Essay, ENGL1002.

Full­text fol­lows, incor­rect for­mat­ting. PDF ver­sion also avail­able (proper for­mat­ting, foot­notes, etc.).

Your daughter’s chastity — there it begins.
He spake of her as Dian had hot dreams
And she alone were cold; whereat I, wretch,
Made scru­ple of his praise, and wager’d with him
Pieces of gold ‘gainst this which then he wore
Upon his honour’d fin­ger, to attain
In suit the place of’s bed, and win this ring
By hers and mine adul­tery. He, true knight,
No lesser of her hon­our con­fi­dent
Than I did truly find her, stakes this ring;
And would so, had it been a car­bun­cle
Of Phoe­bus’ wheel; and might so safely, had it
Been all the worth of’s car. Away to Britain
Post I in this design. Well may you, sir,
Remem­ber me at court, where I was taught
Of your chaste daugh­ter the wide dif­fer­ence
’Twixt amorous and villainous.

V. iv. 179 – 95.

Iachimo’s expo­si­tion of his past actions in this, the clos­ing scene of Cym­be­line, is a cru­cial com­po­nent of the play: we observe a com­plex nar­ra­tive approach its clo­sure, a dénoue­ment of which Imo­gen is (per­haps not insignif­i­cantly) cat­a­lyst. It is the idea of wronged Imo­gen that dri­ves this ear­lier part of Iachimo’s con­fes­sion — it should be observed, how­ever, that it is not only he who should bear respon­si­bil­ity for wrong­ing her.

Out­side of this pas­sage, Iachimo asserts the pro­pri­ety and nobil­ity of Posthu­mus, declar­ing from line 158: ” What should I say? he was too good to be/Where ill men were, and was the best of all/Amongst the rar’st of good ones — sit­ting sadly,/Hearing us praise our loves of Italy/For beauty, that made bar­ren the swell’d boast/Of him that best could speak.”

His praise of the man whom he had ear­lier proven hasty, jeal­ous, and in many other ways impru­dent (cf. Posthu­mus’ hys­ter­i­cal, misog­y­nis­tic tirade in II. v.) feels, with­out doubt, ironic. In the con­text of this play such irony should appear humor­ous — it is, after­all, cat­e­gorised as com­edy — yet one must surely (at the least) con­sider this as a deeper expres­sion of Iachimo’s repen­tance. His own asser­tions of the chastity of Imo­gen against even that of mytho­log­i­cal paragon of virtue, DianaOne must pre­sume this is what Shake­speare means by “Dian” , the con­trac­tion being purely for met­ri­cal pur­poses. Ambi­gu­ity at this point is intro­duced, as in Celtic Mythol­ogy there is, in fact, a fig­ure known as Dian Cecht. He is, how­ever, asso­ci­ated with crafts­man­ship and heal­ing: Roman Diana/Greek Artemis’ per­pet­ual vir­gin­ity is clearly a bet­ter (more log­i­cal) fit. , serve to exac­er­bate his own deeds; per­haps in a man­ner con­sid­ered humourous.

There appear to be recur­rent con­gru­en­cies between the per­ceived com­pe­tency of Posthu­mus as lover and as leader through­out the playIn line with both Judeo-Christian con­cep­tions of the role of a hus­band as leader of his wife, as val­ued by the soci­ety of that time; but also in the renewed ideals iden­ti­fied as essen­tial for the “Renais­sance man”. , and Iachimo’s speech here serves to fur­ther this con­cep­tion. It is his lovers’ praise, for which Iachimo pro­fesses him­self “wretch” hav­ing held scorn towards, that (at least in part) plays towards Iachimo’s address of Posthu­mus as “He, true knight”.

Thus, the two prin­ci­ple con­cerns of this work are found com­bined, inex­tri­ca­ble from one another. From the begin­ning, Iachimo is a trick­ster, debased: his scan­dalous nature defined by his role as seducer and accuser. Such it is that themes of rela­tion­ship (not romance) and jeal­ousy — not con­fined to a mar­i­tal con­text —  are first drawn out. The folk-tale fig­ure of an evil step-mother is the first jeal­ous char­ac­ter met; though, per­haps, one may iden­tify her jeal­ousy as com­ing after the jeal­ous love of a father towards her daugh­ter. How­ever, one is not nec­es­sar­ily dis­posed to con­sid­er­ing Cym­be­line a par­tic­u­larly great ruler; his own absent chil­dren are a pos­si­ble reflec­tionI. i. 64 – 65 of uncer­tain con­ti­nu­ity of the royal line, surely a poor way to be in the eyes of an audi­ence aware of the need for sta­bil­ity in terms of monar­chi­cal successors.

Irre­spec­tive as to who was first jeal­ous chrono­log­i­cally, it seems clear that there are two types of jeal­ousy in this play; the first, it appears, is polit­i­cal. Jeal­ousy, even in the polit­i­cal sense, is intrin­si­cally bound up with chil­dren and the notion of inher­i­tance: such is the nature of monar­chy. The audi­ence wit­ness an evil step-mother, fight­ing to place her own suc­ces­sor to the throne in first posi­tion. Betwixt her poi­son­ing, schem­ing and sub­ver­sion, Posthu­mus and Imo­gen are wed; Posthu­mus is ban­ished by a father jeal­ous not so much of his love, but of his nobil­ity and pre­sump­tion such that a man could be wor­thy of the King’s nat­ural daugh­ter. Cloten, though an igno­rant fool, sim­i­larly exhibits jeal­ous qual­i­ties; they are his end.

Iachimo, then, is dri­ven by what? His own jeal­ousy is one of the few not tied up in rela­tion­ship; he desires not “hers and mine adultery” — but to win the ring! Yet, despite this, his story beings with “Your daughter’s chastity”. The idea of unfounded jeal­ousy per­vades even Iachimo’s comic greed; his devices cun­ning, his man­ner crafty, his influ­ence decep­tive. This is no Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, and Iachimo is no Puck. It is strik­ing that, though this be called com­edy, it is oft closer to a rapidly-executed tragedy with a great deal less intro­spec­tion, and a fair num­ber of addi­tional subplots.

As Posthu­mus’ cooler-than-Dian wife, Imo­gen, was cat­a­lyst for a large por­tion of this work’s plot (with the excep­tion of the “pure” pol­i­tics regard­ing Rome… and even that is used to bring Belar­ius, Poly­dore, Cad­wal, and numer­ous oth­ers — includ­ing Posthu­mus — back into the flow of the text such that all may be bound together in con­clu­sion), she is also cat­a­lyst for its dénoue­ment. Imo­gen chooses to ques­tion Iachimo, bring­ing his story to light. He speaks favourably of Posthu­mus in the ear­lier parts of his story; and is inter­rupted by Posthu­mus him­self before his dis­course pro­gresses to Posthu­mus’ inflamed response.

As it stands, this is the piv­otal point upon which all the story’s threads are brought to clo­sure. Imogen’s appar­ently didac­tic influ­ence upon Iachimo (“where I was taught/Of your chaste daugh­ter the wide difference/‘Twixt amorous and vil­lanous.”) may have had lit­tle impact upon his actions of the time — indeed, it feels as though such a dec­la­ra­tion even at this point of the play may be to appease a king who may attribute the loss of his daugh­ter to such actions, were Iachimo to get to the con­clu­sion of his story before Posthu­mus’ arrival.

Such it is that the nar­ra­tive is rapidly sketched, and the King appears utterly per­plexed. This fan­tas­ti­cal series of events that so befits a romance defuses anger, delays judge­ment, and results in rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of all con­cerned — with the obvi­ous excep­tion of vil­lains slain in val­or­ous man­ner by undis­cov­ered sons.

Val­our, too, is key to Iachimo’s speech. As alluded to ear­lier, Posthu­mus is addressed as “true knight”. The audi­ence is not under any illu­sions as to the char­ac­ter of Posthu­mus, hav­ing wit­nessed his out­burst of II. v. and observed his somewhat-sulky behav­iour for the fol­low­ing two (nearly three) acts. It hardly appears as though he is par­tic­u­larly true — that is, hav­ing faith in his wife’s chastity in his absence — or val­or­ous, hav­ing spent most of the play lament­ing (some would say wal­low­ing) in his own stu­pid­ity: first at hav­ing mar­ried and been deceived, fallen for one of those who are the embod­i­ment of every kind of vice:II. v. 20 – 28

For there’s no motion
That tends to vice in man but I affirm
It is the woman’s part. Be it lying, note it,
The woman’s; flat­ter­ing, hers; deceiv­ing, hers;
Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;
Ambi­tions, cov­et­ings, change of prides, dis­dain,
Nice long­ing, slan­ders, muta­bil­ity,
All faults that man may name, nay, that hell knows,
Why, hers, in part or all; but rather all

Then, at hav­ing ordered her assas­si­na­tion (notably, he does not kill her him­self — one is, it would seem, encour­aged not con­sider a man of such effem­i­nate out­bursts as the histri­on­ics of II. v. capa­ble of such a deed), he spake thus:V. i. 7 – 11

Gods! if you
Should have ta’en vengeance on my faults, I never
Had liv’d to put on this; so had you saved
The noble Imo­gen to repent, and struck
Me, wretch more worth your vengeance.

No, Posthu­mus is not of a greatly val­or­ous appear­ance. His char­ac­ter in this tragi­com­edy invokes both Othello’s jeal­ous vio­lence, and escapes Romeo and Juliet’s tragic sui­cide upon think­ing one another dead, yet as mil­i­tary hero he is no Oth­ello; as lover, no Romeo.

Yet, despite all this, Iachimo’s praise of him to the audi­ence is pleas­ant, if not true. Whilst Imo­gen is as fault­less Diana, Posthu­mus forms, with her, the mar­i­tal rela­tion­ship that directs the action of this play. It would be deeply dis­sat­is­fy­ing for the cou­ple to fail in this process of “untangling”.

This pas­sage of Iachimo’s speech is clearly one from a work that is not devoted to tragedy. Iachimo presents a ” true knight” such that roman­tic (as in rela­tional, dis­tinct from “romance”) expec­ta­tions may be ful­filled upon the restora­tion of Imo­gen and Posthu­mus as a cou­ple. From that per­spec­tive, Iachimo’s speech is essen­tial. The appar­ent false­hood of ele­ments of his speech is entirely excus­able: his story is a seg­way into Imogen’s own, which in turn intro­duces Guiderius and Arvi­ra­gus  — the two who are, from the out­set, des­tined for leadership.

The audi­ence is aware of Posthu­mus’ unsuit­abil­ity for such a role; all Iachimo’s speech achieves is a restora­tion of him such that there is an inher­ent sat­is­fac­tion at the restora­tion of their mar­riage. Iachimo’s role is as dis­qual­i­fier and restorer, as he clears way for the ascen­sion of the true heirs to the throne, whilst — through a dis­course per­haps gen­tly biased — finally unit­ing Posthu­mus and Imo­gen together in happy marriage.

Tags: Dian Cecht, Imogen, Italy, Juliet, King, leader, particularly great ruler, poisoning, Roman Diana, Rome, Romeo