SOURCE: Bergeron, David M. “Cymbeline: Shakespeare's Last Roman Play.” Shakespeare Quarterly 31, no. 1 (spring 1980): 31-41.

[In the following essay, Bergeron studies the Roman sources of Cymbeline and probes affinities between several of the drama's main figures and individuals in the family of the Roman Emperor Augustus.]

By the time he wrote Cymbeline, Shakespeare had already made several forays into things Roman: the early tragedies Titus Andronicus and Julius Caesar and the two tragedies shortly before Cymbeline—Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. Shakespeare apparently saw in the ancient Romans virtues that could be celebrated, historical events of profound significance, and characters ripe for dramatic presentation.

In a recent retrospective essay discussing criticism and scholarship on Shakespeare's classical plays, John W. Velz wrestles with the question, “What … was Rome to Shakespeare?”¹ He argues that Shakespeare thought concretely, perhaps authentically, about Rome. The “Roman” qualities Velz sees in Shakespeare's plays include language and style (especially an oratorical mode), national character (mirrored sometimes in the Stoicism of characters and sometimes in their decadence), institutions (with particular emphasis on the family, notably in Titus), and sense of place (Rome as a walled city of civilization).

One might also mention that common to the Roman plays is a focus on military exploits, with the accompanying tumult, confusion, and occasional exercise of magnanimity. Whatever else Shakespeare may have thought about Romans, he surely thought of them as soldiers.

Unlike any of Shakespeare's other romances, Cymbeline has a military focus and a concentration of political struggles reminiscent of the Roman plays. Though its Roman background has not been particularly emphasized by interpreters,² that attribute of the play accounts for much that happens. Cymbeline is a happy blend of two of Shakespeare's favorite topics: English history and Roman history. The play is set primarily in Britain of the first-century a.d., but the presence of Rome, literal and spiritual, is pervasive. One might argue that it is the dramatist's last Roman play, providing a glimpse of the Augustan era and offering a logical conclusion to the events dramatized in the other Roman plays. It is probably not without significance that the compilers of the First Folio, aware of the serious political and historical issues in the play, placed Cymbeline with the tragedies. In any event, I shall argue that Shakespeare's probable knowledge of ancient Roman history shapes several events and influences his conception of a number of his British characters in Cymbeline, especially Cloten and the Queen.

I

With this play, as with a number of others, G. Wilson Knight seems to have led the way—both in a sympathetic and sensitive response to its design and in his premise that Cymbeline should “be regarded mainly as an historical play.”³ Like Knight, I think that the heart of the play is its historical basis, both ancient Britain and ancient Rome, and that the romance elements are not incompatible with this perspective. J. P. Brockbank has enlarged our understanding of Shakespeare's debt to Holinshed as a shaping influence on Cymbeline.⁴ Similarly, Bernard Harris has suggested that in this play “the problem[s] of structure and utterance are complicated by the necessary attention to the past as history.”⁵ Robin Moffet has found a clue to the play in the crucial historical event, mentioned by Holinshed, that occurred during the reigns of Augustus Caesar and Cymbeline—namely, the birth of Jesus.⁶ Taking a quite different tack, Emrys Jones has explored the Jacobean topicality of the play.⁷ These critics have all provided rewarding interpretations of the play. But no one, to my knowledge, has looked closely enough at the Roman historical basis of the play.

What I propose, if not exactly a “source” study, is an examination of some unnoticed analogues from the accounts of the reign of Augustus. Geoffrey Bullough has ably explored the likely sources for Cymbeline, ranging from Holinshed, Boccaccio, and Frederyke of Jennen, to others less obvious.⁸ But the presumed sources do not provide much basis for understanding some of the play's characters, especially the Queen and her son Cloten. I suggest that Shakespeare dipped into other histories of the Augustan era and was prompted to give dramatic shape to events of this period by two plays that immediately preceded Cymbeline.

Why should the reign of Augustus be of any particular interest to a Jacobean dramatist? One reason could be the ready accessibility of material, but more of that in a moment. Another possibility is that the popular mind saw some connection between the Jacobean era and the ancient Rome of Augustus. That the English had for some time perceived a link between themselves and the ancient world is obvious, as in the case of the Brutus-Trojan myth, still popular during James's reign. In emphasizing the topicality of Cymbeline, Emrys Jones, in a work cited above, likens the peace achieved at the end of the play to the new peace and union brought about by James, the “Jacobus Pacificus—who was a ‘figure’ of Augustus …” (p. 96). The Pax Romana is linked to the Pax Britannica, and one recalls James's personal motto: “Beati Pacifici.” On a much larger scale, Glynne Wickham argues that Shakespeare's movement to tragicomedy from tragedy reflects the national mood, indeed “has its true origins in the political consciousness of the British peoples saved from foreign invasion and civil war by the peaceful accession of James I in 1603, by the timely discovery of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and the final ratification of the Union of the two Crowns by Act of Parliament in 1608.”⁹ Wickham refers to James, in fact, as “the British Augustus” (p. 42). On the basis of an extensive survey of writings on Roman history, J. Leeds Barroll sums up the prevalent Elizabethan-Jacobean attitudes toward the reign of Augustus: “Whether the Romans praised Augustus for ending civil disaster, whether the Christians honoured him because Christ enrolled as a citizen under the head of his temporal kingdom, or whether he was remembered for restoring the laudable institution of kingship, the varying attitudes only reinforced one another.”¹⁰ Barroll also observes that “Augustus was, for the Elizabethans, the ideal Roman emperor” (p. 341). The early part of the Jacobean era must have seemed, then, to be an appropriate time for a playwright to dramatize something from the Augustan era. And in writing Cymbeline, Shakespeare hit upon an ingenious artistic strategy for uniting ancient Rome and ancient Britain.

II

We know that the decade leading up to Cymbeline was particularly rich in the translation of Roman writers. Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius, for example, had all been recently translated or published in new editions of slightly earlier translations.¹¹ I think the three that Shakespeare might have used (and of course he need not have used all three, since there is duplication of material) are: The Annales of Cornelius Tacitus, translated by Richard Grenewey (1598), Suetonius' Historie of Twelve Caesars, Emperours of Rome, translated by Philêmon Holland (1606), and Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes, translated by Thomas North (the 1603 edition of a book originally published in 1579). The important thing about the 1603 Plutarch is that added to it is, among other things, an anonymous Life of Octavius Caesar Augustus—not by Plutarch obviously, but calling attention to the reign of Augustus.

As we know, Shakespeare was much influenced by Plutarch in the construction of his Roman plays. But if T. J. B. Spencer is right, the influence of Plutarch's Lives has probably been exaggerated (the Moralia are much more influential) and the English view of Roman history takes its cue from Tacitus and Suetonius.¹² As Spencer puts it: “… the Romans in the imagination of the sixteenth century were Suetonian and Tacitan rather than Plutarchan” (p. 31). Dio Cassius' History of the Romans covers much of the same ground; but it was not available in an English translation, and I doubt that Shakespeare used it. The point is that there was a wealth of material on the Augustan era immediately available which even a rushed and hard-pressed dramatist could have consulted.¹³ In a few pages from Tacitus or the 1603 Plutarch Shakespeare could have gained the basic outline of the period and picked up many tantalizing details about the principal figures. If we can entertain the vision of Shakespeare's poring over hundreds of pages in Holinshed, we should have no difficulty in imagining his thumbing through recently-translated Roman authors.

Adding to the sources and highlighting an apparent interest in the Augustan period are two plays that preceded Cymbeline by only a few years: Jonson's Sejanus His Fall (1603; printed 1605) and the anonymous The Statelie Tragedie of Claudius Tiberius Nero (1607). While Sejanus centers on the period after the death of Augustus, many of the same historical figures linger on. Tiberius succeeds Augustus, and other members of the family appear in the play. One who does not appear on stage but who is referred to occasionally is Tiberius' mother and Augustus' wife, Livia (or “Augusta” as she is designated in the play). By Jonson's own testimony, his two chief sources were Tacitus and Dio Cassius, the latter presumably read in the Greek. The Tragedy of Tiberius (its common short-title) opens with a funeral procession for Augustus. Again, the Sejanus matter is at the heart of the play, but many other events clamor for attention. The play closes with a triumph of Caligula. Also prominent is Augustus' wife, Livia (in this play called “Julia”); indeed, this is the only English Renaissance play in which she appears as a character. These materials, both historical and theatrical, form a background for Cymbeline, providing Shakespeare with some models for his characters.

III

As a number of critics have observed, the presiding deity in Cymbeline is Jupiter, underscoring the Roman atmosphere. The spectacular descent of Jupiter on the back of an eagle in V. iv gives dramatic reality to the numerous references to this god (he is referred to thirty times in the play). Among Cymbeline's closing words of joy is the statement: “And in the temple of great Jupiter / Our peace we'll ratify: seal it with feasts” (V. v. 483-84).¹⁴ Cymbeline's words and deeds remind us of Augustus' dedication of the Temple of Jupiter, particularly as described in Suetonius.¹⁵ The motto here as elsewhere in Cymbeline seems to be: when in Britain, do as the Romans do.

The Soothsayer tells Lucius of a dream in which he has seen “Jove's bird, the Roman eagle” winging its way across Britain and finally vanishing in the sunbeams (IV. ii. 348-52). At the play's end the Soothsayer interprets that vision, saying that it “foreshow'd our princely eagle, / Th' imperial Caesar, should again unite / His favour with the radiant Cymbeline, / Which shines here in the west” (V. v. 474-77). Imogen associates Posthumus with the eagle when she draws the contrast between her husband Posthumus and Cloten: “I chose an eagle, / And did avoid a puttock [i.e., kite]” (I. ii. 70-71). A similar distinction between the noble eagle and the worthless kite is to be found in The Tragedy of Tiberius, where Nero, one of Germanicus' sons, notes the difference between his father and Tiberius: “We saw a Kite vsurpe the Eagles place.”¹⁶

The political and military conflict in Cymbeline over the payment of tribute to the Romans derives from Holinshed's account of the reign, but the conflict is also treated in the 1603 edition of Plutarch's Lives. Here the anonymous writer reports: “… he [Augustus] opened the temple of Ianus, and tooke his iourney to give order for all. But the Ambassadours of England preuented him, and promised tribute.”¹⁷ In order to meet the threat of England's refusal to pay tribute, Augustus in Cymbeline has dispatched troops. The brief scene viii in Act III, set in Rome, has a conversation between Senators and Tribunes, revealing that Lucius has been created proconsul and is leading troops into England. James Nosworthy, vexed by the scene, falls back on the familiar notion that “it may be the work of someone other than Shakespeare” (p. 120 n.). But in fact the scene allows for a necessary passage of time before Act IV and underscores the Roman intention of confronting the issue. The Roman general so dispatched is Caius Lucius, whose name Shakespeare may have obtained by combining the names of Augustus' grandsons, Caius and Lucius, sons of Julia. Both were soldiers for whom Augustus had high hopes as his potential heirs, but both died young.

IV

The delineation of several characters reveals a possible indebtedness to sources treating Roman history. When Cymbeline welcomes Lucius to his court, he says: “Thy Caesar knighted me; my youth I spent / Much under him; of him I gather'd honour” (III. i. 71-72). This presumed historical association between Cymbeline and Augustus suggests that Shakespeare may intend for us to imagine Augustus to be an analogue to Cymbeline. By the end of the play Cymbeline, though having won the battle, becomes a peacemaker and offers to pay the tribute. And even though he does not appear in the play, Augustus is nevertheless referred to several times. The wily Iachimo tells the hapless Imogen, for example, that the trunk he would leave in her bedchamber contains treasures for Augustus, “a present for the emperor” (I. vii. 187).

Because Cymbeline's two sons had been stolen years earlier, “and to this hour no guess in knowledge / Which way they went” (I. i. 60-61), he has, in effect, but one child: his daughter Imogen. Only at the play's end is he reunited with the lost sons. Augustus, too, had only one child, his daughter Julia. Both rulers confront the lack of a male heir, and their daughters disappoint them. Imogen marries Posthumus against her father's wishes. Though Cymbeline does not banish her, his words are harsh: “O disloyal thing, / That shouldst repair my youth, thou heap'st / A year's age on me!” (I. ii. 62-64). Suetonius writes of Augustus' reaction to Julia: “His daughter and niece either of them named Julia disteined with all kinde of leawdnesse and dishonestie he sent out of the way as banished” (I, 135). Tacitus reports that Julia remained in exile for twenty years and died unreconciled to her father.¹⁸ There is in Cymbeline, of course, a joyous reunion of father and daughter; and though Imogen is accused of adultery, she proves blameless.

The banishment-reconciliation pattern occurs in Cymbeline's treatment of Posthumus, who is exiled in I. ii. By a long and tortuous path the two are eventually united in purpose, and Cymbeline accepts Posthumus as his son-in-law. “We'll learn our freeness [generosity] of a son-in-law: / Pardon's the word to all” (V. v. 422-23). Augustus frequently banished kinsmen, usually with good reason. Agrippa, Julia's third son, was sent to the island of Planasia because, Tacitus says, he was “badly trained vp in liberall sciences, and sottishly bragging of his strength and actiuitie of bodie; but yet neuer detected of any notorious vice” (sig. A1^v, p. 2). In the closing part of his life as reported by Tacitus, Augustus went secretly to the island to be reconciled with Agrippa, “both weeping tenderly at their meeting, with manifest tokens of loue, and a hope conceiued that the yong man should be recalled and restored to his Grandfathers house” (sig. A2, p. 3). But Agrippa never returned to Rome: the first act of the new emperor Tiberius was to order his murder. It is of some interest to note that he was sometimes called Agrippa Posthumus.¹⁹

Both in name and in character Posthumus Leonatus seems the most Roman of the British characters.²⁰ While a prisoner of the Romans, he experiences a fantastic apparition of his father, his mother, his two brothers, and eventually Jupiter. Posthumus' English relatives pray for help from Jupiter, who obliges and promises:

Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift:
.....Our Jovial star reign'd at his birth, and in
Our temple was he married.

(V. iv. 103, 105-6)

That he has two older brothers may again remind us of Agrippa. And that Jupiter singles him out for special favor reinforces the idea of his worthiness. Cymbeline has in a sense adopted him—rather like Augustus and his grandsons—and brought him up at court, “most prais'd, most lov'd” (I. i. 47). He has even given him the name “Posthumus Leonatus” (l. 41). Though Posthumus stumbles badly in his relationship with Imogen, the play-world allows enough time to straighten out the situation happily, and he is instrumental in rescuing Cymbeline and helping the Britons defeat the Romans.

In valor and in the respect shown him by the people, Posthumus is somewhat analogous to Germanicus, Tiberius' nephew and adopted son, the husband of Agrippina (Augustus' granddaughter). In The Tragedy of Tiberius Germanicus is perhaps the only shining light in an otherwise corrupt world. He is hailed for his military victories; and the citizens adore him, to the increasing dismay of Tiberius and Sejanus (who sees him as an obstacle in his own path to the throne). Germanicus distinguishes himself from Tiberius in the following soliloquy:

Germanicus, soare thou an higher pitch,
Towre like a Larke, and like an Eagle mount,
Till thou hast seaz'd vpon thy pray: for why?
The Legions loue thee, hate Tiberius:
Honour thy vertues, scorne his cowardise,
Extoll thy meekenesse, and reuile his pride.

(ll. 548-53)

Such self-analysis and valor remind us of Posthumus, especially the Posthumus of Act V, who chides the British soldiers for their cowardice (V. iii. 3-51), spares his enemy Iachimo (V. ii), and repents of the wrong he has done Imogen (V. i).

If Posthumus somewhat resembles Germanicus, one may argue that Cloten bears a similarity to Tiberius. Like Tiberius, Cloten is the Queen's son for whom she has great ambitions. Like Tiberius, Cloten is stepson to the ruler. Tiberius becomes Augustus' heir, thanks to the wholesale deaths of other potential heirs; for a while Cloten looms as heir to the British throne when Imogen disappears. Cymbeline seeks Cloten's help in dealing with the Romans:

                                                            Our dear son,
.....                    … we will have need
T'employ you towards this Roman.

(II. iii. 61, 63-65)

A typical comment about Augustus' use of Tiberius is that in the added section of the 1603 Plutarch: “For all this Augustus withdrew him from thence, and sent Tiberius thither to settle all things in good estate againe” (p. 67). Cloten, Cymbeline, and the Queen all want Imogen to marry Cloten instead of Posthumus. Cymbeline chides her as one “That mightst have had the sole son of my queen!” (I. ii. 69). Though it was not exactly his idea, Tiberius eventually married Augustus' daughter, Julia. Cloten lusts after Imogen, whom he says he will pursue “Even to Augustus' throne” (III. v. 102). He decides to kill Posthumus and rape Imogen: “With that suit [Posthumus' garment] upon my back, will I ravish her: first kill him, and in her eyes; there shall she see my valour, which will then be a torment to her contempt” (III. v. 141-43). All of which is worthy of Tiberius as described by Tacitus (sig. A1^v, p. 2): “he dreamte of nothing but reuenge, dissimulation, and secret meanes of licentious lusts.” Cloten doesn't have time in the play, however, to match the unsurpassed debauchery of Tiberius, documented in graphic detail by Suetonius and dramatized in the anonymous Tragedy of Tiberius.

V

The only principal character in Cymbeline who has no name is “the Queen,” wife of Cymbeline—“a widow / That late he married …” (I. i. 5-6). She is not particularly difficult to understand in the play, and most critics settle on seeing her as evil incarnate. Typical is Knight's assessment: “She is a composite of Lady Macbeth and Goneril, though without the tragic dignity of the one and the cold rationality of the other. She is cruelty incarnate” (p. 130). But Nosworthy suggests: “She is the embodiment of malevolence in the person, not of Goneril or Lady Macbeth, but of the fairy-tale witch” (p. lii). He adds a curious point: she “bears little or no relation to every-day experience.” Jones echoes this idea: “So the Queen is made conventionally grotesque after a fairy-tale fashion in order to counteract the temptation to find a real-life analogue” (p. 97). But there is a real-life analogue, not perhaps in the Jacobean court but certainly at the court of Augustus: namely Augustus' wife Livia. Anyone who saw the television rendition of I, Claudius will remember the machinations of Livia. As recorded in the histories and on stage, Livia is a perfect model for Cymbeline's Queen. If, as Cymbeline says, he has spent some time at Augustus' court, perhaps, unbeknownst to us, the woman who became his queen did likewise. In any event, she is well-schooled in the Livian arts.

Cymbeline's Queen is skillful as a counselor to him, ambitious for herself and her son, crafty and devious in her ways, and unrepentant for what she has done. She is also stepmother to Imogen, but not, she says in her first appearance on stage, “After the slander of most stepmothers” (I. ii. 2). Imogen, however, knows the truth: “How fine this tyrant / Can tickle where she wounds!” (ll. 15-16). If Livia is Shakespeare's model, then one understands his decision to make the Queen a stepmother. Discussing the complicity of Tiberius and Livia in the death of Agrippa, Tacitus cites the following motives: “… by Tiberius feare, and Liuiaes hatred: the one as iealous, least he should bandie for the soueraigntie: the other through the naturall hatred incident to all stepmothers” (sig. A2, p. 3). A few pages later Tacitus observes that Livia was a “burdensome mother to the common wealth, and to the house of the Caesars a dangerous stepdame” (sig. A3^v, p. 6).

In the Queen's first appearance in Cymbeline we learn that she is not only a wicked stepmother but also a skilled politician and manipulator of Cymbeline. She says in an aside:

                                        … yet I'll move him [Cymbeline]
To walk this way: I never do him wrong
But he does buy my injuries, to be friends:
Pays dear for my offences.

(I. ii. 34-37)

She later tells Pisanio: “I'll move the king / To any shape of thy preferment …” (I. vi. 70-71). It is obvious in the confrontation with Caius Lucius in III. i that the Queen's voice dominates. Clearly she is behind the idea of resisting the demand for tribute, and at the play's end Cymbeline places all the blame on her:

Although the victor, we submit to Caesar,
And to the Roman empire; promising
To pay our wonted tribute, from the which
We were dissuaded by our wicked queen,
Whom heavens in justice both on her, and hers,
Have laid most heavy hand.

(V. v. 461-66)

One of Livia's accomplishments was to get Augustus to adopt Tiberius as son and designate him as heir. Suetonius reports: “howbeit, overcome by his wives intreaty and earnest praier he refused not to adopt him …” (I, 188). Tacitus notes that Tiberius displayed himself as adopted son, “not as before by secret deuises and practises of his mother, but openly perswading the Emperor thereto” (sig. A1^v, p. 2). All writers agree on the matter of Livia's skill at the moment of Augustus' death: she kept giving out conflicting information, saying at one moment that Augustus was well and at the next that he was dying. The point was to buy time for Tiberius. In the play The Tragedy of Tiberius, Livia reminds her son:

Meane while had I not with great policie,
Buried in silence great Augustus death,
And in the closet of my care-sworne brest,
Embosomed the notice of the same, …
A Castrell had possest thy Eagles nest.
And thou the Eagle hadst beene dispossest.

(ll. 424-31)

This “crafty devil,” as the Queen is called (II. i. 54), makes explicit her ambitions in her final moment in Cymbeline. Delighting in the disappearance of Imogen, she says:

                                                                                … gone she is,
To death, or to dishonour, and my end
Can make good use of either. She being down,
I have the placing of the British crown.

(III. v. 63-66)

When she learns that Cymbeline is in a rage over Imogen's absence, the Queen's sentiments are: “All the better: may / This night forestall him of the coming day!” (ll. 69-70)—her final words in the play. Her ambition is naked and intense. Like Livia, the Queen wants the throne for her son, irrespective of the King's children or heirs.

One means of bringing to successful completion her devious plan is the use of poison. For this purpose she asks the physician Cornelius for poison, falsely claiming: “I will try the forces / Of these thy compounds on such creatures as / We count not worth the hanging (but none human)” (I. vi. 18-20). Cornelius, suspecting her motives, hands her a potion that merely induces sleep. The Queen immediately gives it to Pisanio, with the hope and expectation that he in turn will give it to Imogen: “I have given him that, / Which if he take, shall quite unpeople her” (ll. 78-79). In the final scene Cornelius explains to an astounded court about the poison and the Queen's intention (V. v. 249-58).

Historical accounts are replete with references to Livia's skillful use of drugs to bring about desired deaths. One of the characters in Jonson's Sejanus is Eudemus, a physician who busily prepares opiates and poisons. When Sejanus asks him about his patients, Eudemus mentions Livia (here called Augusta): Sejanus says “Me thinks, Augusta should be most perverse” (I. i. 315).²¹ The answer comes back: “She's so, my lord” (l. 317). In the 1603 Plutarch edition the author of the added biographies reports the death of Marcellus, a potential successor to Augustus: “But this young man of great hope, died shortly after, to the great griefe of euery man: and no man can tell whether it was of naturall sicknesse, or of poison giuen him by the practises of Liuia” (p. 64). The writer also implies that she was involved in the death of Caius: “For she greatly desired the aduancement of her son Tiberius …” (p. 71). Tacitus echoes this assessment, wondering about the cause of the deaths of both Caius and Lucius, whether it be “by hastie fate or trecherie of their stepmother Liuia …” (sig. A1^v, p. 2).

The Queen disappears from the action in Act III, and Cornelius brings in the word of her death in V. v. “How ended she?” asks Cymbeline. Cornelius replies: “With horror, madly dying, like her life, / Which (being cruel to the world) concluded / Most cruel to herself” (ll. 31-33). Step by step Cornelius reveals the depth of the Queen's malevolence to a dismayed Cymbeline (rather like Augustus, who apparently never suspected Livia's cruel deeds). The Queen has never loved Cymbeline. Imogen “Was a scorpion to her sight, whose life / … she had / Ta'en off by poison” (ll. 45-47). She had even prepared poison for Cymbeline, “which, being took, / Should by the minute feed on life and ling'ring / By inches waste you” (ll. 50-52). All of these deeds were designed “to work / Her son into th' adoption of the crown” (ll. 55-56). Her only regret is that “The evils she hatch'd were not effected” (l. 60)—a striking contrast to the series of genuine repentances that occur in this scene. If we may trust the Roman writers, Livia never felt remorse or came to repentance either; indeed, she spent her last years doing battle with Tiberius, who had, in the charming words of Tacitus, “a secret hartburning against her” (sig. G6^v, p. 84).

If Cymbeline is to be liberated and if the play is to end happily, then the Queen must go—either that or she must have a lightning-fast conversion. Shakespeare therefore lets this evil one die, thus opening the possibility for reunion and reconciliation on the personal, social, and political levels for those who remain.

The Queen does not absolutely parallel Livia, and we should be surprised if she did. But there are enough significant resemblances to suggest, short of contrary evidence, that Shakespeare partly drew his inspiration for this wicked stepmother-queen from available materials that portrayed the magnificent and horrible Livia. Robert Graves knew that a writer doesn't pass up such possibilities; as he has Claudius say about Livia near the beginning of his novel, “that remarkable and—let me say at once—abominable woman …”²² Out of such stuff fictions are created.

VI

That the Augustan family may lie behind Cymbeline as a kind of paradigm enriches the play and throws needed light on characters like Cloten and the Queen, whom critics have been too quick to dismiss with ready labels like fool and fairy-tale witch. If Shakespeare consulted Roman sources, as I suggest, then we see again how the artist uses what he finds, shaping it and giving it dramatic life. Like the other late plays, Cymbeline documents the dissolution of a family, then joyously and somewhat miraculously puts it back together, made whole again. The family bond is renewed in ways that are impossible in a tragedy like King Lear, and perhaps in ways that are seldom seen in real-life analogues, such as the family of Augustus. In the household of Augustus wicked physicians do Livia's bidding, but in Cymbeline the physician Cornelius perceives the wickedness of the Queen and thwarts her purpose. Thinking of the household of Cymbeline, we may recall Jupiter's words about Posthumus: “And happier much by his affliction made” (V. iv. 108). Or as Cymbeline says in joy and humility at the end: “Laud we the gods, / And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils / From our blest altars” (V. v. 477-79).

Notes

1. “The Ancient World in Shakespeare: Authenticity or Anachronism? A Retrospect,” Shakespeare Survey, 31 (1978), 7. The section specifically dealing with this question is found on pp. 7-12.

2. One critic who sees Cymbeline in the lineage of the Roman plays, particularly Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, is Hugh M. Richmond. See his essay, “Shakespeare's Roman Trilogy: The Climax in Cymbeline,” Studies in the Literary Imagination, 5 (1972), 129-39. Of necessity he and I touch on some of the same ground, but our purposes are finally quite different. Professor Richmond is primarily concerned with the spiritual and religious milieu of Cymbeline, noting the theme that for him orders the play's complex structure: “the inadequacy of the best codes of law and value available to pre-Christian society” (p. 135). According to Professor Richmond, the characters in Cymbeline are able to achieve a level of humane politics largely denied the likes of a Brutus or Octavius; this accomplishment “leads towards the serene formulation of Christian policies sensed throughout Henry VIII” (p. 139). In his rush to present Shakespeare as one fully cognizant and appreciative of New Testament virtues, Professor Richmond sells the Romans short, or so I think.

3. The Crown of Life (London: Methuen, 1947; rpt. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966), p. 129. R. Warwick Bond may have been the first to emphasize the link between Cymbeline and Shakespeare's Roman plays and English histories. He suggests, in fact, that Cymbeline is “a direct sequel to the sumptuous Antony and Cleopatra …” (see “The Puzzle of Cymbeline,” in his Studia Otiosa: Some Attempts in Criticism [London: Constable, 1938], p. 74). For additional background on Shakespeare's knowledge and use of Roman history, see Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare's Rome: Republic and Empire (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1976).

4. “History and Histrionics in Cymbeline,” Shakespeare Survey, 11 (1958), 42-49.

5. “‘What's past is prologue’: ‘Cymbeline’ and ‘Henry VIII,’” in Later Shakespeare, ed. John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies, 8 (New York: St. Martin's, 1967), p. 204.

6. “Cymbeline and the Nativity,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 13 (1962), 207-18.

7. “Stuart Cymbeline,” Essays in Criticism, 11 (1961), 84-99.

8. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, VIII (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 3-111.

9. “From Tragedy to Tragi-Comedy: ‘King Lear’ as Prologue,” Shakespeare Survey, 26 (1973), 36. Wickham does not cite Jones's earlier article.

10. “Shakespeare and Roman History,” Modern Language Review, 53 (1958), 343.

11. For a brief discussion of translations during this period, see Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century 1600-1660, rev. 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), pp. 57-75. See also Henry B. Lathrop, English Translations from the Classics into English from Caxton to Chapman 1477-1620 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin, 1933), and C. H. Conley, The First English Translators of the Classics (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1927); unfortunately the latter study stops at 1572. Consult also Barroll, cited in footnote 10.

12. “Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Romans,” Shakespeare Survey, 10 (1957), 27-38.

13. Other sources that provide information about Augustus and could have been known by Shakespeare include: Pedro Mexia, The Historie of All the Romane emperors, trans. W. Traheron (London, 1604), especially pp. 27-51; Richard Reynoldes, A Chronicle of all the noble Emperours of the Romaines (London, 1571), folios 16-22; Appian, An Auncient Historie and exquisite chronical of the “Romanes warres,” trans. W. B. (London, 1578); Eutropius, A brief Chronicle …, trans. Nicholas Haward (London, 1564); William Fulbecke, An historicall Collection … of the Romans and Italians … (London, 1601).

14. Cymbeline, ed. J. M. Nosworthy, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1955). In citing the play I will quote from this edition.

15. The History of Twelve Caesars, introduction by Charles Whibley, The Tudor Translations, XXI, gen. ed. W. E. Henley (London: David Nutt, 1899), I, 104, passim. All citations to Suetonius will be to this edition.

16. The Tragedy of Tiberius, ed. W. W. Greg (Oxford: Malone Society, 1914), l. 1277. All quotations will be from this edition and cited by line numbers.

17. The addition to North's translation of Plutarch is entitled The Lives of Epanimondas, of Philip of Macedon, of Dionysius the Elder, and of Octavius Caesar Augustus: Collected out of good Authors (London, 1603), p. 62. The section on Augustus is found on pp. 51-75 of the addition. Citations will be from this original edition. Though it is generally conceded that Shakespeare used the 1595 North translation of Plutarch for his Roman plays, the 1603 edition was the most recent at the time of the writing of Cymbeline and departs from the earlier one by including this anonymous life of Augustus. Obviously, I cannot “prove” that Shakespeare used this edition; but it was handy and contained material that Shakespeare could use, given, if my argument holds, his apparent interest in the Augustan era.

18. The Annales of Cornelius Tacitus, trans. Richard Grenewey (London, 1598), sig. K3^v, p. 114. All references to Tacitus are from this source.

19. There is also a character named Posthumus in Jonson's Sejanus.

20. Knight observes that “He is imaginatively at least a composite of the British and the Roman …” (p. 142).

21. Jonson, Sejanus his Fall, ed. W. F. Bolton, New Mermaids, gen. ed. Philip Brockbank and Brian Morris (New York: Hill & Wang, 1969). All quotations are from this edition.

22. I, Claudius (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 4. Graves explicitly refers to Cymbeline and his reign on pages 405 and 409. He says that Agrippa Posthumus was a “lion-like champion” (p. 60), reminding us perhaps of Posthumus Leonatus in Cymbeline. One of the rhetorical questions posed early in the novel is rich with implications and indirectly touches on the Queen in Cymbeline: “How many of the Imperial family have died a natural death?” (p. 50).