I. THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY.

Cymbeline was first printed in the folio of 1623, where it is the last play in the volume, occupying pages 369-399 (misprinted 993) in the division of "Tragedies." The earliest allusion to it that has been discovered is in Dr. Simon Forman's MS. Diary (see Richard II. p. 13, M. N. D. p. 10, and W. T. p. 10), which belongs to the years 1610 and 1611. His sketch of the plot (not dated) is as follows:*

*As given in the New Shaks. Soc. Transactions for 1875-6, p. 417.

And

"Remember also the storri of Cymbalin king of England, in Lucius tyme, howe Lucius Cam from Octauus Cesar for Tribut, and being denied, after sent Lucius with a greate Arme of Souldiars who landed at milford hauen, and Affter wer vanquished by Cimbalin, and Lucius taken prisoner, and all by means of 3 outlawes, of the which 2 of them were the sonns of Cimbalim, stolen from him when they but 2 yers old by an old man whom Cymbalin banished, and he kept them as his own sonns 20 yers with him in A caue. howe [one] of them slewe Clotan, that was the quens sonn, goinge To milford hauen to sek the loue of Innogen the kinges daughter, whom he had banished also for louinge his daughter. and howe the Italian that cam from her loue conveied him selfe into A Cheste, and said yt was a chest of plate sent from her loue & others, to be presented to the kinge. And in the depest of the night, she being aslepe, he opened the cheste & cam forth of yt, And vewed her in her bed, and the markes of her body, & toke a-wai her braslet, & after Accused her of adultery to her loue, &c. And in thend howe he came with the Romains into England & was taken prisoner, and after Reueled to Innogen who had turned her self into man's apparrell & fled to mete her loue at milford hauen, & chanchsed to fall on the Caue in the wodes wher her 2 brothers were, & howe by eating a sleping Dram they thought she had bin deed, & laid her in the wodes, & the body of cloten by her in her loues apparrell that he left behind him, & howe she was found by lucius, &c."

The play was probably a new one when Forman saw it in 1610 or 1611. Drake dates it in 1605, Chalmers in 1606, Malone in 1609 (after having at first assigned it to 1605), Fleay (Introd. to Shakespearian Study) "circa 1609," White "1609 or 1610," Delius, Furnivall, and Stokes in 1610, Dowden and Ward at about the time when Forman saw it. The internal evidence of style and metre indicates that it was one of the latest of the plays.

Cymbeline is badly printed in the folio, and the involved style makes the correction of the text a task of more than usual difficulty. The critics generally agree that the vision in v. 4 cannot be Shakespeare's. Ward considers that “there is no reason, on account of its style, which reminds one of the prefatory lines to the cantos of the Faerie Queene, to impugn Shakespeare's authorship of it;" but it seems to us very clearly the work of another hand. Cf. the rhymed episode in A. Y. L. v. 4. 113 fol., and see our ed. p. 199 (note on 136).

II. THE SOURCES OF THE PLOT.

The poet took the names of Cymbeline and his two sons from Holinshed, together with a few historical facts concerning the king; but the story of the stealing of the princes and of their life in the wilderness appears to be his own.*

The story of Imogen, which is so admirably interwoven with that of the sons of Cymbeline, was taken, directly or indirectly, from the Decamerone of Boccaccio, in which it forms the ninth novel of the second day. No English translation of it is known to have been made in Shakespeare's time. A version appeared in a tract entitled Westward for Smelts, which was published in 1620. Malone speaks of an edition of 1603; but this is probably an error, as the book was not entered upon the Stationers' Registers until 1619-20. This translation, moreover, lacks some important details which the play has in common with the Italian original.†

*It has been pointed out by K. Schenkl that the incidents of Imogen's seeking refuge in the wilderness and her deathlike sleep occur in the German fairy-tale of Schneewittchen.

+ For an outline of Boccaccio's novel, see the extract from Mrs. Jameson below. The chief incidents of the story had been used in a French miracle-play of the Middle Ages, and also in the old French romances of La Violette and Flore et Jehanne; but we have no reason to suppose that Shakespeare made any use of these. In one of the romances the lady has a mole upon her right breast; in Boccaccio, as in Shakespeare, it is on her left breast. This mark is not mentioned at all in Westward for

But, as Verplanck remarks, “from whatever source the idea of the plot might have been immediately drawn, the poet owes to his predecessors nothing more than the bare. outline of two or three leading incidents. These he has raised, refined, and elevated into a higher sphere; while the characters, dialogue, circumstances, details, descriptions, the lively interest of the plot, its artful involution and skilful development, are entirely his own. He has given to what were originally scenes of coarse and tavern-like profligacy a dignity suited to the state and character of his personages, and has poured over the whole the golden light, the rainbow hues, of imaginative poetry.'

III. CRITICAL COMMENTS ON THE PLAY.

[From Schlegel's "Dramatic Literature." *]

Cymbeline is one of Shakspeare's most wonderful compositions. He has here combined a novel of Boccaccio's with traditionary tales of the ancient Britons, reaching back to Smelts. In the latter, moreover, the person corresponding to Iachimo conceals himself under the bed in the lady's chamber, while in the French and Italian versions he is conveyed thither in a chest.

White has noted another circumstance which seems to show that Shakespeare went directly to Boccaccio, and that the Winter's Tale and Cymbeline were composed at about the same period: "In Boccaccio's novel the convicted slanderer is condemned by the Sultan to be anointed with honey, and exposed to the rays of the sun, tied to a stake upon some elevated spot, and to remain there until his flesh falls away from his bones. From this doom it seems quite clear that Shakespeare took the hint for that mock sentence which Autolycus passes upon the young clown in W. T. iv. 4. 812: ‘He has a son who shall be flayed alive; then 'nointed over with honey. . . then, raw as he is, and in the hottest day prognostication proclaims, shall he be set against a brick wall, the sun looking with a southward eye upon him, where he is to behold him with flies blown to death.'"

Westward for Smelts is reprinted in the "Variorum" ed. of 1821, vol. xiii., and in Collier's Shakespeare's Library, vol. ii.

*Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, by A. W. Schlegel; Black's translation, revised by Morrison (London, 1846), p. 397 fol.

the times of the first Roman Emperors, and he has contrived, by the most gentle transitions, to blend together into one. harmonious whole the social manners of the newest times with olden heroic deeds, and even with appearances of the gods. In the character of Imogen no one feature of female excellence is omitted: her chaste tenderness, her softness, and her virgin pride, her boundless resignation, and her magnanimity towards her mistaken husband, by whom she is unjustly persecuted, her adventures in disguise, her apparent death, and her recovery, form altogether a picture equally tender and affecting. The two Princes, Guiderius and Arviragus, both educated in the wilds, form a noble contrast to Miranda and Perdita. Shakspeare is fond of showing the superiority of the natural over the artificial. Over the art which enriches nature, he somewhere says, there is a higher art created by nature herself. As Miranda's unconscious and unstudied sweetness is more pleasing than those charms which endeavour to captivate us by the brilliant embellishments of a refined cultivation, so in these two youths, to whom the chase has given vigour and hardihood, but who are ignorant of their high destination, and have been brought up apart from human society, we are equally enchanted by a naïve heroism which leads them to anticipate and to dream of deeds of valour, till an occasion is offered which they are irresistibly compelled to embrace. When Imogen comes in disguise to their cave; when, with all the innocence of childhood, Guiderius and Arviragus form an impassioned friendship for the tender boy, in whom they neither suspect a fe- . male nor their own sister; when, on their return from the chase they find her dead, then “sing her to the ground,” and cover the grave with flowers-these scenes might give to the most deadened imagination a new life for poetry. If a tragical event is only apparent in such case, whether the spectators are already aware of it or ought merely to suspect it, Shakspeare always knows how to mitigate the impres