Imogen

William Shakespeares Cymbeline Renamed and Reclaimed

Matthew Dunster

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781786820471
• eBook ISBN: 9781786820488
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

London. 2016. A strange and unsettled time – where men and the violence of gangs rules the streets. In a dangerous world we hear a new voice – Imogen's. Suffocated by her father's aggression – her man kicked out of town, her life under threat, poisoned by the drugs of her step-mother – she strikes out on her own to try and reach the man she loves. A thrillingly raw and modern adaptation of Shakespeare's Cymbeline, re-told and created by young Londoners. This production will employ modern costumes and staging.

SCENE TWENTY-SEVEN

POSTHUMUS is pushed to his knees beside other Roman prisoners. All on their knees, hoods over their heads and hands cable-tied behind their back.

CYMBELINE by a fire.

Stood apart are BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS.

CYMBELINE: Stand by my side, you three who God has made
Preservers of my throne. Sad is my heart

That the poor soldier whose naked breast

Stepped before blades of proof, cannot be found.

He shall be happy that can find him, if

Our grace can make him so.

BELARIUS: I never saw
Such noble fury.

CYMBELINE: No tidings of him?

PISANIA: No trace of him.

CYMBELINE: To my grief, I am
The heir of his reward which I will add
To you, knights of the battle. I create you
Companions to our person and will fit you
With dignities becoming your estates.

CORNELIUS and HELEN come in. They are clean – not covered in blood.

There’s business in these faces. Why so sadly

Greet you our victory?

CORNELIUS: Cymbeline,

To sour your happiness, I must report

The queen is dead.

Silence.

CYMBELINE: Who worse than a physician
Could this report come from?

He signals and CORNELIUS is dragged onto a chair. His face smashed into a table. A torch is lit and held in front of CORNELIUS. CYMBELINE roars at him.

But I consider,

By medicine life should be prolonged, yet death
Will seize the doctor too.

CORNELIUS’ face is smashed into the table again, this time by CYMBELINE. CYMBELINE walks away until he has calmed.

How ended she?

A light comes on somewhere in the stage and we see the image of QUEEN. She wears a man’s vest and nothing else. She is pulling it. Distorting it’s shape and her own.

CORNELIUS: With horror, madly dying, like her life,
Which, being cruel to the world, concluded
Most cruel to herself. What she confessed
I will report. This her woman was there.
She can stop me if I tell it false.

CYMBELINE: Say.

CORNELIUS: First, she confessed
QUEEN joins in here (see below).

she never loved you, only

Married your greatness, was wife to your place;
Abhorred your person.

QUEEN: I never loved him, only
Married his greatness, was wife to his place;

Abhorred his person.

CYMBELINE: She alone knew this;
Had she not spoke it dying, I would not

Believe her lips in opening it. Proceed.

CORNELIUS: Your daughter, whom she did pretend to love
Was as a scorpion to her sight; whose life,
But that her flight prevented it, she would have
Taken off by poison.

QUEEN: (At the same time.) His daughter, who I did pretend to love
Was as a scorpion to my sight; whose life,
But that her flight prevented it, I would have
Taken off by poison.

CYMBELINE: Who is it can read a woman?

There is now only light on QUEEN. She smokes and at the same time injects into her arm.

QUEEN: I have
For him a mortal mineral; which, when he takes,
Will by the minute feed on life, and lingering
By inches waste him. In which time I plan,
By watching, weeping, tendance, kissing, to
Overcome him with my show, and in time,
When I have finished him with my craft, to work
My son into the adoption of the crown.
Lights come back up on CORNELIUS.

CORNELIUS: But, failing of her aim by Cloten’s absence,
Grew shameless-desperate; opened, in despite
Of heaven and men, her purposes; repented
The evils she hatchd were...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Characters
• Scene One
• Scene Two
• Scene Three
• Scene Four
• Scene Five
• Scene Six
• Scene Seven
• Scene Eight
• Scene Nine
• Scene Ten
• Scene Eleven
• Scene Twelve
• Scene Thirteen
• Scene Fourteen
• Scene Fifteen
• Scene Sixteen
• Scene Seventeen
• Scene Eighteen
• Scene Nineteen
• Scene Twenty
• Scene Twenty-One
• Scene Twenty-Two
• Scene Twenty-Three
• Scene Twenty-Four
• Scene Twenty-Five.
• Scene Twenty-Six
• Scene Twenty-Seven