CYMBELINE is one of the most delightful of Shakspeare'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 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 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
developement 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 Shakspeare 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 overspreads 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 excellence of
Shakspeare'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 Shakspeare--no one ever so well painted
natural tenderness free from affectation and disguise--no one else ever so
well shewed 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 forego 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 purpose, 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 Shakspeare'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 back-ground. 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 Shakspeare'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 shew 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 touching as
it is possible for anything 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 betray'd 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 villainy: not born where't grows,
But worn a bait for ladies.
_Pisanio._ Good Madam, hear me--
_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."