Cymbeline was first printed in the Folio of 1623. The earliest mention of it occurs in the Booke of Plaies and Notes thereof kept by the above-mentioned astrologer and magician, Dr. Simon Forman. He was present, he says, at a performance of A Winters Tale on May 15, 1611, and at the same time he sketches the plot of Cymbeline, but unfortunately does not give the date of the performance. In all probability it was quite recent; the play was no doubt written in the course of 1610, while the fate of Arabella Stuart was still fresh in the poet's mind. Forman died in September 1611.
In depth and variety of colouring, in richness of matter, profundity of thought, and heedlessness of conventional canons, Cymbeline has few rivals among Shakespeare's plays. Fascinating as it is, however, this tragi-comedy has never been very popular on the stage. The great public, indeed, has neither studied nor understood it.
In none of his works has Shakespeare played greater havoc with chronology. He jumbles up the ages with superb indifference. The period purports to be that of Augustus, yet we are introduced to English, French, and Italian cavaliers, and hear them talk of pistol-shooting and playing bowls and cards. The list of characters ends thus—"Lords, ladies, Roman senators, tribunes, apparitions, a soothsayer, a Dutch gentleman, a Spanish gentleman, musicians, officers, captains, soldiers, messengers, and other attendants." Was there ever such a farrago?
What did Shakespeare mean by this play? is the question that now confronts us. My readers are aware that I never, in the first instance, try to answer this question directly. The fundamental point is, What impelled him to write? how did he arrive at the theme? When that is answered, the rest follows almost as a matter of course.
Where, then, is the starting-point of this seeming tangle? We find it on resolving the material of the play into its component parts.
There are three easily distinguishable elements in the action.
In his great storehouse of English history, Holinshed, Shakespeare found some account of a King Kymbeline or Cimbeline, who is said to have been educated at Rome, and there knighted by the Emperor Augustus, under whom he served in several campaigns. He is stated to have stood so high in the Emperor's favour that "he was at liberty to pay his tribute or not" as he chose. He reigned thirty-five years, was buried in London, and left two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus. The name Imogen occurs in Holinshed's story of Brutus and Locrine. In the tragedy of Locrine, dating from 1595, Imogen is mentioned as the wife of Brutus.
Although Cymbeline, says Holinshed, is declared by most authorities to have lived at unbroken peace with Rome, yet some Roman writers affirm that the Britons having refused to pay tribute when Augustus came to the throne, that Emperor, in the tenth year after the death of Julius Cæsar, "made prouision to passe with an armie ouer into Britaine." He is said, however, to have altered his mind; so that the Roman descent upon Britain under Caius Lucius is an invention of the poet's.
In Boccaccio's Decameron, again (Book II. Novel 9), Shakespare found the story of the faithful Ginevra, of which this is the substance:—At a tavern in Paris, a company of Italian merchants, after supper one evening, fall to discussing their wives. Three of them have but a poor opinion of their ladies' virtue, but one, Bernabo Lomellini of Genoa, maintains that his wife would resist any possible temptation, however long he had been absent from her. A certain Ambrogiuolo lays a heavy wager with him on the point, and betakes himself to Genoa, but finds Bernabo's confidence fully justified. He hits upon the scheme of concealing himself in a chest which is conveyed into the lady's bedroom. In the middle of the night he raises the lid. "He crept quietly forth, and stood in the room, where a candle was burning. By its light, he carefully examined the furnishing of the apartment, the pictures, and other objects of note, and fixed them in his memory. Then he approached the bed, and when he saw that both she and a little child who lay beside her were sleeping soundly, he uncovered her and beheld that her beauty in nowise consisted in her attire. But he could not discover any mark whereby to convince her husband, save one which she had under the left breast; it was a birth-mark around which there grew certain yellow hairs." Then he takes from one of her chests a purse and a night-gown, together with certain rings and belts, and conceals them in his own hiding-place. He hastens back to Paris, summons the merchants together, and boasts of having won the wager. The description of the room makes little impression on Bernabo, who remarks that all this he may have learnt by bribing a chambermaid; but when the birth-mark is described, he feels as though a dagger had been plunged into his heart. He despatches a servant with a letter to his wife, requesting her to meet him at a country-house some twenty miles from Genoa, and at the same time orders the servant to murder her on the way. The lady receives the letter with great joy, and next morning takes horse to ride with the servant to the country house. Loathing his task, the man consents to spare her, gives her a suit of male attire, and suffers her to escape, bringing his master false tidings of her death, and producing her clothes in witness of it. Ginevra, dressed as a man, enters the service of a Spanish nobleman, and accompanies him to Alexandria, whither he goes to convey to the Sultan a present of certain rare falcons. The Sultan notices the pretty youth in his train, and makes him (or rather her) his favourite. In the market-place of Acre she chances upon a booth in the Venetian bazaar where Ambrogiuolo has displayed for sale, among other wares, the purse and belt he stole from her. On her inquiring where he got them, he replies that they were given him by his mistress, the Lady Ginevra. She persuades him to come to Alexandria, manages to bring her husband thither also, and makes them both appear before the Sultan. The truth is brought to light and the liar shamed; but he does not escape so easily as Iachimo in the play. He who had falsely boasted of a lady's favour, and thereby brought her to ruin, is, with true mediæval consistency, allotted the punishment he deserves: "Wherefore the Sultan commanded that Ambrogiuolo should be led forth to a high place in the city, and should there be bound to a stake in the full glare of the sunshine, and smeared all over with honey, and should not be set free till his body fell to pieces by its own decay. So that he was not alone stung to death in unspeakable torments by flies, wasps, and hornets, which greatly abound in that country, but also devoured to the last particle of his flesh. His white bones, held together by the sinews alone, stood there unremoved for a long time, a terror and a warning to all."
These two tales—of the wars between Rome and heathen Britain, and of the slander, peril, and rescue of Ginevra—were in themselves totally unconnected. Shakespeare welded them by making Ginevra, whom he calls Imogen, a daughter of King Cymbeline by his first marriage, and therefore next in succession to the crown of Britain.