VII.CYMBELINE
Cymbeline is Shakespeareâs most magisterial combination of folktale materials. In this late play, he combines one folk-tale plot, âThe Wager on the Wifeâs Chastityâ (ATU 882), with another, âSnow Whiteâ (ATU 709). Their point of connection in the play is a motif both tales share, the moment when the villain or villainess sends an agent to kill the heroine, but the agent instead allows her to go free and fakes the required evidence of her death. In the Grimmsâ âSnow White,â this compassionate executioner is the huntsman who abandons Snow White in the forest and gives her stepmother a boarâs liver and lungs to eat rather than the childâs. The âSnow Whiteâ tale is closely related to another set of folktales that have also left their mark on Cymbeline, tales in which a sister leaves home, finds her long-lost brothers in the wilderness, and keeps house for them (as Snow White does for the dwarves) until disaster strikes.
âThe Wager on the Wifeâs Chastityâ folktale commonly begins with a marriage, often between a rich man and a poor woman. A man challenges the husband to a large-stakes bet that he can seduce the husbandâs wife. The man finds a way to fake carnal knowledge of the heroine. He either sneaks into her bedroom and spies on her or has a female accomplice do so. He then is able to report to the husband details of the womanâs appearance, most damningly a mark on some private part of her body, and he often also presents some stolen personal possession of hers, such as a ring. The husband, emotionally and financially stricken from losing the bet, either sends an agent to kill his wife, or attacks her and leaves her for dead himself. The wife survives her husbandâs attempt on her life or is released by his agent. She then finds work, often disguised as a man and in a masculine profession. Eventually she is reunited with her husband, and is able to summon the villain and reveal the truth to everyone. The husband and wife resume their marriage.
Cymbeline follows the âWagerâ plot closely. The play begins not with the marriage of the heroine, Imogen, but with the fallout from her marriage. Her father, King Cymbeline, is enraged by her marriage to Posthumus, âa poor but worthy gentlemanâ (1.1.7),* and has found occasion to banish him. Class disparity features in this marriage, as in many of the folktales, but here it is the bride who out-ranks the husband. Posthumus, having taken refuge in Rome, makes a wager with the villain Iachimo, who claims he can seduce Imogen with no more than a letter of introduction. Imogen roundly rejects Iachimo, but allows him to store a chest in her bedchamber. Iachimo conceals himself in the chest and emerges after Imogen is asleep. (The villain uses the same ploy in a Scottish version of the folktale not included here.â ) He observes a distinctive mole beneath her left breast and steals a bracelet Posthumus gave Imogen as a love token before his departure. Posthumus, convinced and devastated by these false proofs, orders his faithful servant Pisanio to lure Imogen into the countryside and kill her. Pisanio instead supplies Imogen with boyâs clothes and a planâin the folktales the heroine takes care of these matters herself. Pisanio gives Post-humus a bloodied cloth as evidence of Imogenâs death. The plot then becomes parallel to âSnow White,â as I will discuss later, but the cross-dressed Imogen eventually enters into the service of the Roman ambassador to Britain, according to Pisanioâs plan. When the Romans are captured by the British, with whom they are at war, Imogen finds herself back at her royal fatherâs court, along with Posthumus and Iachimo. The truth comes out, Imogen and Post-humus are reconciled, and Iachimo is forgiven his misdeeds. Shakespeare most likely knew Boccaccioâs version of âThe Wager on the Wifeâs Chastityâ in The Decameron (second day, ninth story). The âWagerâ story also circulated in chapbooks (cheap printed editions) both before and after Cymbeline, and was a popular subject for medieval French romances.
The Chilean story here, âThe Wager on the Wifeâs Chastity,â has several notable parallels to Cymbeline. The heroineâs gruff father is outraged by his daughterâs marriage, much as King Cymbeline is. This paternal opposition doesnât last, however, and is due to the fact that his daughter is much poorer than his prospective son-in-law, the reverse of Princess Imogenâs marriage to orphaned, impoverished Posthumus. The folktale husband enters into a wager with the would-be seducer of his wife, who uses an accompliceâs wiles to steal the ladyâs ring and nightgown, and note a mole on her leg. The husband is convinced, as is Posthumus, by Iachimoâs theft of Imogenâs bracelet and knowledge of her mole. The folktale husband orders his employee to kill his wife, but this compassionate executioner instead lets her go and gives the husband false evidence of his wifeâs death, as does Pisanio. The heroine disguises herself as a man and finds manly work with a king whose son is fascinated by and attracted to her androgyny. Similarly, when Imogen is taken in by three outlaws, one declares, âWere you a woman, youth, / I should woo hard, but be your groom in honestyâ (3.6.66â67). The folktale heroine eventually becomes king, and uses this power to locate her husband and uncover the truth. She retains her elevated status even when she becomes a wife again. After her identity is revealed, she is still called a king, in contrast to Imogen, who loses her status as royal heir at the end of the play because of the return of her long-lost brothers. âOh, Imogen, / Thou hast lost by this a kingdom,â says Cymbeline (5.5.371â72).
âThe Innkeeper of Moscow,â a German folktale, also begins with a poor woman marrying a wealthier man. In this case, the son of a rich merchant marries the familyâs maidservant of seven years. Posthumus, somewhat similarly, is a familiar figure to Imogen and her household, having grown up with her as a royal ward. The folk-taleâs villain, to win his bet with the husband, hides under the heroineâs bed at night, just as Iachimo hides in a trunk in Imogenâs room. He steals her wedding ring and notes a mole beneath her breast, the same distinguishing mark that Imogen possesses and Iachimo exploits. When the heroine of the folktale misses her wedding ring, she has a duplicate made, which later makes her look guilty. The object that symbolizes her married chastity is not unique, pointing to its unsuitability as proof of fidelity, just as Desdemonaâs handkerchief, the loss of which convinces Othello that she has slept with another man, is twice intended to be copied (3.3.300, 3.4.178). Cymbeline deliberately recalls Othello, Shakespeareâs earlier play about a woman framed for adultery, by giving Cymbelineâs villain the name Iachimo, a diminutive of the name Iago, the villain in Othello. âThe Innkeeper of Moscowâ takes place during wartime, just as much of Cymbeline unfolds during a war between the British and the Romans. The folktale wife disguises herself as a man, joins the army, and rises through the ranks to become a colonel and her husbandâs commanding officer. From this vantage point, she is able to uncover the villainâs wrongdoing.
I have included Italo Calvinoâs âWormwoodâ because it overlaps to some extent with the âMaiden Who Seeks Her Brothersâ tales, which may also have left their mark on Cymbeline and are here represented by the Norwegian story âThe Twelve Wild Ducks.â âWormwoodâ begins with a king who threatens to kill his unborn child if it proves to be a girl, as he has only daughters and wants a son. âThe Twelve Wild Ducksâ begins with a queen who says rash words because she wants her next child to be a girl, since she has only sons. The heroines of both âWormwoodâ and âThe Twelve Wild Ducksâ grow up to be framed for infanticide. âWormwoodâ is at root a chastity wager story, however, and another one in which a wealthy man marries what seems to be a poor girl, although she is, unbeknownst even to herself, a princess. The heroine, Wormwood, in this regard is much like Imogenâs brothers, who are raised by a hermit in the wilderness, unaware that they are princes. As happens with Imogen and the heroines of the Chilean and German folktales, the villain who enters into the wager with Wormwoodâs husband is able to find out about her hidden mole. The famously convoluted ending of Cymbeline, an extravaganza of revelations so offensive to the playwright George Bernard Shaw that he rewrote it,* has nothing on the final scene of âWormwoodâ for sheer strangeness. A talking lantern and oil cruet bring all secrets to light, and three men claim the heroine as their own: her father, her husband, and the man who rescued her when her husband left her for dead. This seems quite similar to the ending of Shakespeareâs narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, in which Lucreceâs husband and father argue over to whom Lucrece, now dead, belongs. Ultimately, a third man, Brutus, claims Lucrece as a means to incite revolt against her rapist, Tarquinâs, family.â I mention the parallel because Lucrece begins with something of a chastity wager, described in the poemâs introductory Argumentâmen away on military duty fall to boasting about whose wife is most virtuous, and so decide to visit the women unannounced. Lucrece turns out to be the most virtuous, but the contest results in Tarquin conceiving a passion for her and ultimately raping her. Iachimo, spying on the sleeping Imogen, explicitly compares himself to Tarquin (2.2.12). âWormwoodâ is one of several chastity wager stories in Calvinoâs excellent collection Italian Folktales. One of them, âThe King of Spain and the English Milord,â involves a heroine who is âwhite as ricotta and rosy as a rose,â an overlap with Snow Whiteâs red and white beauty.*
The final chastity wager tale comes from a travelogue by J. M. Synge, the Irish author most famous for his play The Playboy of the Western World. Synge describes hearing a story told by an old man in the Aran Islands. This variant combines âThe Wager on the Wifeâs Chastityâ with a folktale Shakespeare used as a source for The Merchant of Venice, âA Pound of Fleshâ (see chapter 4). An English ballad, âThe Northern Lord,â is another example of such a combination.â If Shakespeare was aware of the combination of the chastity wager and pound of flesh stories, perhaps it might have helped to inspire his combination of âWagerâ with another folktale, âSnow White.â âWagerâ and âSnow White,â however, do not seem to have been combined in folk tradition. Syngeâs version bears two particular resemblances to Cymbeline: a poorer man marries a wealthier woman, causing some trouble, and the villain conceals himself in a box that is then placed in the heroineâs bedroom.
Cymbelineâs other folktale plot derives from âSnow White,â presumably the most familiar of all the folktales in this book for most of its readers. The version of the story we know best is the Brothers Grimmâs, on which Walt Disneyâs 1937 animated film is based. The dominance of the Grimmsâ version can actually conceal Cymbelineâs resemblance to the folktale, as the play lacks a talking mirror, seven dwarves, and a poisoned apple. âSnow White,â however, is a folktale found in many different countries and cultures, and while certain core elements define it, the details of the stories vary considerably. Again and again in âSnow Whiteâ stories, we see the heroine persecuted by a jealous female relative and forced to leave home. The villainess sends an agent to kill the heroine, but this compassionate executioner takes pity on her, allowing her to flee into the wilderness. There she encounters a group of men who live on the margins of society, because they are criminals, giants, dwarfs, djinn, and so on. These men take her in, and she acts as their housekeeper. The villainess learns that the heroine is alive and poisons her, perhaps several times, until she falls into a deathly unconsciousness. The heroineâs adopted family does not bury her because she remains beautiful, and eventually she is found by a man who falls in love with her. She awakes from her death-sleep and marries him, and her persecutor is punished.
Cymbeline contains all of these episodes. As with some other Snow Whites, Imogen is reunited with her husband rather than married during the resolution of the plot.* Like Snow White, Imogen is persecuted by a jealous stepmother, the Queen, a practiced poisoner. Imogen flees her royal home, escaping into the wilderness. Pisanio has been given orders to kill her, but instead mercifully releases her. Imogen wanders, lost, until she comes to the home of three men who live as outlaws in a cave. They take her in, and she acts as their housekeeper. Eventually, she takes a poison concocted by the Queen, which Pisanio gave her in the mistaken belief that it was medicinal. Imogen appears dead, but her adopted family does not bury her. She wakes from her death sleep and is reunited with her husband, Posthumus. The Queen, her plans thwarted, goes mad and dies.
Cymbeline in fact may be the earliest literary version of âSnow White.â Elements of the folktale exist in earlier texts such as Xenophon of Ephesusâs ancient Greek novel An Ephesian Story and Marie de Franceâs medieval lai Eliduc, but these texts do not include all of the episodes listed in the preceding summary. Cymbeline is both earlier and more complete than Giambattista Basileâs seventeenth-century novella âThe Little Slave Girlâ (second day, ninth story), which includes a number of âSnow Whiteâ motifs. Martin Butler, one of Cymbelineâs editors, writes that ââSnow Whiteâ was not written down until the eighteenth century, but its resemblances to Cymbeline tempt one to speculate that it must have...