‘I have spoke this, to know if your affiance
Were deeply rooted.’
She begs him to prolong his visit! The apology is worse than the original insult.
The royal behaviour, or what Shakespeare means us to take for royal behaviour, in the two youths is overdone and sometimes repulsive.
Arviragus goes out of his way to put his love for Imogen higher than that for his supposed father, Belarius, who is present.
‘The bier at door,
And a demand who is’t shall die, I’d say
My father, not this youth.’
Yet the point of the scene is the nobility of blood in these youths!
Lucius, who had protected Imogen, hopes she will plead for his life, and she turns on him:
‘No, no; alack!
There’s other work in hand: I see a thing
Bitter to me as death: your life, good master,
Must shuffle for itself.’
In the fifth act Posthumus believes his wife to be guilty, and yet breaks out into strains like these:
‘So I’ll die,
For thee, O Imogen! even for whom my life
Is every breath a death.
. . .
For Imogen’s dear life take mine; and though
’Tis not so dear, yet ’tis a life; you coin’d it.’