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discovery of what seems to be her
dead husband when she wakes
from her deathlike sleep echoes
Juliet waking to the dead Romeo.
The complex plot is not easy to
follow, but its three main strands—
the story of Innogen and Posthumus;
the loss of Cymbeline’s two sons;
and the conflict between Britain and
Rome—all echo earlier plays by
Shakespeare, brought together in
this work by a fast-moving plot.
A matchless heroine
The story of Innogen and
Posthumus is the emotional heart
of the play. In Innogen, Shakespeare
created one of his most admired
heroines—steadfast, loyal, brave,
and resourceful. At the beginning
of the play, Posthumus is described
as a worthy hero, a more than
suitable companion for her. Yet
as soon as he is away from her in
Rome, his nobility drops away and
he falls prey, much too easily, to
foolish machismo. He not only
agrees to Giacomo’s bet that he can
seduce her, but also readily believes
that Giacomo has succeeded. Then,
in an act of stomach-churning
duplicity and cruelty, he sends two
letters, one to Innogen declaring
undying love and the other to
Pisanio asking him to kill her.
Fortunately, Pisanio, perhaps the
play’s true hero, refuses Posthumus’s
bidding and helps Innogen escapeTHE KING’S MAN
in disguise, to try to put matters
right. No wonder many critics have
heaped scorn on Posthumus as an
unworthy husband for the peerless
Innogen. Feminist critics have
highlighted the male stereotyping
that portrays women as either
virgins or whores, which the wager
seems to play out. But perhaps
there is another theme here.A middle ground
The British court is torn between
the decadent corruption and false
honor of Rome and the rough
innocence of wild Wales, where
Cymbeline’s lost sons Guiderius
and Arviragus are brought up in a
cave by Belarius. Even the heroic
Posthumus’s moral compass is set
spinning in the competitive world
of Rome, where men trade verbal
blows over empty ideas of honor—
such as whose country’s women are
the purest. Away from corrupting
influences in the natural world,
Guiderius and Arviragus grow up
honest and true. “Great men / That
had a court no bigger than this
cave, / ...Could not outpeer these
twain” (3.6.79–84), exclaims
Innogen when she meets them for
the first time. She has no idea, of
course, they are her lost brothers.
The opposition of the court and
the country is a common theme in
several of Shakespeare’s plays.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As
You Like It, and The Winter’s Tale,
characters all journey into the wild
to learn to see things afresh before
they can return to the court with
sense restored. What’s different in
Cymbeline is the third place that
lies between civilized Rome and ❯❯In London-based company
Cheek-by-Jowl’s emotionally charged
2007 production, Tom Hiddleston took
on the dual roles of Posthumus and
Cloten. Jodie McNee played Innogen.