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.--
When Pisanio, who had been charged to kill his mistress, puts her in
a way to live, she says:
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?
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:
Oh, for such means,
Though peril to my modesty, not death on't,
I would adventure.
And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences, tells her she must
change
--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--
she interrupts him hastily;
Nay, be brief;
I see into thy end, and am almost
A man already.
In her journey thus disguised to Milford Haven, she loses her guide
and her way; and unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully:
--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.
She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumus, and
engages herself as a foot-boy to serve a Roman officer, when she has
done all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former master:
--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.
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:
--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.
The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when he steals into her
bed-chamber:
--Cytherea,
How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! Fresh lily,
And whiter than the sheets I 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.
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.
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 under-standing! The exclamation of the
ancient critic, 'O Menander and Nature, which of you copied from the
other?' would not be misapplied to Shakespeare.
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 Shakespeare 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.
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!
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 bondage freely.
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 scenes in
Cymbeline: yet how different the contemplative quiet of the one from
the enterprising boldness and precarious mode of subsistence in the
other! Shakespeare 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'.
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:
--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 yon hill.
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:
Nay, Cadwall, we must lay his head to the east;
My Father hath a reason for't.
Shakespeare'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:
Stick to your journal course; THE BREACH OF CUSTOM
IS BREACH OF ALL!
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:
--Your Highness
Shall from this practice but make hard your heart.