[In the following essay, Kay argues that Shakespeare manipulated audience expectations in Cymbeline by introducing various characters according to shifting generic tropes: first fairy tale, then romantic comedy, and lastly tragedy.]

It is a critical axiom that Shakespeare's opening scenes are crucial in such obvious ways as introducing characters and relationships, establishing atmosphere and setting, positing themes, and so forth.¹ In less obvious ways these scenes also manipulate, cajole, and nudge their audiences into certain expectations about the kind of play to follow. One of these more subtle devices is the order of introduction of characters, a dramatic device only occasionally noticed but always powerfully operative on the collective unconscious of an audience. For example, what an enormous difference there would be in our response to Richard II—the man and the play—if scenes i and ii of Act I were reversed and our initial view of Richard occurred after Gaunt tells us that the King is a murderer. Reverse the scenes and we would anticipate the entrance of Richard the murderer, Richard the hero/villain, Richard the focal point of a political tragedy in the vein of Macbeth. But as the scenes stand, Richard and Bolingbroke are presented together and in such a fashion that it is clear we are to witness a history play focused on the health of England's body politic, not a tragedy focused on the moral downfall of either individual. The order and manner of introduction of characters in the first two scenes prepare the audience for the direction and the genre of the play to come. Similarly, the frequent nineteenth- and twentieth-century reversals by directors of scenes i and ii of Twelfth Night are a mistake, because they lose the comic reassurance offered by Orsino's opening the play with an amusing portrayal of the courtly lover. If this man is the ruler of the country of this play, then we need not anticipate tragedy or politics. We are ready for a romantic comedy. Shakespeare's frivolous opening allows us to meet shipwrecked Viola, then, with a light heart and the comfortable assumption that nothing really terrible can happen in Orsino's world of music, love and laughter. Reverse the scenes and we have the beginning of a tragedy, as many a director has discovered when the actors have had to fight uphill to convince an audience to laugh after opening the play with scene ii.

Such early plays as Richard II and Twelfth Night declare their generic affiliations very quickly through the order and manner of introductions of the first one or two major characters. And these early declarations are usually reliable; anticipations of history play or comedy are fulfilled. The case is markedly different, however, with later plays, particularly Cymbeline, where we find some curious things being done to our expectations.

Cymbeline opens with a prologue-like scene reminiscent of countless fairy tales. Two unnamed Gentlemen are talking about—what else?—“the king” (1),² “the princess” (16), the “poor but worthy gentleman” (7) who has won the hand of the Princess, and the “thing / Too bad for bad report” (16-17) who has lost her. The King, the Princess, and the rejected suitor remain unnamed throughout the scene as we listen to the archetypal fairy tale: the King had three children, but his two sons were stolen from the nursery twenty years ago (our only problem is to try to decide which elf did it), he married again, and his second Queen, also unnamed, brought along her very unattractive son, who has recently been pursuing the Princess, now presumed to be the King's only child. The Princess has chosen instead to marry another young man, an orphan (naturally), named Posthumus Leonatus. In a lengthy history of Posthumus and his family, the first Gentleman gives high praise to the youth and indicates that while the King is so displeased with his daughter's choice that he has banished Posthumus, the entire court is delighted with her choice. Now that the “once upon a time” exposition is completed, the First Gentleman announces, “here comes the gentleman, / The queen, and princess” (68-69), and scene ii begins.

At this point we certainly have no expectation of seeing unfold a tragedy of the ilk of Hamlet or a history play of the likes of Richard II. The style and expository content of scene i have prepared us for a romantic story which we hope will conclude in a comic fashion: after all fairy tales do usually end happily, but it could take a tragic turn as did Romeo and Juliet after a potentially comic beginning. The final declaration for comedy or tragedy will be made—or so we assume—as we meet the major characters involved, especially the three blocking figures, the Queen, the King, and the rejected suitor.

As Scene ii opens the Queen is busily trying to convince the Princess Imogen that she is not the usual fairy-tale stepmother: “No, be assur'd you shall not find me, daughter, / After the slander of most stepmothers, / Evil-ey'd unto you” (1-3). She offers to walk aside and give Posthumus and the Princess opportunity to say farewell privately. Thus far we are still in the unreal world of Cinderella and her glass slippers, but as soon as they are alone, the two young people transfer us to a real world of human beings in love and in pain. The perceptive girl is not fooled for a second by her stepmother's “Dissembling courtesy” (15), and she realizes that she and Posthumus face separation, paternal anger, and the Queen's ill-will. Imogen tells him, “You must be gone, / And I shall here abide the hourly shot / Of angry eyes: not comforted to live, / But that there is this jewel in the world / That I may see again” (19-23). The pathos of their farewell is undercut, however, by a reappearance of the Queen who pops in to tell them, “Be brief” because the King may come (32), and to tell us—in comic Barabas fashion—that she will maliciously “move him / To walk this way” (34-35). As the lovers exchange love tokens, those talismen always so important for later recognition scenes in romances and fairy tales, the King bursts in. Posthumus quickly departs, and Imogen is left to bear the harsh rebukes of her father alone. He is as angry as we have been led to expect. He calls his daughter a “disloyal thing” (63) and a “foolish thing” (81). He curses her in Lear-like terms: “… let her anguish / A drop of blood a day, and being aged / Die of this folly” (87-89). The archetypal Angry Father-King, Cymbeline is nonetheless real enough and Imogen sympathetic enough that we are made apprehensive by this scene; however, our apprehension is moderated by the fact that Imogen proves capable of standing up to her father. She insists that in choosing Posthumus over her stepbrother she “chose an eagle, / And did avoid a puttock” (70-71). She has thus added to, not diminished, the lustre of the throne. Besides, she points out, the King has only himself to blame since he was the one who educated and trained Posthumus side by side with Imogen. Furious, the King cannot refute Imogen's points. He simply orders the Queen to “pen her up” (84) and leaves the two women together. Scene ii ends with Pisanio's bringing news to them that the Queen's son drew his sword against the departing Posthumus, but no real harm was done.

At this point we have met the two young lovers announced in the prologue, and they are sympathetic, attractive people who win our hopes for happiness. Scene ii has also presented two of the three persons opposing their union and has concluded with attention drawn to the third. The first blocking figure has proven to be so much a caricature of the wicked stepmother and so immediately recognized as such by Imogen, that we need have little serious worry from that quarter. The second and more significant blocking figure—King Cymbeline—has proven to be a strong obstacle for the young lovers, but clearly one that Imogen will be able to handle or circumvent in some fashion. The crucial question now becomes: what is the rejected suitor like? The third blocking figure, he now looms as the potential villain of this play. If he is an Iago or a Richard III, Imogen and Posthumus are in serious difficulties, and we may yet find Romeo and Juliet unfolding before our eyes.

Pisanio's news at the end of Scene ii teases our fears about this as-yet-unnamed suitor. He has, after all, attacked Posthumus. The fact that he seemingly did little harm may be due to chance, and he may well be a fierce swordsman and a shrewd rival capable of destroying both Posthumus and Imogen if he cannot have her. The order of introductions in Cymbeline has built to this climactic moment (Scene iii) when the play's potential villain is to be produced and the mode of the play to be settled.

And who bounds onstage as Scene iii opens and our apprehensions are at their height? That “clotpoll” Cloten, with a smelly shirt and an empty head. Funny rather than frightening, the Queen's son comes directly from what we quickly realize was a Sir Andrew non-duel with Posthumus. We learn about the fight as he talks with his attendants, one obsequious lord who plies him with outrageous flattery, and one honest lord who plies the audience with outrageous asides:

CLO.
The villain would not stand me.
SEC. Lord [Aside].
No, but he fled forward still, toward your face.
FIRST Lord.
Stand you? You have land enough of your own: but he added to your having, gave you some ground.
SEC. Lord [Aside].
As many inches as you have oceans. Puppies!
CLO.
I would they had not come between us.
SEC. Lord [Aside].
So would I, till you had measur'd how long a fool you were upon the ground.

(14-23)

Cloten is stupid, ineffectual, and vain. Even more importantly, he is the butt of our laughter. We seldom fear what we find amusing, and Scene iii creates a highly amusing half-buffoon, half-bully whose potential threat is consistently eradicated by the Second Lord's jibes. We now relax in what we presume to be the safe world of romantic comedy where all the Clotens, Malvolios, and Olivers can be contained or reformed and everything will end as you like it.

We continue to be lulled along by Scene iv, which introduces no new characters. Imogen's conversation with Pisanio about Posthumus' departure is lyrical and almost lighthearted. Her worries for her husband are not serious ones: she wishes she had had a chance to tell him a number of “pretty things” (26), to make him swear to avoid the “shes of Italy” (29), to think on her at certain prearranged times of day, and so forth. Such is the stuff of romantic comedy, and we fully expect this separation by an ocean and an angry father to be but temporary, because our clever heroine can always disguise herself as a boy and, in the company of good Pisanio, travel to Arden or Illyria or some other green world near Rome, where they will meet Posthumus, then probably the victim of shipwreck or pirates, and solve all their problems.

Now that Shakespeare has cajoled us into thinking we know precisely where we are and where we are going in this dramatic world, he suddenly jerks the rug out from under us. Just when we are most complacent in our confidence that we have seen the play's villain and he is but a comic bungler, and that we have met all the major characters in a predictable love triangle, just at that vulnerable moment everything unexpectedly turns ugly.

Scene v takes us to Rome where several gentlemen of various nationalities are speaking about Posthumus's current good reputation. An Italian named Iachimo has the first words:

Believe it, sir, I have seen him in Britain; he was then of a crescent note, expected to prove so worthy as since he hath been allowed the name of. But I could then have look'd on him without the help of admiration, though the catalogue of his endowments had been tabled by his side and I to peruse him by items.

(1-6)

Iachimo's speech rings with a realistic, mature cynicism previously unheard in the naive voices of the play. When Posthumus joins the courtiers, the simplistic world of Cymbeline seems far away as Iachimo turns locker-room bantering about the honor of mistresses into a vicious, all-or-nothing wager about Imogen's fidelity. Early in the scene Iachimo is a somewhat ambiguous character. After all, cynicism is not always partnered by evil, and Iachimo's initial teasing of Posthumus over his excessive faith in Imogen may be only the rudeness of the cynic who mistakes bluntness for humor. But such allowances cannot be granted for long. In spite of Philario's objections as he realizes that the argument is becoming too heated: “Let us leave here, gentlemen” (96), Iachimo pushes Posthumus even further: “With five times so much conversation, I should get ground of your fair mistress; make her go back even to the yielding, had I admittance, and opportunity to friend” (100-103). When Posthumus would drop the subject, Iachimo will not. There is no mistaking Iachimo's unexplained desire to destroy both Imogen and Posthumus through a wager that he himself can seduce Imogen and can prove it to Posthumus' satisfaction. After the two men seal their bargain, the Frenchman asks, “Will this hold, think you?” (168). Philario replies ominously, “Signior Iachimo will not from it” (169). The scene ends with this chilling prediction of the villainy to come.

At last the play's genuine villain has arrived. Unprepared for, unannounced, and appearing suddenly from a totally unexpected direction, Iachimo is precisely that shrewd destructive force we had been cozened out of anticipating. As soon as the final presumed obstacle, Cloten, had been introduced amidst laughter and therefore dismissed with the other blocking figures, as soon as we had become convinced that the play's movement would be the comfortable one of romantic comedy, we have been rudely jolted by the arrival of a manipulator worthy of the tragic worlds of Elsinore or Cyprus. In short, we have been tricked. With the dramatist's sleight-of-hand, Shakespeare has forced us to look under empty shell after empty shell and has then triumphantly produced the pea from under a shell we had not even noticed before.

In no previous play has Shakespeare tampered so drastically and for so long with our expectations.³ Even Iago's negative introduction to Othello is quickly reversed by Iago's own revelation that he is a hypocrite and therefore not to be trusted. In Othello, then, we start readjusting our responses in the right direction—i.e., to admiration of Othello, distaste for Iago, and anticipation of a play of intrigue—within the first 50 lines of the first scene. In contrast, Cymbeline opens in a fairy tale, moves to romantic comedy, and reverses itself into tragedy. After five scenes we are more, not less, confused about the dramatic world into which we have stumbled, and we find that the usual aesthetic generic assumptions must be temporarily suspended. We have no reliable guideposts and we must simply give ourselves up to the world of surprise in this play where presumed villains are buffoons and presumed dandies may be villains.

The order of the introductions of the characters in the first five scenes of Cymbeline forces us to share the characters' sense of wonder in the richness and diversity of the human experience. Not the clever people we may have thought we were when we entered the theatre, we can now anticipate the answer to the question, “How will it all turn out?” no better than can the characters themselves. Like them, we can only wait and see—and be amazed. That is, if we are willing to wait, for Shakespeare's generic shifts in these opening scenes place heavy demands on audience and actor alike, demands which have not always been met successfully and which may in part account for the difficulty so many viewers and scholars have had in appreciating Cymbeline. Whenever the magician's hand is quicker than the observer's eye, the magician runs the risk of losing his audience before delighting them.

Notes

1. The author wishes to thank The Research Grants Committee of the University of Alabama for their assistance in making this study possible.

2. William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, ed. J. M. Nosworthy (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 3. All subsequent quotations will be taken from this Arden edition.

3. The only subsequent play in which it might be argued that Shakespeare tricks our expectations for so long is The Winter's Tale, where half the play takes place in a tragic world before Shakespeare introduces Perdita, Florizel, and the pastoral world of reconciliation and harmony.