Introduction
Shakespeare’s late play Cymbeline explores the tension between the desire for freedom and our needs as social and political beings. In its two primary plot lines, Innogen struggles against her father’s parental and political authority, while Britain struggles to free itself from its obligations to Rome. While several commentators discuss the place of freedom in Shakespeare’s works, only Matthew James Smith details its role in Cymbeline.
John Alvis argues that freedom is the enduring theme of Shakespeare’s work, saying, “One will not read far into Shakespeare’s plays before becoming aware of the relevance of his work to an understanding of liberty. This discovery is hardly surprising … since we cannot fail to perceive that his abiding subject is human choice.”Footnote 1 Peter Holbrook, Stephen Greenblatt, and Ewan Fernie describe Shakespeare’s account of freedom largely in opposition to earlier formulations of humans as rational animals. Holbrook argues that aligning freedom with reason sets too high a bar on both. He writes that it is almost impossible to discern the goodness of any particular desire or choice. Instead, we should gauge the freeness of our activity on the intensity of the passion that drives it.Footnote 2 Referencing some of Shakespeare’s memorable characters, including Banardine from Measure to Measure, Cordelia from King Lear, and Hermia and Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he argues that Shakespeare celebrates individual authenticity, even when it leads to tragedy.Footnote 3
Fernie argues that Shakespeare should be read as the exemplar or “poet laureate” of Hegel’s ethical freedom, in which individual subjectivity is fulfilled in and enlarged by the communities of which they are a part.Footnote 4 Fernie argues correctly that Hegel is limited in his understanding of Shakespearean freedom. In the Lectures on Aesthetics Hegel says that “by the picture in which they [Shakespeare’s characters] can contemplate and see themselves objectively like a work of art, he makes them free artists of their own selves.”Footnote 5 In this, Hegel limits Shakespeare’s account of freedom to the inner freedom of pure subjectivity and does not recognize that Shakespeare’s characters move beyond their infinite subjectivity to be reconciled to the objective world around them. In this fuller account of freedom, one moves beyond being able to do what one immediately wants regardless of the moral or ethical consequences. Living in a community that recognizes and incorporates individual subjectivity, individuals, seeing their interests promoted and protected, take the interests and principles of the wider community as their own. While Fernie does not argue for Holbrook’s absolute or radical freedom, he does not connect freedom to reason despite his emphasis on self-consciousness.Footnote 6 Greenblatt similarly suggests that individual freedom is only realized in the face of limits, but does not argue that reason might be the way these limitations are set.Footnote 7
We argue that in Cymbeline Shakespeare explicitly draws together reason and freedom. We agree with Fernie that Hegel’s account of freedom best explicates Shakespeare’s position, but for Hegel freedom is an act of reason. The will, wherein our freedom emanates, is a faculty of reason. Hegel notes that “the distinction between thought and the will is simply that between theoretical and practical reason … the will is a way of thinking—thinking translating itself into existence.”Footnote 8 For Hegel this means that our individual freedom is only actualized when we choose what is rational or true. A commonsense way of understanding this is to recognize that, while freedom can mean doing what one wants, accomplishing this requires that one know what it is that is actually wanted.
Fernie, Holbrook, and Greenblatt recognize that the free play of individual subjectivity can lead to unethical and dangerous actions. Shakespeare’s plays show the often tragic consequences for individuals who do not ground their freedom in reason. Even further, as Holbrook says, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to know what one desires and whether such a choice will prove rational.Footnote 9 Previous choices are often looked back on with regret. While this does not discredit reason in itself, it points to the natural limitations of both reason and freedom. In the political realm, Hegel indicates that the development of ethical institutions can educate and direct our choices to better ends. He goes further, however, when speaking about theology, or the end as he understands it of philosophy.
The actualization of human freedom, Hegel argues, comes about with the advent of Christianity which “is the religion of truth and the religion of freedom.”Footnote 10 In Christian theology the nature of the divine is realized as truth, freedom, and love. Participating in the divine, human nature takes up these divine attributes. When the nature of the God is fully revealed, humans are called to both understand its truth and will the same. In so doing, their freedom is finally actualized. Freedom is “relating oneself to something objective without it being alien.”Footnote 11 This reciprocal exchange of wills, wherein one finds oneself fulfilled in another, is the nature of love. Adding the element of love and its constituent element forgiveness to the debate between freedom and reason shows how they might more easily be reconciled. Shakespeare explores this relationship in Cymbeline.
Smith argues that Hegel’s philosophy of reciprocal recognition is the cause of Cymbeline’s comedic ending. Cymbeline shows how mutual recognition that includes individuals’ lived histories can actualize individual autonomy and, through mutual forgiveness, free each from the determinism of past actions.Footnote 12 Building on Smith’s argument, we explore how the characters of Cymbeline strive to be free from the interference and limitations placed on them by life in community only to discover that the freedom they desire is only available in and through the diverse communities of which they are a part. Whereas Smith focuses on Hegel’s account of recognition as developed in the master–slave dialectic of The Phenomenology and its relationship to the recognition described in Aristotle’s Poetics, we engage more fully with the play’s context, which Shakespeare sets proximately around the birth of Christ and the advent of the Pax Romana.
Cymbeline’s setting, in particular its proximity to the birth of Christ, is a necessary context for interpretation, for, as Alvis says, this distinguishes the Roman plays from the British ones.Footnote 13 As in other works, Shakespeare does not limit his images to the particular time in which the play is set.Footnote 14 Cymbeline, set at the turn of the first century, appropriately references the pagan gods, particularly Jupiter. At the same time, Shakespeare weaves Christian imagery through the play, directing audiences to note the importance of its setting.Footnote 15 Sean Benson correctly argues that Shakespeare thereby highlights the scope of Christianity’s transformational reconciliations.Footnote 16
Recognizing the play’s nascent Christianity, we explore the progressive development of its characters’ understanding of themselves and the nature of freedom that results. Freedom is fulfilled when individuals recognize and will what is rational, including elements that might otherwise be seen as restrictions on their freedom. This is made possible when such restrictions are themselves made reasonable. Neither of these things is sustainable without the presence of love and a capacity to forgive and accept forgiveness. After all, individual choices and political actions often prove to be in error. While Caesar Augustus grounded the Pax Romana on the premise of rule by a common law, in Cymbeline Shakespeare suggests the possibility of a pluralistic and free community whose peace is secured not merely by universal and formal legalities, but by a reciprocal willing of the good among individuals and communities so that the letter of the law might be inspired by respect, mercy, and forgiveness.
We trace the desire for freedom and the nature and role of authority in Cymbeline as it exists first in families among children and fathers. We then turn to the play’s political communities, Britain’s monarchy and Rome’s empire. Finally, we explore Cymbeline’s consideration of the relationship between human freedom and divine authority. While characters seek to be free of even divine will, when freedom and power are understood in relationship to the play’s burgeoning Christian principles, both are transformed so that freedom becomes fulfilled in willing the good of others, while power is realized only in the recognition of forgiveness as central to its nature.
Natural authority: parents and children
Cymbeline’s opening highlights the tensions between Innogen’s desire for freedom and her obligation and responsibilities as a daughter and future monarch. The play begins by asking us to consider the proper limits of parental and, in this case, political authority. Cymbeline is overwrought with anger at Innogen’s disobedience, leading him to dehumanize Posthumus as well as Innogen. He refers to them as “thing[s]” and Innogen, like an animal, is to be penned up (1.1.126, 132, and 153). Innogen is “mad” for suggesting that Cymbeline, who raised Posthumus alongside her, is to blame for her love (1.1.148). Finally, he hopes she languishes and slowly dies as a result of her actions (1.1158–60). Cymbeline assumes an authoritative power over his daughter. As her father and king, he would tyrannically determine her personhood.
In light of his responsibility to the state, Cymbeline’s anger, if not the extent of his response, is justified. Conventionally, Cloten, the son of a Queen, is a legitimate husband for Innogen. However, other than Cloten and the ill-intentioned Queen, no one in the court agrees with Cymbeline’s decision. Instead, they are happy with Innogen’s choice, confident that Posthumus’s virtue makes him a suitable consort for both Innogen and Britain. As one courtier describes him, Posthumus’s virtue is such that one could “seek through the regions of the earth / For one his like, there would be some failing / In him that should compare” (1.1.10–26). While Posthumus later describes Innogen as a gift from the gods, he too stands singular in his worth. However appropriate it may be for a parent and monarch to be involved in the choice of their child’s spouse, in the case of Innogen’s marriage, Cymbeline’s judgment is found wanting. As such, the legitimacy of his authority over Innogen and even the court is placed in doubt.
While Cymbeline’s response to Innogen’s disobedience is overwrought, Innogen is not without blame. She expresses no regret for disobeying her father nor any sense that she might owe him, if not obedience, at least respect. Nor does she voice any thoughts regarding her obligations to the state. Innogen’s refusal to marry Cloten is reasonable. After all, Cloten is so lacking in reason and self-consciousness there is little sadness when he is later beheaded. He had little use for his head after all. However, as a daughter and princess, Innogen’s choice to marry someone without her father’s consideration should come with trepidation.
Innogen only reflects on how deeply she has offended against her obligations to her father after Posthumus betrays her. However, even here, she does not accept any responsibility, but blames her transgression on Posthumus (3.4.87–92). Innogen is not then tempted to return to court and make amends with her father. Instead, she readily agrees with Pisanio’s plan to find and serve Lucius, a commander of the Roman forces who is waging war against Britain. Innogen is prepared to let her father think she is lost and presumably dead, leaving Cymbeline bereft of children and Britain without an heir. While Cymbeline’s failings as a father are obvious, Innogen’s transgressions are also egregious.
Lest we think Innogen’s willfulness is singular, Guiderius and Arviragus also seek freedom from their “adoptive” father, Belarius. Belarius insists that their simple way of life is better than that of the court, saying, “O, this life / Is nobler than attending for a check, / Richer than doing nothing for a bauble, / Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk; / Such gain the cap of him that makes ’em fine, / Yet keeps his book uncrosses: no life to ours” (3.3.22–26). Being harder won than the luxuries of the court, the pleasures they enjoy are more satisfying, particularly because they are the work of their virtue. Guiderius and Arviragus, however, are not so easily satisfied. While Belarius is freed from what he believes is the arbitrary authority of the court, the young men want to freely experience the world beyond this natural state and draw their own conclusions.
Disagreeing with his father, Guiderius argues, “Haply this life is best / If quiet life be best, sweeter to you / That have a sharper known … but unto us it is / A cell of ignorance … A prison for the debtor” (3.3.29–34). Arviragus responds more bluntly: “We have seen nothing. / We are beastly: subtle as the fox for prey, / Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat. … Our cage / We make a choir, as doth the prisoned bird, / And sing our bondage freely” (3.3.43–48). While both young men suggest they live as prisoners, Arviragus explains that they are like animals who know nothing other than the need to survive. With nothing to compare their experiences with, Arviragus suggests that their understanding remains undeveloped. Reason, he insists, requires a diverse array of experiences such that one has the capacity to know what is good because one has already experienced and so understands what is worse. While Innogen deals with Cymbeline’s wrath, Guiderius and Arviragus are benevolently ruled by their father (1.1.8). Yet they compare themselves to prisoners, indicating that the desire for independence is a natural and necessary development for children to become rational adults.
The tension among the fathers and children in the play indicates that, once children gain a sense of their autonomy and the capacity to act upon it, parents who seek to continue to have any kind of ongoing authority, let alone a relationship with their children, have to transform the nature of their rule. They can no longer act in an authoritarian way, but must negotiate common ends based on a reciprocated respect and good will.
In contrast to the other children in Cymbeline, Posthumus is orphaned at birth and free from parental rule. While the other children resist the rule of their fathers, with both parents dead Posthumus is rootless. In exile, he is again “orphaned,” and entirely dependent on the kindness of others. His poor reception by Giocomo reveals the way he might normally expect to be treated as an orphan and an exile.
Having to depend on the good will and opinion of others, Posthumus thinks of his own relationships in external and finite terms. We see this initially when he and Innogen exchange tokens of love. When Innogen gives him her mother’s ring, she asks that he keep it, “till you woo another wife / When Innogen is dead” (1.1.113–14). While she recognizes the material and finite nature of both the ring and her life, Posthumus, giving her a bracelet, describes it as a “manacle” and Innogen his “prisoner” (1.1.123–24). Posthumus has lost his entire family and so will not consider the possibility that Innogen might too vanish in death. Instead, he handcuffs himself to her so as to be certain of her continued presence. His dependence on her is later symbolized when, believing she is dead, Posthumus engages in a continuous transformation of identity (5.1.24 and 5.3.75–77).
Innogen’s love for him makes Posthumus certain of his worth. In Hegelian terms, he comes to know himself through Innogen’s knowledge of him. When Innogen’s love and virtue appear false, everything Posthumus thought of himself is also placed in jeopardy. It is startling, however, how ready Posthumus is to believe Giocomo (2.4.110). Posthumus is so easily seduced by his desire to be recognized as worthy that he will kill the one woman he might call family. As Jeffrey Doty writes, “Posthumus’s compulsion to prove his worth leads to his undoing.”Footnote 17 While the other children demonstrate that the development of their reason depends on autonomy from the dictates of their parents, Posthumus reveals that the capacity to trust what one is and what one understands is dependent on having had a steady and dependable source of recognition and trust, a role normally provided by parental or familial figures.
Political authority: emperors and kings
Whatever freedom children might wring from their parents, they then have to contend with the authority of a political community. Even Belarius, who claims to have escaped the boundaries of a political system, is in hiding and has much to fear from the power of the throne. While the legitimacy of parental authority is bolstered by the immediacy of natural affection, political legitimacy is conventional and, aside from the power of force and fear, depends on a more rational accounting.
As the play’s children confront their parents’ rule, so subjects question and resist political power. Cymbeline, who seeks to make his daughter obey him, chides the authority of Rome over Britain, arguing Britain had its own laws and king long before Rome conquered it in battle (3.1.45–59). While the Queen points to the natural defenses posed by Britain’s landscape and Cloten focuses on the superficial differences between British and Roman noses, Cymbeline asserts a more rational reason for Britain’s independence. Britain is not a child, but a rational, self-governing entity.
Left alone with Lucius, Cymbeline offers a more pragmatic explanation of why he is willing to risk leading Britain into war with Rome: “Our subjects, sir, / Will not endure [Caesar’s] yoke, and for ourself / To show less sovereignty than they must needs / Appear unkinglike” (3.5.3–5). The legitimacy of Cymbeline’s rule is in question so long as he is not the singular sovereign of Britain. Cymbeline’s concerns point to another problem. He had used the example of Britain’s first mythological king, Mulmutius, as proof of Britain’s sovereignty. However, he also notes that Mulmutius crowned himself (3.1.57). While Cymbeline argues against the rule of Rome, he must consider the legitimacy of his own rule and whether his subjects might also seek to be independent of him in particular and of governments or monarchs more broadly. Belarius and the Queen are examples.
Belarius explains that under a monarch one is only free to do what is allowed, and so not free at all: “This service is not service, so being done / But being so allowed” (3.3.16–17). Real freedom can only be found outside political boundaries: “This rock and these domains have been my world, / Where I have lived at honest freedom” (3.3.69–71). Living outside government, Belarius is free to do what he likes and knows that whatever virtue he displays is real as it is not prescribed or required by anything other than his conscience. As we have seen, his sons express a similar desire when they say they want to experience the world themselves.
The same desire for freedom manifests itself in the plotting of the Queen. She initially seeks to position Cloten as Innogen’s groom, and, when Innogen disappears, we learn that she is slowly poisoning Cymbeline (5.4.50–56). In either case, Cloten will become king, and the Queen, manipulating his slower wits, would garner the power and freedom that she wishes. As she notes upon the absence of Innogen, “She being down, I have the placing of the British crown” (3.5.63–65). Without a husband to stay her hand or even the weight of the crown to remind her of her duty, the Queen, ruling through her son, would be at liberty to do whatever she wants, fair or foul.
Even if Cymbeline had the good will of both Belarius and the Queen, his government, and that of all hereditary monarchs and emperors, would be dependent not merely on his sound and reasonable judgment, but also the twists of nature. Hereditary monarchs depend on the longevity of their lineage to legitimize their rule, but they must be able to point to the future as well as the past. The stability of their rule requires a suitable heir or obvious successor to the throne. Hence Cymbeline’s insistence that Innogen marry Cloten. However, even if Cymbeline were able to secure their marriage, the ongoing well-being of Britain would be partially dependent on Cloten’s judgment. In this way, monarchs and emperors are dependent on unpredictable, singular moments in nature, such as the birth of a child with sufficient reason and good will that they might not only govern well but garner the willing support of their subjects.
Beyond the political realm, the characters direct their attention to the Roman gods, particularly Jupiter. Both Belarius and Cloten suggest that the divine is the only legitimate source of authority. (3.3.1–8 and 3.1.41–44). Cloten tells Lucius that the only way Britain will obey Caesar is “if Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket” (3.1.40–42). It is not sufficient that one wants to rule the world, one must have the power to so. Only the power of the gods matches the infinite nature of their wills. While Belarius is sincere in his divine devotion and Cloten more likely cynical, both indicate that there is something arbitrary about a human, even a Caesar, ruling authoritatively over others.
This point becomes even sharper when Innogen leaves Britain and experiences the potential equality of all people. Alvis, who primarily analyzes the later British histories, finds little reason for thinking that Shakespeare is concerned about the freedom of the many, and instead focuses on the freedom of kings and nobles to do as they want and should.Footnote 18 However, we argue that Shakespeare uses the character of Innogen to explore the potential nobility of all people as well as a more determinative form of equality.
Leaving the court, Innogen is freed of its conventions and, disguised as a man, she leaves behind the limitations placed on women. While she finds crossing the countryside physically demanding, that she so easily takes on the appearance and role of man suggests a natural equality among the sexes (3.6.1). Innogen, who recognizes the virtue of Posthumus despite his lowly status, has her sense of the nobility of others deepened when she happens upon the cave where Belarius and her biological brothers live. Expecting to meet some savage fate, she is instead greeted with courtesy and love, and sees the possibility of a natural nobility—one potentially present in all people. She notes their grace and kindness despite not having any of the luxury or training of the court to draw it forth, saying, “Great men / That had a court no bigger than this cave, / That did attend themselves and had the virtue / Which their own conscience sealed them, laying by / That nothing-gift of differing multitudes / Could not outpeer these twain” (3.7.78–84). Not knowing that these are her brothers, Innogen ironically notes that even noblemen forced into these circumstances would not match the virtue of Belarius, Guiderius, and Arvirigus. Conventional nobility is no match for the natural nobility she meets in these men.
Innogen later wakes up in a shallow grave beside the beheaded Cloten whom she mistakes as Posthumus. Again, albeit in the opposite way, Innogen confronts the radical equality of people. In death, Posthumus and Cloten are the same. The funeral dirge Guiderius and Arviragus sing bring this point home: “Fear no more the heat o’th’sun, / Nor the furious winter’s rages. / Thou thy worldly task has done, / Home art gone and ta’en thy wages. / Golden lads and girls all must / As chimney-sweepers, come to dust” (4.2.259–64). Mistaking Cloten’s body for that of Posthumus, Innogen unwittingly confirms the equality of all bodies, for regardless of a person’s strength or nobility, everyone will die.
The natural equality of individuals, determined by both their potential for virtue as well as the fragility of their bodies, combined with what appears to be a natural desire for freedom, raises the tenuous nature of any single individual or group ruling unilaterally over others. The gods seem to hold the only clear claim to rule.
Divine authority
While children owe their efficient existence to their parents and their ongoing security and well-being to that of political leaders, in Cymbeline, all—children, parents, and governors—trace their first cause to the gods. The nature and power of the gods is a further reference point for human equality. Just as death reduces humans to an essential equality, so when compared to the divine, must the power of all humans look alike. While Belarius and his adopted sons shrug off conventional political authority, they still pay homage to the gods; Innogen prays before she goes to sleep; and one of the courtiers offers a prayer for Innogen’s virtue and steadfastness for the sake of Britain: “The heavens hold firm / The walls of thy dear honour keep unshaken / That temple, thy firm mind, that thou mayst stand / T’enjoy thy banished lord and this great land” (2.1.8–10 and 2.1.49–61). The courtier notes that Innogen’s virtue is not solely her doing but is dependent also on divine grace.
In the same way, the autonomous existence of the individuals in the play is dependent on the will of the gods. It is not surprising, however, that certain characters reject even this limitation on their wills. Pisanio describes the treachery against Innogen as akin to that of the serpent of the Nile or the snake that killed Cleopatra, and Posthumus, believing Innogen to have betrayed him, refers to the ring she had given him as a basilisk, a mythical serpent said to kill anyone who looks at it (2.4.106 and 3.4.33–35). More than just symbols from Ancient Rome, his imagery points to the snake in the Garden of Eden that tempted Eve and thereby Adam to disobey divine authority. Throughout the play, Giocomo is akin to the serpent, while Innogen and Posthumus stand as references to Eve and Adam.
Several times across the course of the play Giocomo is referred to as strange (1.6.191, 2.1.30, 31, 33, 37). In the context of these scenes, the word strange means that he is not from Britain and so is estranged from its people and customs. More than just a foreigner, Giocomo is outside the borders that define right and wrong. In this sense, he is estranged not just from the political laws of Britain, but also the moral and divine laws of the play.
Meeting Posthumus, Giocomo immediately challenges his account of Innogen’s virtue. She is so virtuous that nothing could tempt her to act viciously. Innogen is as a god and Posthumus rates her virtue as eternal (1.4.90–93). Posthumus further argues that Innogen “is a gift of the gods,” which he will keep according to their “graces” (1.4.80–83). Posthumus recognizes the degree to which his good fortune in gaining Innogen’s love is dependent on divine grace. Giocomo’s response, however, does not reference the work or favor of the gods. Instead, he notes that purely human or natural causes could win Innogen from Posthumus’s side (1.4.82–86). Failing to woo her, Giocomo then breaks the contract he has signed with Posthumus and fraudulently convinces Posthumus that Innogen betrayed him. The will of the gods is as authoritative as the piece of paper, and Giocomo will be ruled by neither.
While Giocomo’s vice is obvious, we cannot forget the failings of Innogen and Posthumus. Like Adam and Eve who disobey God, they disobey the command of their father and king respectively. While the original pair are immediately aware and made ashamed of their nakedness, Innogen and Posthumus take their love and each other’s virtue as an indication of their righteousness. This points toward our conclusion wherein love becomes the means by which injustice is overcome. It is not until they each meet Giocomo and eventually believe that their love has been betrayed that they know the possibility of evil, if not directly in themselves, then in the person they most trusted. Inasmuch as they had previously seen and known themselves in each other, this works as a way of mediating their guilt until they are finally able to see their own vice.
Posthumus quickly realizes his fault. Believing he has killed Innogen, he immediately regrets his actions and forgives her for her presumed betrayal, saying now that she erred, “but a little” (5.1.5). Posthumus seeks to atone for his sins and redirects himself both to the gods and Innogen. Praying to the former, he concludes, “Do your blest wills, / And make me blest to obey” (5.1.16–17). Posthumus, who had disobeyed Cymbeline’s authority when marrying Innogen, and then acted as if her life were somehow his to give or take, now willingly turns to the gods, submitting to their authority. He now tells the gods, “Innogen is your own,” signalling that Posthumus now recognizes an authority greater than any other and whose universality is such that it governs nobles and orphans alike (5.1.16).
In this vein Posthumus fights for Britain, but whereas he had regretted his ignoble status, he now embraces the image of a peasant. Stripping off his Italian uniform, Posthumus says, “To shame the guise of the world, I will begin / The fashion: less without and more within” (5.1.32–33). While in exile, Posthumus’ need for the recognition of others led him to the worst of betrayals. Now he understands that all that he does is known by the gods. Posthumus no longer worries about how he appears to others, as the only recognition that matters comes from those who know the state of his soul.
While dedicating himself to virtue, specifically courage, Posthumus believes his crimes can only be atoned for in death. In three speeches, he says that he will die for Innogen, saying “so I’ll die / For thee, O Innogen, even for whom my life / Is every breath a death” (5.1.25–27) and “I, in my woe charmed, / Could not find death where I did hear him groan … Well, I will find him” (5.3.67–73). Finally, when in prison Posthumus explains that death is his path to freedom: “My conscience, thou are fettered / More than my shanks and wrists. You gods give me / The penitent instrument to pick that bolt, / Then free … For Innogen’s dear life take mine” (102–16). Having taken a life, he now thinks he can balance the scales of justice by dying himself. Having killed the woman he loves, Posthumus sees no joy in living and is wracked by the guilt of what he has done.
Posthumus cannot imagine being forgiven without his full surrender in death, for as he says, “Is’t enough I am sorry? / So children temporal fathers do appease; / Gods are more full of mercy … to satisfy… take no stricter render of me than my all” (105–12). The gods, he believes, must be first “satisfied” that justice is fulfilled before they will accord forgiveness. His penitence can only be sufficiently known through his death. Christianity, wherein forgiveness is freely offered, is not yet known to him.
Jeremy Tambling notes the repetitive imagery of trunks in the play, referencing both the trunk that Giocomo climbs into in Innogen’s room and the trunk of the body that is all that is left of Cloten.Footnote 19 When read in light of the Christianity of Shakespeare’s age, this image also suggests both the tree of knowledge as well as the tree which formed the cross for Christ’s crucifixion. Posthumus thinks that his death is the necessary price for having had Innogen killed. However, as Howard Felperin notes when describing the “rarer action” that is taking place offstage, “The incarnation represents a turning point within Christian history from the eras of nature and law to a new era of grace.”Footnote 20 Christ’s death is essential to this new grace. Given the infinite nature of human crime and vice, only an infinite sacrifice is sufficient to balance the scales of justice. By means of the crucifixion, all our past and future vices are “paid” for such that a person need only accept the forgiveness that is now offered by God. Following Hegel, once a person understands their capacity for vice and the nature of divine love, the appropriate response is empathy and forgiveness for failings of others.
Posthumus has never experienced the forgiveness of a loving parent and so only theoretically understands the kind of mercy that might be shown by a loving god. Falling asleep, he dreams of his family urging Jupiter to save him from his misfortune only to wake and find a tablet on his chest. Although he notes his good fortune in the vision he had of his family, he initially looks at the tablet with distrust (5.3.226–30). Posthumus does not reference his vision of Jupiter or Jupiter’s claims that all of Posthumus’s misfortunes will be reversed. This is too much for him to hope. Receiving word that he will be soon executed, Posthumus says, “I am called to be made free” (5.4.285). At this point, Posthumus embodies his name for the only goodness he can hope for is “after death.”
Reconciling freedom and authority
Commentators almost consistently note the strength of Innogen’s virtue and character, pointing to her ongoing love of Posthumus as a sign of her integrity. Her capacity to love is connected to her capacity for life and renewal. Giocomo is the first to name Innogen’s propensity for life and renewal, describing her as an “Arabian bird,” an allusion to the Phoenix, a mythological creature revered for its ability to regenerate itself first by burning up, and then by rising from its own ashes (1.6.17). Innogen continuously revives herself, finding reasons to continue in the world and preserve her virtue. When her father sends Posthumus into exile, Innogen, foretelling the Christian virtues and vices, tells us that she is past the grace of gods: “Past hope and in despair” (1.1.138). However, the next time we see her, she hopefully waits for a letter from Posthumus (1.3.22–23). When Posthumus orders her death, Innogen urges Pisanio to kill her. However, she is quickly persuaded to hope and turn again to life, resurrecting herself as Fidele.
While Innogen’s previous life was insulated by the safety of the court and the surety of Posthumus’s love, turned out in the world she experiences loss and the possibility of her own death and the death of those she loves. Even when she believes that she has been betrayed by Pisanio and that he has plotted and succeeded in killing Posthumus, she revives herself, transferring her fidelity and service to Lucius. If the court is initially a garden of Eden, Innogen leaves it, experiences the world, and in so doing comes to know the nature of good and evil. Nonetheless, she remains Fidele, faithful to life and the possibility of better ends. Innogen is a symbol of the resurrection, wherein death is overcome by life.
The allusions to Christian imagery, particularly to the crucifixion and resurrection, become fully secured in Cymbeline’s final scenes.Footnote 21 With Roman and British soldiers, friends and enemies, lost sons and exiled husbands all gathered together in Cymbeline’s court, Belarius cries out upon seeing Innogen, “Is not this boy revived from death?” (5.5.119). Her brothers echo Belarius’s sentiment, with Guiderius saying, “The same dead thing alive” (5.5.123 and 5.5.120–22). While these men wonder at seeing the boy they thought dead and buried now standing before them, Posthumus responds angrily, for not recognizing Innogen, he strikes her down as someone who is getting in the way of his execution. As Sean Benson explains, “resurrectionary possibilities, even of the natural kind, collide in the last act with the paganism of the characters and their world. Posthumus cannot even begin to imagine Innogen could possibly be alive.”Footnote 22
Shakespeare has curated a somewhat perplexing reversal. Innogen’s estranged brothers, kept since childhood from the truth about their identities, and the morally questionable Belarius are privy to this instantiation of supernatural revival and recognition. Posthumus, on the other hand, Innogen’s husband and the character closest to her in the play, is blind to the beauty and truth offered in this moment. Unable to imagine and hope that Innogen lives, Posthumus is, at least for the moment, relegated to the pagan past, while Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus are drawn immediately into a different, perhaps higher reality. As we later discuss, this speaks to the integrity of appearance which at the same time points to a greater meaning.
Posthumus’ inability to hope for the continuance of life is connected to his inability to imagine the endurance of love. The ghosts of his parents and brothers lament his fate to Jupiter: “Then Jupiter, thou king of gods, / Why hast thou thus adjorned / The graces for his merits due, / Being all dolours turned” (5.3.171–74). Posthumus has imagined that he is not loved. The absence of his physical family and the loss of Innogen left him unmoored and encouraged him to imagine the worst. He has not considered that, despite their physical absence, their love might endure and so have meaning and even an impact on his fortunes.
Jupiter’s arrival indicates the effect of his family’s ongoing love and prayers. Echoing Posthumus’s declaration that he would leave himself to the will of the gods, Jupiter advises his family to do the same. He begins by telling them to attend to things of immortal worth, “Be not with mortal accidents oppressed; / No care of yours it is” (5.3.193–94). He continues, however, explaining his will so that they might understand, and so be at rest: “you know, / Whom I best love, I cross, to make my gift, / The more delayed, delighted” (5.3.195–96). The trials that Posthumus and Innogen encounter make their eventual reunion more joyous, presumably not merely because of the contrast between the earlier pain followed by pleasure, but because they are now in a position to better understand what they potentially lost, and so are more capable of fully taking pleasure in it. The prayers of Posthumus’s family mediate divine will and, as a result, his mortal fortunes.
The riddle inside the tablet left by Jupiter further indicates that the natural and finite order is not distinctly apart from the world or will and authority of the gods, but mediates divine truths to those who will tend to them. The tablet speaks in riddles or metaphors, likening the people to animals and elements of the physical world: “‘Whereas a lion’s whelp shall to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air: and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow, then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty” (5.3.232–38). The riddle requires its readers to discern what is symbolized in each of the images. Posthumus, the lion’s whelp, does not know himself as loved and in this state of despair will yet be embraced by “a piece of tender air.” While we know Innogen as the tender air, we cannot help but note the spiritual connotation, for air, unlike Innogen’s physical body, will embrace him in a different way. Posthumus will be revived from his despair by the love of a woman that mediates divine grace.
While the images point beyond themselves, each one is important for understanding its true meaning. The riddle demonstrates something of the integrity and importance of the phenomenal world of which Posthumus despairs. The phenomena are the means by which we might come to understand the nature of reality. The images do not point only to metaphysical ideas, but to particular, living people—individuals who have to exist phenomenally for the riddle to come true and for Posthumus to be happy. In this way the riddle further speaks to the importance of the finite world. Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviraus recognize Innogen but Posthumus does not. At this moment she is still dressed as a man and so her appearance speaks more directly to their last experience of her. Composed of both bodies and souls, humans speak to the comedic juncture of the physical and metaphysical, or appearance and reality, wherein by properly attending to appearance we can know something about reality. The gods’ rule is not arbitrary but can be known in and through the world in which these characters live.
Although only briefly appearing in the play before its conclusion, Cymbeline has time and again mistaken the appearance of things as their full reality. He mistakes the appearance of the Queen’s love as real and Cloten’s formal nobility as referring to the state of his soul. Similar to Cymbeline’s focus on appearance is his dedication to the letter of positive law. This is most explicit at the end of the play when, discovering that Guiderius has killed Cloten, Cymbeline says that they must follow the law, and so even though Guiderius has just helped save Cymbeline’s life, he will face execution. Belarius reasonably protests: “Stay, sir King. / This man is better than the man he slew. / As well descended as thyself, and hath / More of thee merited than a band of Clotens” (5.4.302–4). Without giving up his identity, Belarius assures Cymbeline of the great nobility of Guiderius. Cymbeline, however, is instantly angered, this time by the suggestion that someone whom he takes to be a commoner is said to be as well born as himself. Once again, Cymbeline’s focus is on the appearance of things rather than their true nature.
However, once Belarius, risking his own life, explains that Guiderius and Arviragus are the King’s lost sons, Cymbeline appears to synthesize and understand the fuller meaning of all of the recent revelations. He had trusted in the appearance of the Queen’s love, but now knows that she was false. Innogen, whom he had taken to be lost, has appeared at his side dressed as a Roman and then revealed her true identity. Now the sons he thought were dead have appeared as mere commoners and are revealed as noble, both in their nature and titles. Everything that Cymbeline had thought to be true has been proven false. As he says, “This fierce abridgement / Hath to it circumstantial branches which / Distinction should be rich in” (5.4.383–84). He looks forward to hearing the details and peering below the surface so as to discern the full nature of what has happened. As Constance Jordan says, “What is identified as divine [in the play] is not some supernatural agent that defies natural law or makes positive law irrelevant, but the voice of the individual conscience speaking words that have meaning, and arguably new meaning because of the historical moment in which they are spoken, the moment of the incarnation of the Word in the reigns of Cymbeline and Augustus Caesar.”Footnote 23 The point is not that the Christian God overturns or destroys what had been previously understood as true, but rather redeems or perfects it. This means that it is not necessary that the characters fully understand or believe in a particular image of the divine. It is sufficient that they attend to the reality of the world and people around them such that they see past semblances to what is truly indicated.
Before Cymbeline can turn to the details of events, he first witnesses the extraordinary nature of love that is freely reciprocated and the causal and resultant forgiveness. He directs his own and the audience’s attention to something which he takes as more important than the intricate stories of what has happened. “See / Posthumus anchors on Innogen, / And she like harmless lightning, throws her eye / On him, her brothers, me, her master, hitting / Each object with joy. The counterchange / Is severally in all” (5.4.393–98). Cymbeline thought he understood love, believing that the Queen loved him and imagining that he could discern the best match for his daughter and, thereby, Britain. Now, however, he is seemingly amazed to see the genuine love that exists among Innogen and her brothers as well as with Posthumus, and indeed, himself. Posthumus now “anchors on Innogen.” No longer manacled to him, she is the ship that will guide him as he strives to anchor her. Innogen’s joy in the reconciliation of all whom she loves is contagious. Seeing and knowing themselves in her love, they share in her joy.
As noted, the nature of Innogen’s love is remarkable. Although she has spent only a brief time with Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus, she immediately loves them. Seeing the instinct of her love, Cymbeline turns to Belarius and embraces him, calling him a brother, leading Innogen to refer to him as a father (5.4.399 and 401). Prior to this moment any attempt to equate another with him drew his anger. Cymbeline now responds, saying, “All o’erjoyed” (5.4.403).
While it might be natural that Innogen feels affection for her brothers, one might expect her relationship with her father and Posthumus to be more complicated. After all, Cymbeline was prepared to marry her to Cloten and Posthumus betrayed her and even ordered her death. Yet just as Innogen loves her brothers, so she loves her father and husband regardless of how they have acted. Katherine Gillen argues that Innogen, whose chastity is initially equated with a commodity to be exchanged, is finally recognized for her intrinsic virtue only to be relegated to the private sphere, as a wife and presumably a mother.Footnote 24 However, while we know that Innogen will no longer be Britain’s monarch, there is no indication that she will give up any of the autonomy she has gained, particularly now that she knows herself and all other people as equal. She continues to love and is reconciled to Posthumus and Cymbeline; however, that they have been transformed through the course of the play seems essential to the ongoing well-being of these relationships.
As a result of Innogen’s loving example, Posthumus turns to Giocomo, who kneels, prepared for his just punishment. Posthumus, however, responds with forgiveness: “The power I have on you is to spare you, the malice towards you to forgive you” (5.4.419–20). Innogen reveals how forgiveness is an essential component of love. Posthumus betrayed her in his contract with Giocomo, then ordered her death, and had struck her so hard that she appeared to be dead. Her love, however, is such that she forgives all that has been done to her. Posthumus now responds in kind. His words to Giocomo words are notable. He indicates that his power lies not in the expected execution of Giocomo. Indeed, inasmuch as this might be legally just, it really takes little to no power to accomplish. We have seen in the example of Cloten how easy it is for one person to kill another, and indeed, in enough time, all our enemies eventually die regardless of what we do. Instead, Posthumus says that any power he has stems from love, and love looks not to death, but to life.
While previously Cymbeline saw nothing worthwhile in Posthumus and no reason for Innogen to love to him, he now sees an example to copy. Forgetting about the letter of the law, Cymbeline leans into its spirit, pardoning everyone, including the Roman soldiers who attacked his kingdom and nearly took his life: “We’ll learn our freeness of a son-in-law. / Pardons the word to all” (5.4.423–24). While Posthumus spoke of the nature of power, Cymbeline takes this a step further and speaks of freedom.
If power lies in forgiveness, then the outcome is freedom both for those forgiven and for those who would otherwise retain their anger. Posthumus is imprisoned not merely by the bars of the jail cell, but first by his terrible anger and then his guilt. While forgiveness in the Christian account is freely given by God, for it to be effective, it must be sought for and accepted. This requires the wrongdoer to acknowledge their crime and seek to be reconciled to those who they have wronged. As Sarah Beckwith highlights, all of those who have wronged others through the course of the play, with the exception of the dead Cloten, confess their crimes, starting with the Queen.Footnote 25 Whatever Shakespeare hints of the need for individuals to atone for their crimes, he here indicates that the power and freedom associated with forgiveness requires that both the wronged and the wrongdoer freely and reciprocally engage in the act.
Smith explains in Hegelian terms, saying that “Hegel believes, to be truly free is not accomplished by imagining one’s will to be untouched by alien causes, such as the will of another, but rather through coming to grips with the social and historical conditioning of freedom … that is mediated through and in the recognition of others.”Footnote 26 Smith focuses on the way this recognition occurs in the master/slave dialectic and the kind of freedom known when one willingly risks one’s life. Several characters experience this kind of struggle. Cymbeline, Posthumus, Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus all participate in the war, risking their lives for Britain’s freedom. Yet Cymbeline follows Hegel’s argument to the advent of Christianity, such that not all struggles for freedom need literally or even figuratively risk death. As Hegel understands in the crucifixion, Christ overturns the necessity of death.Footnote 27 Cymbeline’s willing concession to Rome at the end of the play reveals a new and broader understanding of what freedom entails, not the enslavement of those who are weaker, but relinquishing one’s power so that the other might be included, their freedom enriching one’s own.
The play began with Innogen wanting to be free from her father’s will and Britain seeking its freedom from Rome. Freedom was then assumed to be being able to do what one wanted and not being beholden to anything or anyone. Innogen should not be restrained by her father’s will and Britain ought not owe anything to Rome. Such obligations speak of dependence and even servitude. However, if power is now understood as love rather than dominion, it speaks to a reciprocity such that parties recognize both their equality with, but also dependence on, the other. Freedom is not a freedom from others, but is found in a willed and reciprocated love. Britain now finds its freedom not in denying Rome but in willingly recognizing their historical and future relationship. Cymbeline recognizes and accepts Innogen’s autonomy in matters of love, made easier by the reappearance of her brothers, while she readily forgives him for his harshness. As Alvis puts it, this condition of freedom “look[s] to the goal of making the universal law one’s own, rather than escaping all law in the exercise of the unfettered will.”Footnote 28
The play ends with repeated claims of peace. Prior to Cymbeline’s reconciliation with Rome, Posthumus asks that the Soothsayer be brought to interpret the note that he discovered while in jail. The reunion of Cymbeline, Innogen, Guiderius, and Arviragus presumably reminds him of the family that he also thought was lost, but which visited him in his dream. The Soothsayer interprets the note to everyone’s satisfaction and hearing Jupiter’s prophecy of peace leads Cymbeline to announce they will continue to pay Rome’s tribute. “Let a Roman and British ensign wave / Friendly together” (5.4.480–81). No longer victor and defeated, they will now walk together as friends.
The Soothsayer also reinterprets the vision he had previously claimed as indicating Rome’s victory. Rome, he now says, has still won, for it will enjoy the forthcoming peace. However, it has achieved this only by lessening itself: “For the Roman eagle / From south to west on wings soaring aloft, / Lessened herself, and in the beams o’th’ sun.” (5.4.471–72). Just as Britain willingly forsakes some of its power and continues to pay tribute to Rome, so Rome, which lost the war, must now be willing to humble itself and graciously accept this favour. Once power is understood and accepted as love, then peace and friendship are possible. That the eagle flies from the south, where the sun is the most powerful, to the west, where it sets, suggests that Britain’s empire, in a contrast to Rome, will understand the limitations of its power and the need for such friendships.
As the play ends, almost all elements of the prophecy are complete: Innogen is reunited with Posthumus and Cymbeline with his children. In this reunion, we see a play of resurrection, for Cymbeline and the entire court, including Innogen and Posthumus, imagined that Guiderius and Arviragus were dead, while Cymbeline had no idea where Innogen was and Posthumus presumed her dead. Now all who were thought dead are alive and reunited with those who grieved their loss. For those so affected and presumably for the audience, the play raises the question of a more absolute resurrection and, further, how one should act when given new life. Cymbeline, who has now learned and gained so much, ends the play speaking about the sacrifices they will make to Jupiter (5.4.398 and 477).
This is particularly poignant when we return to Innogen. Up to the final scenes she has been defined by her chastity and faithfulness. Bereft of Posthumus and Pisanio, she attached herself to the Roman Lucius. Captured, Lucius asks only that his servant, Fidele, be saved. Describing Innogen/Fidele he says, “never master had / a page so kind, so cut out, diligent / So tender over his occasions, true, / So feat, so nurse-like” (5.4.85–88). Innogen then has the opportunity to demonstrate her faithfulness by asking in return that her master be let go. Spotting Giocomo, she instead looks for revenge, saying, “I see a thing / Bitter to me as death. Your life, good master, / Must shuffle for itself” (5.4.102–4). With this Innogen turns away from Lucius and seemingly never references him again. Seeing Giocomo, she paraphrases Ecclesiastes 7:26: “And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her.” For Innogen, Giocomo is like a seductive woman who snared Posthumus and caused him to sin against Innogen. Innogen, ironically, does not seem to realize that she is similarly betraying Lucius.
At the end of the play, Innogen, who has stood as a symbol of virtue, shows herself yet to be mortal and a participant in the finite and imperfect world. The appearance of Posthumus reminds Innogen of the stronger nature of her love, for she rushes to him twice, even after he has struck her. Their happy ending, as Cymbeline reminds us, is entirely dependent on Guiderius and Arviragus being found alive, for they now take official responsibility for the crown. We agree with Alison Thorne that by this very incongruity Shakespeare warns us against imagining that our own interpretative capacities can find or make comprehensive accounts of the play or the world.Footnote 29 We add that Shakespeare offers us the tools of love and forgiveness as ways to navigate the ever-evolving complexity of life in community and the contingent world of which we are a part.
Conclusion
Cymbeline pushes against the general trend to understand Shakespeare as espousing the value of freedom as doing whatever one wants. While he explores human freedom in all its forms, he celebrates it as a virtue when it is underscored by reason. While Holbrook notes the difficulty and even impossibility of ensuring that all choices are rational, Shakespeare does not demand this high a bar. Cymbeline shows how the principles of love and forgiveness, as understood in Christianity, moderate the demands of reason.
Doty argues that the play’s final actions are utopian “because virtue is a quality that can inhere in anyone, not just princes, and because virtuous action promotes the collective good.”Footnote 30 We see Cymbeline’s utopian conclusion differently. The comedic end certainly requires several unlikely coincidences to occur simultaneously, including Giocomo’s penitent appearance. However, no one in the play has acted with perfect virtue. The happy ending comes about only when each recognizes their failures, and then turns to another and offers forgiveness. It is, however, utopian to think of forgiveness as a principle that can animate a political community.
Shakespeare argues that forgiveness, like all virtues, works neither as a law nor a convention. While directed toward another, forgiveness can only be given and received individually. Holbrook suggests a necessary tension between individual freedom and ethics or at least goodness.Footnote 31 Yet our ethical obligations are only fulfilled when we freely will them. All of Shakespeare’s characters, and especially those of Cymbeline, are shown as either fulfilled or in despair in direct relationship to the possibility of an eventual reconciliation with the wider community of which they are a part. Jordan posits that the recognition of the value and weight of individual conscience is the root of the Cymbeline’s reconciliations, marked by Cymbeline’s acknowledgment and upholding of both Innogen and Posthumus’ marriage, a union grounded not in formal legalities but the conscience of each, and of Britian’s original agreement to pay a tribute, something that need no longer be paid except to honor the conscience of his ancestor.Footnote 32
Perhaps because of its miraculous ending, Cymbeline reminds us that, in the finite world, not everyone will be so fortunate as these characters—after all, Cloten and the Queen are dead. The final resolution is utopian in that everyone present has forgiven one another, and so there are no political ramifications. It is unlikely, for instance, that the Queen would have as easily forgiven Guiderius for killing her son. One can imagine that Belarius will struggle with his independence and life in a political community, and there is no reason to imagine that any of the children will not continue to have moments of disagreement or tension with their parents. All of this points to our limitations and the possibility that we too might act viciously, and so need to be loved and forgiven by others. Cymbeline reminds us of our responsibility to those who seek to express their autonomy, to guide them to good ends and to respond forgivingly when they fail. In this way, a political community and individual freedom are both maintained and fulfilled. Individuals willingly concede to the authority of those who they understand as acting with concerted good will and those in positions of authority who are governed by their own good will understand that true power lies in the capacity to forgive.
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