“Deceased as He Was Born”: Past, Present, Future Queens in William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline

Abstract

This study uncovers the corroboration of patrilineal rule in William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline through an analysis of royal heirs, gender, and power. The head and body as metaphor for Christ and the church appears in Saint Paul’s first epistle to Corinthians. Conversely, James I’s self-representation adds the roles of husband and shepherd to describe his relationship with England and Scotland and their subjects in “Speech to Parliament of 19 March 1604.” This religio-political notion of harmonious interdependence, however, appears disjointed in Cymbeline because the head of the realm is blind to the problems of his remarriage. While James uses monogamy as a secular metaphor to depict a union of England and Scotland, Shakespeare’s romance portrays matrimony as producing strife, assassination attempts, and plots to enthrone Cymbeline’s stepson instead of Princess Imogen, his sole heir. To divert the succession to her son by a former marriage, the Queen conspires to poison Cymbeline and Imogen. Moreover, Imogen privileges romance over politics as demonstrated by her clandestine nuptials and her departure from court to follow the instructions in Posthumous’s letter. False information of Imogen’s seduction, reminiscent of Othello, enrages her husband and even makes him doubt his mother’s fidelity. The play presents the two lost princes as alternatives; Guiderius, in a symbolic act as Cymbeline’s eldest son, beheads Cloten, and, with Arviragus, fights the Romans. The two princes supersede Imogen, and Cymbeline symbolically reproduces royal progeny, “O, what, am I / A mother to the birth of three?” (5.5.368-69). The dramatization of the reunion between Cymbeline and his sons partially resolves anxieties associated with wives and mothers, yet the play remains ambiguous about the competence of rulers and the births of future heirs.