there is a visually striking scene focused on a sleeping character:
The Wager
Everyone screws up in Cymbeline. Posthumus Leonatus, exiled to Rome, accepts a bet from the womanizer Iachimo. Of course Iachima goes straight to her castle and tries to compromise her. When that fails he sneaks into her room and collects enough identifying information (decor, mole on breast etc.) to plausible claim he took her virtue.
Performed in candlelit Blackfriars, the scene must have made an incredible visual impression, as it has done in art and performances ever since:
Cymbeline – 1997 Royal Shakespeare Company, source: www.ahds.rhul.ac.uk
Cymbeline – 2023 Royal Shakespeare Company, source:
Wales
Dishonored, Imogen disguises herself as a man and flees into the forests of Wales, where she meets a band of brigands. Two of them are, unknown to her, the lost sons of the King. They shelter her in a cave.
The caves are lovely this time of year
She falls ill and takes medicine, stolen from the Queen and provided to her by a loyal servant (everyone fucks up in this play). This knocks her out so completely that her companions believe she has passed away, occasioning the finest eulogy ever given for someone who is not quite dead:
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave!
Like Juliet, she awakens next to a corpse, which is headless but dressed in her husband’s clothes, which the rogue prince Clotus stole to facilitate his plan to find her in the forest and molest her, which she of course does not know.
The Roman army makes a timely appearance and prevents another Romeo and Juliet situation. Imogen (still disguised as a man) is instead brought into the army as a page, and goes with them to the battlefield.
I can’t find a good picture of the headless corpse scene, but it was memorable in Cupertino, and I suspect everywhere else it has been played.
The War
There is a war. King Cymbeline of the Britons, under the influence of his evil scheming wife, has decided to discontinue tribute payments to Rome. The Romans send an army, in which Posthumus Leonatus serves. They lose, and Posthumus Leonatus is imprisoned. He sleeps and has visions.
The ghosts of Mom and Dad, with manifestation of Jupiter
Did I mention the MANIFESTATION OFJUPITER?
I find it amusing that there is confusion over the happy ending of the play. Jupiter, mightiest of all the gods, said he would make it right. C’mon people.
When he awakens, Posthumus Leonatus, who has been playing a worse hand than Othello ever did, marvels at what he has experienced, and the luck of his promised deliverance:
I, that have this golden chance, and know not why.
The Tidy Wrap-Up
Emma Smith notes in her lecture on the play that in traditional tragedy, “you screw up, you die.” Shakespeare followed that code for most of his career. But in Cymbeline he refuses to play ball. Given all that has come before, the final scene could have been a bloodbath. There are 24 revelations made before the King, and in virtually every instance, the normal punishment would be death.
Wait…what?! Source
Guiderius. Let me end the story:
I slew him there.
Cymbeline. Marry, the gods forfend!
I would not thy good deeds should from my lips
Pluck a bard sentence: prithee, valiant youth,
Deny't again.
Guiderius. I have spoke it, and I did it.
Cymbeline. He was a prince.
Guiderius. A most incivil one…
But, one-by-one, the traps are disarmed, and relationships repaired through understanding, love, and forgiveness.
There is a case to be made that much of the play is directed at King James. The Roman elements, play to his interest in Augustus. The theme of political unification (Cymbeline settles with Rome and agrees to pay tribute) is consistent with his goal of unifying England, Scotland, and Wales. Perhaps the last scene is intended to be an example of the deliberations of a just and merciful king, a friendly suggestion to the monarch to look past initial impressions, and think things through with an open heart.
There’s also a legal angle. Blackfriars was right near the Inns at Court, where most of London’s legal profession worked and trained. The law students would often organize and perform plays of their own. So this long concluding scene that make so little dramatic sense might have been a series of tests or provocations for the legal-leaning audience - a bunch of capital crimes with extenuating circumstances. We can imagine some class participation as the scene progresses with pardon after pardon. It wouldn’t be the first time Shakespeare had done something like this: in 1604 his Measure for Measure played like a tragedy and ended with all the characters marrying the wrong people. A little going-away gift for the lawyers?
I did think one guy was a sure goner in that final scene: Iachimo, the womanizer who lies about compromising Imogen. Posthumus Leonatus warns him from the start that treachery will be answered with the sword, and he knows how to use one. But in the play’s last moments he changes his mind, and places a different, arguably heavier burden on his adversary -
The power that I have on you is, to spare you;
The malice towards you to forgive you: live,
And deal with others better.
“The making of the new RSC production of Cymbeline”, BBC (link)
“Approaching Shakespeare: Cymbeline”, Emma Smith, University of Oxford podcast (link)
“Cymbeline review – Shakespeare’s knotty romance is a fabulous farewell for Doran,” The Guardian (link)