CYMBELINE is one of the most delightful of Shakespeare'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 [on?] 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 development 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 Shakespeare 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.
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 Shakespeare'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
Shakespeare--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 forgo 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 Shakespeare'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 background. 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.
We have almost as great an affection for Imogen as she had for
Posthumus; and she deserves it better. Of all Shakespeare'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 show 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 touch-ing as it is
possible for any thing to be:
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,
To break it with a fearful dream of him,
And cry myself awake?
That's false to's bed, 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 villany: not born where't grows,
But worn a bait for ladies.