No pretty PDFs of this one. I wrote it in a nor­mal word-processor (because jaggy, unjus­ti­fied lines are eas­ier to read) so there were no LaTeX sources to make doc­u­ments from. OpenOf­fice does PDF export but there’s not much point. Shrug. Speech fol­lows, ~5mins (prob­a­bly over, closer to 6). ~950 words.

Scene 4 in Act 2 of Shakespeare’s Cym­be­line affords us a great deal that is of inter­est when exam­in­ing the devel­op­ment of romance nar­ra­tive through­out time.

This por­tion of the play is a scene — just in case, you know, every­one doesn’t, ah, remem­ber what the read­ing was — a scene in which Posthu­mus is in the house of Phi­lario, dis­cussing the present polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion that exists between Rome and Eng­land. As Penny Gay men­tioned in her sec­ond lec­ture on Cym­be­line, there’s a cer­tain depar­ture from his­tory at this point. We are made aware that there is trou­ble brew­ing over the ces­sa­tion of the pay­ment of trib­utes to Rome, and, in Posthu­mus’ words, “this will prove a war”.

It’s unabashed nation­al­ism, com­pletely shame­less, and writ­ten in such a way that a con­tem­po­rary audi­ence would thor­oughly approve: “You shall hear/ The legions now in Gal­lia sooner landed/In our not-fearing Britain than have tidings/Of any penny trib­ute paid.” O’Neill would, how­ever, have us call this some­thing other than the re-writing of History.

It is the con­struc­tion of a fic­tional world — a fic­tional world that, it should be said, bears some mark of real­ity… but a fic­tional one nonethe­less. In fic­tion, as O’Neill explains, every­thing is con­tin­gent upon noth­ing aside from the whim of the author; that term, of course, extend­ing to include “play­wright”, “poet”, and all other man­ner of narrative-creator.

So in this fic­tional world, against this back­drop of polit­i­cal tur­moil, Iachimo enters. He enters amidst Posthu­mus’ nation­al­is­tic out­bursts, and it almost appears as though Posthu­mus doesn’t realise the issue at hand has altered, so unfal­ter­ing is his courage in his spouse, as with his nation.

“I hope the brief­ness of your answer made/The speed­i­ness of your return.” — he could well be speak­ing of an emissary’s rebut­tal at the hands of a for­eign power demand­ing trib­ute. There is some­thing diaphanous about the edges of these themes, as though Shake­speare has feath­ered them together inten­tion­ally. Our con­cep­tion of “state” is quite dif­fer­ent from that of mar­riage, but per­haps there is some­thing to be made of the way in which they are together, here. I think it pos­si­ble that we are being invited to exam­ine Posthu­mus against expec­ta­tions of what befits a “good” hus­band, specif­i­cally with regards to his lead­er­ship qual­i­ties. As a poten­tial states­man, Posthu­mus has not yet been thor­oughly dis­qual­i­fied. That comes in the scene fol­low­ing this, wherein he throws a hys­ter­i­cal, misog­y­nis­tic, tempter tantrum.

I con­sider this jux­ta­po­si­tion of polit­i­cal and rela­tional dis­cus­sion some­thing that is meant to con­nect the two in our minds: Posthu­mus is, after­all, being eval­u­ated not only as the con­demn­ing hus­band of Imo­gen, but also as a poten­tial ruler of the state. His apti­tude for both roles is seri­ously brought into ques­tion through­out this play: and often through the same events.

In an envi­ron­ment of ironic cru­dity, the sup­posed elite of Renais­sance Europe gather in Philario’s house, jest­ing about the con­stancy of, in par­tic­u­lar, Posthu­mus’ wife Imo­gen. Posthu­mus is agree­ably con­fi­dent in his wife’s fidelity, but, some­what less agree­ably, will­ing to sub­ject her to the approaches of one Iachimo. In con­clud­ing their wager, Posthu­mus declares:

Only, thus far you shall answer: if you make your voy­age upon her, and give me directly to under­stand you have prevail’d, I am no fur­ther your enemy; she is not worth our debate : if she remain unseduc’d, you not mak­ing it appear oth­er­wise, for your ill opin­ion, and the assault you have made to her chastity, you shall answer me with your sword.

This doesn’t take too much unpack­ing. In the case that Iachimo suc­ceeds, Posthu­mus explic­itly says “I am no fur­ther your enemy”. Back in Act II Scene IV, Iachimo is speak­ing of the par­tic­u­lars of Imogen’s cham­ber, and says he must speak in greater detail to jus­tify his knowl­edge. Posthu­mus agrees, stat­ing: “So they must,/Or do your hon­our injury”. There is a con­cern here for Iachimo’s hon­our even amidst his defama­tion of Posthu­mus’ wife. Again, on line 124, Posthu­mus responds to Philario’s ratio­nal sug­ges­tion that a cor­rupt ser­vant may have taken a token on Iachimo’s behalf, say­ing “I am sure/ She would not lose it : her atten­dants are/ All sworn and honourable”.

Sworn and hon­ourable, in fact, beyond the hon­our of his wife? Appar­ently, in Posthu­mus’ mind, this is true.

All this has a fan­tas­tic irony about it, as it serves both to cri­tique Posthu­mus as leader, and as hus­band. The two are insep­a­ra­ble; Posthu­mus has failed in ways a Renais­sance man is not per­mit­ted to fail, demon­strat­ing his cru­dity, his lack of faith, his inabil­ity to lead respon­si­bly even his wife — in the eyes of the audi­ence, he has failed.

This is realised through a nar­ra­tive that is cal­cu­lat­ing in its grad­ual rev­e­la­tion and con­struc­tion of the char­ac­ter Posthu­mus: we see this in the estab­lish­ment of the wager, Act 1 Scene 4; its con­tin­u­a­tion as Iachimo slowly unveils his deceit in Act 2 Scene 4, and Posthu­mus’ propen­sity to doubt his wife jeal­ously; his tantrum in Act 2 Scene 5; and, later, his order­ing her mur­der; and, later still, his grov­el­ing repen­tance rather unlike Iachimo’s stoic admis­sion of guilt. Iachimo is, in some respects, an anti-Posthumus. He is cal­cu­lat­ing, not impul­sive; cun­ning, not deceived; and orches­tra­tor of much action with regards to Posthu­mus’ rela­tion­ship with Imo­gen: he leads their rela­tion­ship, whilst Posthu­mus is (falsely) led.

This should not be taken to mean that Iachimo is a paragon of great lead­er­ship — this is, after­all, a com­edy in a world sus­pended between his­tor­i­cal fact and Renais­sance dis­course. There is scope for some degree of reflex­iv­ity within this play, as Shake­speare pokes fun at his own char­ac­ters, using oth­ers to delin­eate their foibles and pro­pel the nar­ra­tive towards its inevitable, genre-defined, close: poetic justice.

Tags: and as husband, author, Britain, Imogen, LaTeX, leader, normal word-processor, Penny Gay, poet, Rome, United Kingdom