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CYMBELINE
Cymbeline
was written about 1610 and first published in the 1623 Folio,
where it appears as the last of the tragedies. Like the other late plays,
Cymbeline
responds to the fashion of the time for colorful plots and theatrical
display. It is packed with adventure, plot reversals, and dramatic spectacle,
and was perhaps intended to exploit the mechanical resources of Blackfriars,
the new indoor theater of Shakespeare’s company. One stage direction
instructs that “Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle
he throws a thunderbolt.” This bit of staging was far better suited to the
indoor theater than to the Globe, where the play was also performed.
The play has three interrelated plots: one concerns Imogen’s love for her
husband, Posthumus, and his jealousy; another involves the long-lost sons of
King Cymbeline; and the third concerns Britain’s challenge to the power of
Rome. The three plots marvelously come together in the play’s astonishing
conclusion, as characters move from error to truth, from skepticism to faith,
and from hatred to love. Confusion and loss are replaced by clarity and gain,
as families and nations are reunited and are again at peace. At the play’s end,
the comic order is, as the Soothsayer says, “full accomplished.” King
Cymbeline ruled at the time of Jesus Christ’s incarnation. If the Soothsayer’s
words seem to the echo Christ’s “consummatum est” (it is finished), it may
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be because the achievement of harmony in the play offers a secular (worldly)
reflection of the patterns of Christian salvation history.
THE WINTER’S TALE
The Winter’s Tale
was written about 1610 and published for the first time
in the 1623 Folio. In
The Winter’s Tale,
as in
Cymbeline,
characters suffer
great loss and pain and families are driven apart, but by the end most of what
has been lost has been regained. This poignant romance revolves around the
estrangement of Leontes, King of Sicilia, from his wife and daughter. In a
sudden fit of jealousy Leontes becomes convinced that his wife, Hermione,
has been conducting an affair with his friend Polixenes. Believing the
daughter she bears is not his own, he orders the child to be abandoned
abroad. The first three acts deal with Leontes’s jealousy, his persecution of
Hermione, the death of his son, Mamillius, the loss of his daughter, Perdita,
and the recognition of his error and subsequent repentance. In the middle of
the play a speech by Time marks the change of fortunes that lead to the
reconciliation and renewal of the final scene, with its spectacular revelation
that Hermione, long thought dead, in fact still lives. Shakespeare borrowed
the plot for The Winter’s Tale from Pandosto, the Triumph of Time (1588), a
romance in prose by English writer Robert Greene.
One of Shakespeare’s last plays, the beautiful, poignant romance story of
The Winter’s Tale revolves around the estrangement of Leontes, King of
Sicilia, from his wife and daughter, and their eventual reconciliation. In a
sudden fit of jealousy Leontes becomes convinced that his wife has been
conducting an affair with his friend Polixenes and orders the daughter she
bears to be abandoned abroad, believing the child is not his own. The first
scene presented here shows the humiliating trial to which Leontes then
subjects his wife, Hermione, and his tragic realization—too late—that he has
made a grave error. Guided by Hermione’s servant Paulina, he enters a 16-
year period of mourning and repentance. The fourth act of the play follows
the girl, christened Perdita, as she grows up in the Bohemian countryside,
before her chance return to her father’s court, where her true identity is
gratefully discovered. Finally, in the second scene given below, Paulina leads
Perdita to view her mother ’s statue, where the penitent Leontes is granted an
even greater miracle of grace and reconciliation. The statue awakes, and the
three are finally reunited. “A sad tale’s best for winter”, perhaps, but as this
tale reveals, spring follows winter, and the hope of renewal is thus ever
present.
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