Essays on Literature, Literary / Textual Criticism, and Pedagogy
Editor: Ollie O. Oviedo, Eastern New Mexico University
Assistant Editors: Royal Prentice, Harvey Stanbrough,
Eastern New Mexico University
Symbols of Transformation
in Cymbeline
John Boe
English Department
University of California
Introduction
Shakespeare's late plays are deeply, if not traditionally, religious. These plays employ a pastoral framework, where the
world of nature is endowed with the magical or religious qualities lacking in the court world. One critic who emphasized
the religiosity of the late plays, E. M. W. Tillyard, asserts of Cymbeline: "The Welsh hills are, as it were, the womb in
which the new life is growing to birth" (Tillyard 27). Thus the pastoral scenes in Shakespeare's late plays contribute to
the regenerative pattern, helping to create the sense of what Tillyard calls "planes of reality." This phrase, Tillyard
explains, "implies a state of mind akin to the religious; for simply to present different planes of reality without imposing a
pattern on them is an act of homage to the unknown, of humility, the very reverse of self-assertion" (67). That there
indeed are "planes of reality," namely outer reality and inner reality (the world of the psyche), is the basis of Jungian
psychology. In Cymbeline, Posthumus's prison dream and the Welsh countryside most clearly create this feeling of
another (inner) reality. From C. G. Jung's psychological point of view, contact with the inner world is a prerequisite for
psychological or religious transformation. Cymbeline illuminates such transformation by dramatizing it as a natural
process of renewal (such as found in sleep), discovered through a pastoral journey.1 Cymbeline further amplifies this
experience of psychological transformation with a group of archetypal images: the tree, the air (the nothing), and the bird.
Frank Kermode asserted a generation ago that The Tempest (especially in regard to its use of magic) was "rich in
material for a Jungian interpretation," and a recent critic has argued that because Jung "values traditional religious
symbols while acknowledging the emptiness of much traditional doctrine, Jung's thinking is more productive than Freud's
when applied to the Romances—where pagan deities and rituals call for a nonreductive interpretation" (Kermode lxxxiii;
Bieman 15). Because Jung's psychology accepts the reality of religious experience and doesn't reduce it to social
construction or disguised sexuality, this psychology is particularly suitable for analyzing Cymbeline. Because Cymbeline
has such a strong spiritual dimension, it seems fitting that Tennyson chose to read it as he lay dying. His grandson
recounts the death day:
All that day he had asked repeatedly for his Shakespeare, though he could not read. In the middle of the afternoon he tried to raise it in his hand, and said, "I have opened it." The volume had fallen open at one of his favourite passages—in Act V, Scene 5, of Cymbeline, where the reconciled Posthumus says to Imogen as he holds her in his arms: "Hang there like fruit, my soul, till the tree die." Soon afterwards he spoke for the last time—a few faint words of blessing. . . .
(Tennyson 536)
I
In April 1611 Dr. Simon Forman made notes on some of the plays he had seen at the Globe Theatre. He recounted
how, in Cymbeline, Imogen "had turned her self into mans apparrell & fled to mete her loue at milford hauen, &
chanchsed to fall on the Cave in the wods wher her 2 brothers were & howe by eating a sleeping Dram they thought she
had been ded & laid her in the wods . . ." (Nosworthy xiv). Forman's two references to "the wods" perhaps suggest
"that trees were used in the Globe performances" (Nosworthy 87). And still today productions sometimes use trees (real
or symbolic) to create the atmosphere of the Milford Haven pastoral world. Such stage trees give not only an image of
natural health to contrast with the sickness of the court; they also reinforce the tree symbolism that is woven through the
whole play.
In jail, Posthumus wakes from a dream and reads (from a stone tablet sent by Jupiter) the prophecy that structures the
action of the play:
When as 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 lopp'd 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. (V.iv. 138-145)
At the end of the play the soothsayer explicates the prophecy:
The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline
Personates thee: and thy lopp'd branches point
Thy two sons forth: who, by Belarius stol'n,
For many years thought dead, are now reviv'd,
To the majestic cedar join'd; whose issue
Promises Britain peace and plenty. (V.v. 453-458)
The cut-off branches (the dead sons) are rejoined with the old tree (the king). A reductionist psychoanalytic interpretation might see the cutting off of the king's branches as a castration, but a Jungian interpretation would see the cutting off of these branches as a symbol for loss of libido. The old king can be thought to represent the ruling principle of consciousness (the collective consciousness) that has lost contact with the unconscious, with the instinctual libido. This archetypal pattern, found in many fairy tales (e.g. the Grimm's "The Water of Life"), is perhaps best known in the legend of the Grail. Thus, in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the Grail King Anfortas, whose name means "infirmity," was unsexed by a lance inscribed with the name of the Grail. Joseph Campbell explains the symbolism:
This calamity, in Wolfram's meaning, was symbolic of the dissociation within Christendom of spirit from nature: the denial of nature as corrupt, the imposition of what was supposed to be an authority supernaturally endowed, and the actual demolishment of both nature and truth in consequence. The healing of the maimed king, therefore, could be accomplished only by an uncorrupted youth naturally endowed . . . . (Campbell 167)
King Cymbeline's children (Imogen as well as the two sons), mysteriously kept alive in a cave in the woods, similarly
personify lost natural instinct. Likewise, in The Winter's Tale, Leontes' lost daughter Perdita embodies, most obviously
when she takes the role of Flora for the sheep shearing festival, a missing natural attitude towards sexuality and life. In
both plays, the sick king's child flourishes in the world of nature. On a psychological level, the natural mind of the child
(in Freud's language, the primary process) remains alive in the unconscious. Shakespeare's pastoral thus uses the
movement from city to country to represent a movement from the sick world of consciousness to the healing world of the
unconscious (which is, after all, nature).
Jung himself elucidates such a pastoral psychological pattern in Psychology and Alchemy, where in offering a case
history he interprets a dream about "a green land where many sheep are pastured." Jung suggests that this image "may
derive from childhood impressions and particularly those of a religious nature . . . e.g., ‘He maketh me lie down in green
pastures,' or the early Christian allegories of sheep and shepherd." The dreamer's visual impression of the dream points
in a similar direction: "The unknown woman stands in the land of sheep and points the way" (58). Here it is the missing
feminine, on the subjective level the male dreamer's anima figure, who shows the way:
The way begins in children's land, i.e., at a time when rational present-day con- sciousness was not yet separated from the historical psyche, the collective unconscious. The separation is indeed inevitable, but it leads to such an alienation from that dim psyche of the dawn of mankind that a loss of instinct ensues. The result is an instinctual atrophy and hence disorientation in everyday human situations. (58-59)
Cymbeline's "instinctual atrophy" is exemplified in the pre-history of the play; he trusted the false villains and banished the
true Belarius, thus precipitating the abduction of his sons. Cymbeline is duped by surfaces; he trusted the Queen "For she
was beautiful" (V.v. 63), "thought her like her seeming" (V.v. 65). Cymbeline's sons, on the contrary, exhibit a natural
instinctive feeling, loving their sister at first sight, even though they believe she is the boy Fidele. The case study Jung
delineates in Psychology and Alchemy mirrors Cymbeline's waste land/pastoral pattern: "Life has grown desiccated and
cramped crying out for the rediscovery of the fountainhead. But the fountainhead can only be found if the conscious mind
will suffer itself to be led back to the 'children's land,' there to receive guidance from the unconscious as before" (60).
Those of us who as audience or reader, succumb to the magic of the late plays, similarly allow ourselves to be led back
to "'the children's land." Both the fairy tale quality (often seen as suitable for children) and the romantic rendering of an
older "pastoral" way of living (with a closeness to nature) suggest connections with the natural world of the unconscious.
II
While nineteenth century idealizations of Imogen may be amusing to a more sophisticated perspective, they perhaps
show that the figure of Imogen evokes an archetype, what Jung calls the anima. Just as Imogen, as the girlish boy Fidele,
bridges the court and country worlds, so, in a male psyche, can the anima act as a bridge between the conscious and the
unconscious. The repression of the anima, of a man's "female side," reflects a dissociation of conscious from
unconscious. In such a situation fantasy becomes "merely" sex fantasy. Such repression of the anima is perhaps reflected
in the outer world in the political and social repression of women. The anima represents for man a connection with both
female sexuality and spirituality, connection with real women (which projection of the anima inevitably leads to) and
connection with the inner world. Thus is Imogen the "piece of tender air" who embraces the lion's whelp (Posthumus
Leonatus), fulfilling Jupiter's prophecy. As the soothsayer ingeniously interprets this phrase from Posthumus's dream, the
piece of tender air is the woman, mollis aer representing mulier. "Piece" in Shakespeare does occasionally have its
modern sexual connotation, as in Sir Toby's "As witty a piece of Eve's flesh as any in Illyria," and certainly "piece of
tender" evokes a certain fleshliness; but "air" emphasizes equally the spiritual aspect. This image of woman, like love
itself, encompasses both the physical and the spiritual.
Imogen's brothers, skilled hunters and warriors as well as tender mourners, also blend the natural and the spiritual. When
with Belarius they first appear on stage (coming out of their cave), they demonstrate their spirituality:
Bel. A goodly day not to keep house with such
Whose roof's as low as ours! Stoop, boys; this gate
Instructs you how t'adore the heavens; and bows you
To a morning's holy office. The gates of monarchs
Are arch'd so high that giants may jet through
And keep their impious turbans on, without
Good morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven!
We house I' th' rock, yet use thee not so hardly
As prouder livers do.
Gui. Hail, heaven!
Arv. Hail heaven!
Bel. Now for our mountain sport, up to yond hill! (III.iii.1-10)
Their life contains a daily natural religious ritual ("Hail heaven") followed by the perfectly natural sport of hunting (the contrast with Cloten's early morning gaming is obvious). The two boys also show their natural spirituality in their funeral for Fidele. In their grief they exhibit tenderness of feeling (like that exhibited in their original love for Fidele). Arvirargus in particular evokes tender strains, as in this speech (reminiscent of Perdita's flower speech in The Winter's Tale):
With fairest flowers
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The asur'd harebell, like thy veins: no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Out sweet'ned not thy breath; the ruddock would
With charitable bill
Bring thee all this;
Yea, and furr'd moss besides. When flowers are none,
To winter—ground thy corse—
Gui. Prithee, have done,
And do not play in wench-like words with that
Which is so serious. (IV.ii. 219-224, 227-231)
They chant the evocative "Fear no more" (sung once before for their "mother" Euriphile), evoking a religious feeling
found nowhere in Cymbeline's court. One measure of religion's practical efficacy is in its ability to help us deal with
death, to provide us with rituals for such archetypal experiences as burying a loved one. That the cave dwellers perform
the funeral ritual so well (better, it would seem, than would most "modern" people of Shakespeare's time or of ours)
suggests that in children's land, in the old ways of the cave dwellers, we can find a healing religious attitude.
Belarius describes the princes in terms that demonstrate his as well as their spirituality:
O thou goddess,
Thou divine nature; thou thyself thou blazon'st
In these two princely boys: they are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing below the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head; and yet, as rough.
(Their royal blood enchaf'd) as the rud'st wind
That by the top doth take the mountain pine
And make him stoop to th' vale. 'Tis wonder
That an invisible instinct should frame them
To royalty unlearn'd, honour untaught,
Civility not seen from other, valour
That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop
As if it had been sow'd. (IV.ii. 169-181)
The two sons, who live in harmony with the archetypal feminine (the Goddess Nature), are in tune with the archetypal
within and without. Archetypes are psychological correlates of the instincts, and the boys' instinctual oneness with nature
also gives them a kind of psychological oneness, a wholeness. The word "nature" is consistently associated with them.
And when Cymbeline hears how they and Imogen loved at first sight, he says, "O rare instinct!" (V.v. 382). They unite
the spiritual and the natural, as Belarius's speech makes clear. Their natural instinctual life reveals a metaphysical
dimension: the Goddess Nature conditions their actions.
Belarius's wind imagery also suggests that the brothers unify nature and spirit: the spirit-breath of the divine is hinted at,
but the language primarily dwells upon the natural reality of the wind, which does gently kiss the violets and roughly bend
the mountain pine. Tenderness and gentleness are combined with a wild masculine strength, and, because of "invisible
instinct," their wild growth yields a crop as if it had been sowed. This final image of order in natural growth hints at what
Jung calls the central archetype, the Self. The Self is the regulating principle of the psyche, the consciousness
paradoxically found in the unconscious, the bringer of wisdom to the dream. The Self, the psychological equivalent of
God, is the god image within the psyche. Thus the order in the unconscious (and, the religiously inclined would say, the
order in nature) comes from the same invisible instinct, the Self. Jung writes: "But if the unconscious can be recognized as
a codetermining factor along with the conscious, and if life can be lived in such a way that the conscious and unconscious
(i.e., instinctive) demands are accepted as far as possible, the center of gravity of the total personality shifts in position . .
. . This new centre might be called the self" (Jung, quoted in Jacobi 131). Because Cymbeline's cave dwelling sons are
living in tune with the Self ("invisible instinct"), their natural "beastly" unconsciousness can reveal a higher and more
meaningful order than the cultivated and unnatural airs of the court.
Cymbeline, the lofty cedar, is also imaged in terms of wind, but it is a destructive wind. Imogen tells how, at Posthumus's
departure,
ere I could
Give him the parting kiss, which I had set
Betwixt two charming words, comes in my father,
And like the tyrannous breathing of the north,
Shakes all our buds from growing. (I. ii. 33-37)
Cymbeline lacks love, the natural love manifested by his children, who are framed by invisible instinct. Whereas his sons'
rough wind bends but does not destroy the mountain pine, Cymbeline (unlike his "tender air" daughter and his "gentle
zephyrs" sons) is only destructive. The image of Cymbeline as the north wind that destroys the buds parallels the image
of Cymbeline as the dying cedar tree with the lopp'd off branches. As the cedar tree will be renewed, so will the buds of
love be reborn.
Belarius images his own history in similar terms:
Cymbeline lov'd me,
And when a soldier was the theme, my name
Was not far off: then was I as a tree
Whose boughs did bend with fruit. But in one night,
A storm, or robbery (call it what you will)
Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves,
And left me bare to weather. (III.iii. 58-64)
It is Cymbeline's forgetting of his love for Belarius that shook the fruit from the tree, exposing it to injurious weather (cf. Cymbeline as the "tyrannous breathing of the north"). Belarius thus explains how
two villains, whose false oaths prevail'd
Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline
I was confederate with the Romans: so
Follow'd banishment, and this twenty years
This rock, and these demesnes, have been my world,
Where I have liv'd at honest freedom, paid
Precious debts to heaven than in all
The fore-end of my time. (III.iii. 66-73)
Lacking any natural intuitive feeling, Cymbeline did not know whom to trust. Thus he trusted two villains instead of
Belarius, and fooled by her surface beauty, he trusted the evil queen (just as Posthumus too easily trusted the false
Iachimo, convinced in part simply because Iachimo swears).
The paradoxical result of Belarius's banishment is to turn him into "Morgan" (a name rich in fairyland associations). As
wise old Morgan, Belarius stands in compensatory relation to the irreligious and unnatural king, much as Duke Senior in
As You Like It provides the natural and spiritual balance to the courtly evil of his brother, Duke Frederick. Morgan thus
serves as the spiritual teacher to the two sons, as in the burial scene, where he gives the final directions for the ritual and
utters the proper concluding words:
Here's a few flowers, but 'bout midnight more:
The herbs that have on them cold dew o' th' night
Are strewings fitt'st for graves: upon their faces.
You were as flowers, now wither'd: even so
These herblets shall, which we upon you strew.
Come away, apart upon our knees:
The ground that gave them first has them again:
Their pleasures here are past, so is their pain. (IV.ii. 283-290)
When eventually even Cymbeline's daughter has entered the cave world, Belarius has clearly become a surrogate (and
superior) father to Cymbeline's three children. The family love and the spiritual life that are lacking in the court still exist in
the cave and country world; "the children's land," alive in the unconscious (the cave) compensates for the natural and
spiritual poverty of the conscious (the court) world. Belarius embodies what Jung calls the archetype of the wise old
man. Jung calls this the archetype of spirit and says "it appears in a situation where insight, understanding, good advice,
determination, planning, etc. are needed but cannot be mustered on one's own resources. The archetype compensates
this state of spiritual deficiency by contents designed to fill the gap" (Jung, Archetypes 216). It is this archetype that lies
behind the need people feel, when they go astray, for "a guide or teacher, and even of a physician" (Jung, Spirit 103).
Thus Belarius embodies the spiritual wisdom the egotistical King lacks, that an ideal King (or father) should have. When
Cymbeline and Belarius are again united in love, when the foolish king/father gets back in touch with the archetype of the
wise old man, then the missing children are reunited with their father, then the dying tree is restored.
When, at the end of the play, Posthumus is embraced by the piece of tender air (Imogen), he too employs a tree
metaphor: "Hang there like fruit, my soul, / Till the tree die." This idea of the fruitful female giving new life to the dying
male stems from a classical image, the marriage of the vine and the elm (Simonds). Just as a grape-bearing vine can give
new life to the dead elm, so does Imogen give new life to Posthumus. That he calls her his soul—Jung calls the anima the
"soul image"—suggests her capacity to affect him inwardly, even religiously.
The motif of the renewal of the tree, so emphasized in Cymbeline, is an archetypal symbol representing psychological
development. Thus in "The Philosophical Tree" Jung suggests that in the symbolism of alchemy the "whole process which
today we understand as psychological development, was designated ‘the philosophical tree,' a poetic comparison that
draws an apt analogy between the natural growth of the psyche and that of a plant" (Jung, Alchemical Studies 349).
Marie-Louise von Franz sums up Jung's work on this symbol by saying that
Jung shows there that the tree symbolizes human life and development and the inner process of becoming conscious in the human being. You could say that it symbolizes in the psyche that something which grows and develops undisturbed within us, irrespective of what the ego does; it is the urge towards Individuation which unfolds and continues without reference to consciousness.(von Franz 38)
Von Franz further points out "There are many mythological writings which liken the tree to the human being or in which the tree appears as a man-tree. The Self is the tree—that which is greater than the ego in man." The old tree, the old King needs to be renewed. As Jung demonstrated in Mysterium Coniunctionis, a central mythic motif of both fairy tales and alchemy is the renewing of the old king. Perhaps the play is named Cymbeline because of the central mythic value of the renewal of the old king. And that King Cymbeline is personified as the great cedar tree has similar symbolic value. Shakespeare uses the motifs of the tree and the renewed king—both symbols of the Self—to suggest a natural process of psychological renewal. Thus the renewal of the tree cannot be reduced simply to "phallic restoration" (Schwartz 279); it symbolizes restoration of a relationship with the healing waters of the unconscious, reconnection with the Self. In some ways, Cymbeline is about this psychological renewal.
III
Because the play is set just before the birth of Christ, Posthumus's experience can be seen as "a pagan equivalent of Christian regeneration" (Hunter 159). That this experience also follows Jung's pattern of psychological transformation, "individuation," is no surprise; Jung saw individual experiences of religious transformations, occurring as they have throughout world history, as naturally occurring examples of individuation. But while the conversion experience in Cymbeline is explicitly pagan—it is Jupiter who appears—the language of the play (with words like "elect" and "grace") frequently echoes the language of a Christian, specifically a Protestant, conversion experience. And the Protestant pattern of religious conversion parallels the Jungian pattern for psychological transformation. The experience of the Protestant convertant has been described as follows: ‘When the depth of his iniquity became apparent, it was to be contrasted with the height of God's standard, and one could then realize the hopelessness of his situation if no outside aid were forthcoming. Thus the penitent reached a state of ‘holy desperation.’ Convinced of his extreme sinfulness and inability to help himself, he cast himself wholly on the mercy of God" (Knappen 393). Esther Harding's description of the Jungian model of psychological transformation makes the parallel explicit:
The first condition is that, whether the individual is suffering from a neurosis, an emotional conflict, or some other psychological disturbance, he must be keenly and deeply aware of his need for healing. In religious terms he must have a conviction of sin, not just of a sin, but of sinfulness, of uncontrollable sin.
The second condition is that he . . . must have realized that the problem is indeed beyond the power of his conscious ego—that he is utterly unable to resolve the difficulty by will power or by conscious effort.
This is the point that in religious terms has been called the giving-up of the Self. In analytic practice it is often symbolized by the death of the ego, or by dreams of mutilation, dismemberment, or death. But such dreams are invariably followed by symbols of renewed life, for energy cannot be destroyed. It is a case of "the King is dead, long live the King." (Harding 213-214)
This first condition for psychological/religious transformation, "conviction of sin," underlies the tragic part of the
tragicomedy. Posthumus's gain in Self knowledge is framed from the beginning of the play in terms of the opposition of
"within" and "without." In the first scene of the play the First Gentleman describes him: "I do not think / So fair an
outward, and such stuff within / Endows a man, but he" (I.i. 22-24). Thus at the beginning Posthumus seems a worthy
protagonist. But how is an outside observer, a courtier like the First Gentleman, really able to evaluate Posthumus's inner
life? Similarly, at Philario's house, Philario responds to Iachimo's lack of admiration for Posthumus (based on a previous
acquaintance) by saying, "You speak of him when he was less furnish'd than now he is with that which makes him both
without and within" (I.v. 8-10). The "that which" is, of course, Imogen. That she might make him "without" is
indisputable—she is the King's daughter. But to Philario's assumption that an inner transformation had necessarily
complemented the outer marriage, Iachimo brings the hard-headed truth: "This matter of marrying the king's daughter,
wherein he must be weighed rather by her value than his own, words him (I doubt not) a great deal from the matter" (I.v.
14-17).
When Posthumus arrives on the scene and we see him for the first time without Imogen, he shows himself to be inflated,
puffed up with pride in his persona as the accomplished courtier. He has identified himself with his persona; having
gained the king's daughter, he seems complete within and without. But this overvaluation of his ego and identification with
his persona (with what he seems to be) reflects an inability really to relate to the within, the inner world. Thus Posthumus
falls to bragging about his mistress in a group of men, makes a stupid wager, and loses his stone (and his soul).
Beneath the persona of the courtier is a large shadow side. Iachimo later dramatically demonstrates the cynical shadow
side of the male who seeks to destroy love and replace it with lust and contempt. The most brutal demonstration of male
dominance over women is rape, and it is in terms of rape that Iachimo imagines his assault upon Imogen's honor. Imogen
sleeps as Iachimo arises out of a trunk (embodying an adolescent Peeping Tom attitude toward sex) and compares
himself with the rapist of Lucretia. That the courtier without reveals the brute within is most obvious with Prince Cloten,
who is explicitly looking to rape Imogen when Guiderius kills him. While Posthumus never admits to the economic
benefits of his marrying the sole heir of the King, Cloten is explicit after a night of losing gambling: "If I could get this
foolish Imogen, I should have gold enough" (II.iii. 7-8). Even before his attempted rape, he is explicit about his sexual
desires, in language more coarse than any of Posthumus's civilized declarations of spiritual love. Thus he advises his
musicians: "Come on, tune: if you can penetrate her with your fingering, so: we'll try with tongue too . . . " (II.iii.14-15).
The delicate song that follows begins, "Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings, / and Phoebus gins arise," and
concludes, "With every thing that pretty is, my lady sweet arise: / Arise, arise!" (II.iii. 20-21,25-26). The image of a pure
and pretty Apollonian world is framed on each side with Cloten's vulgarities. Here the court world reflects the sharp split
between the superficially civilized surface (the aubade) and the brutally vulgar (Cloten). Iachimo and Cloten thus
exemplify the shadow side of the young male, a shadow side which we soon discover Posthumus also exemplifies. It is
only in the natural world (the cave world of Milford Haven) where men are not possessed by such courtly neurosis.
Like the vulgar Cloten, like the cynical Iachimo, Posthumus is an egotistical and adolescent gamester. The crucial scene
which makes his shadow side explicit is when Imogen, waking beside a headless corpse, explicitly if unconsciously
identifies the villain Cloten (a would-be rapist) and Posthumus (a would-be murderer). Imogen is deceived because
Cloten has put on Posthumus's clothes and has, as it were, put on his persona. Imogen's judgment is based on the
"without," and the audience is forced into an awareness of Posthumus's secret inner similarity to Cloten. There is a similar
suggestion of the hero's having a shadow side in The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, with Autolycus and Florizel
exchanging clothes and Ferdinand taking Caliban's log carrying task. Creating such an awareness of the shadow is one
of the social functions of a play like Cymbeline. The play then works for its society much as Jung argued Winnebago
trickster myths work for Winnebago society: "keeping the shadow figure conscious and subjecting it to conscious
criticism" ("Trickster" 205).
Cloten clearly represents Posthumus's shadow side, that is, the sum of all the unpleasant qualities he would like to hide.
Once Posthumus is forced to see his own shadow side (never a pleasant experience), he can no longer either identify
with his persona or believe he is what he seems. Thus Posthumus repents having commissioned the murder of his wife.
Having killed "Britain's mistress" (V.i. 20), he will no longer fight against Britain. He asks the "good heavens" to
Hear patiently my purpose. I'll disrobe myself
Of these Italian weeds, and suit myself
As does a Briton peasant . . . . (V.i .21-24)
His transformation from gentleman to peasant is emblematic of an inner transformation; as Posthumus declares after adopting his new clothes:
To shame the guise o' th' world, I will begin,
To fashion less without, and more within. (V.ii. 32-33)
This transformation reflects Posthumus's consciousness of his own shadow side; he is not really a civilized courtier. Even
after this inner transformation and after his subsequent heroic actions, Posthumus remains extremely conscious of his own
shadow side. But his realization of the shadow, this "growing awareness of the inferior part of personality . . . should not
be twisted into an intellectual activity, for it has far more the meaning of a suffering and a passion that implicates the
whole man" (Jung, Structure 208). Thus Posthumus introduces himself to the court in Act V: "it is I / That all th' abhorred
things o' th' earth amend / By being worse than they" (V.v. 215- 217).
Arnold Hauser, in his speculations on the relationship between Protestant theology and tragedy, suggests that such
consciousness of sin is more to be expected in a tragic universe, since:
The granting of grace does not depend on good works, in the Protestant view, but is decided in advance without regard to rewards or punishment, and judging the tragic hero by guilt or innocence is similarly irrelevant.
The irrelation between faith and works in Protestantism corresponds to the discrepancy between the tragic hero's character and his actions. The latter is nobler and greater than his deeds, and retains his innocence, no matter what crime he may commit. (Hauser 139)
The tragic hero, like the Protestant sinner, is plagued with suffering and guilt. But at the final stages of the conversion
experience, despair leads to grace, and thus tragedy turns to comedy. Posthumus is a tragic hero, is unable to surmount
his fate, is condemned to death; but free pardon, God's grace, brings comic consummation.
Such Protestant ideas illuminate the comic justice at work in Cymbeline.2 In the first act Posthumus is like one of the
"elect." Thus the First Gentleman and the Second Lord evaluate Posthumus in terms of Imogen's loving him: "and his
virtue / By her election may be truly read / What kind of man he is" (I.ii. 52-54), and "If it be sin to make a true election,
she is damn'd" (III.iii. 26-27). And Iachimo commends Imogen on her "great judgment / In the election of a sir so rare, /
Which you know cannot err" (I.vii.174-176). Thus we are urged not to evaluate Posthumus in terms of his own actions.
One of the elect can attempt murder (as Posthumus does) and not forfeit his salvation; he doesn't earn God's grace by
good works. While early on we see Posthumus as elect of the virtuous Imogen, later on we see that he is also one of
God's (or Jupiter's) elect. In Posthumus's dream vision his dead family asks Jupiter to give Posthumus "The graces for his
merits due." Jupiter, after descending in thunder and lightning, makes no mention of Posthumus's merits, but rather
emphasizes his own love: "whom best I love, I cross; to make my gift, the more delayed, delighted" (V.iv. 101-102).
One is "elected" before birth, independent of one's actions. Thus Jupiter tells his family to have faith: Posthumus is
destined to a happy ending because "Our Jovial star reign'd at his birth" (V. iv. 105).
In jail, where he has the dream vision, Posthumus fulfills the second condition for psychological/religious transformation:
realizing he cannot solve his problem with his conscious ego. Thus before descending into the unconscious (sleeping),
Posthumus makes a powerful and personal religious statement:
For Imogen's dear life take mine, and though
‘Tis not so dear, yet ‘tis a life; you coined it:
‘Tween man and man they weigh not every stamp;
Though light, take pieces for the figure's sake:
You rather, mine being yours: and so, great powers,
If you will take this audit, take this life,
And cancel these cold bonds. O Imogen,
I'll speak to thee in silence. (V.iv. 22-29)
Just as the vile Cloten can be buried with the angelic Fidele—"mean and mighty, rotting together, have one dust" (IV.ii.
246-247)—so can Posthumus's vile life be offered for the dear Imogen's. The gods weigh not every stamp; from the
transpersonal perspective of the divine, humankind becomes one. In Jung's terminology, this involves a realization of the
basic insignificance of the personal ego, especially from the perspective of the collective unconscious (the great powers).
It takes God (Jupiter) to solve Posthumus's problems.
Posthumus's transformation is directly attributable to transcendental intervention—the God Jupiter descends upon an
eagle. This numinous religious experience comes through a dream; it is from the unconscious that the God emerges. The
familial spirits who invoke Jupiter are symbolically dynamic forces in the unconscious; Posthumus's externally dead family
is alive in the inner world. Posthumus's spirit family parallels Cymbeline's missing family, alive in a cave in Milford Haven.
The pastoral family of Milford Haven is an agent for renewal, as is the spiritual family that appears in the prison.
Symbolically, in both instances the spirit family is seen as alive in the unconscious; the psychic world is both the idyllic
children's land of the cave world and the numinous world of the prison dream.3
When Posthumus, awake, sees the tablet Jupiter has left, he asks:
What fairies haunt this ground? A book? O rare one,
Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment
Nobler than that it covers. Let thy effects
So follow, to be most unlike our courtiers,
As good as promise. (V.iv. 133-137)
This clothes image (one of many in the play) once again emphasizes the distinction between within and without.
Posthumus, no longer superficial, has discovered the difference between the persona (the courtier's clothes) and the true
Self.
After reading the book's cryptic message, Posthumus declares:
Tis still a dream: or else such stuff as madmen
Tongue, and brain not: either both, or nothing
Or senseless speaking, or a speaking such
As sense cannot untie. Be what it is,
The action of my life is like it, which
I'll keep, if but for sympathy. (V.iv. 138-151)
Posthumus realizes the action of his life is like a product of the unconscious, an indecipherable dream, or such stuff as
madmen talk of, or nothing, or senseless speaking, or speaking such as sense cannot untie. Posthumus has had what
Jung called a "big dream"—that is, a dream with archetypal content. Such a dream contains an image or a message from
the unconscious which the conscious mind (sense) cannot untie. (Jung recommended that the first step in interpreting
such a "big dream" was to admit your ignorance, to be aware of your inability to unravel the mystery within.) When
Posthumus sees the action of his life as like a dream, he admits his own ignorance, the weakness of his inflated
ego-consciousness. He keeps the mysterious tablet without knowing why he does so, out of sympathy, for he
understands what has happened to him in his life as little as he understands the message on the tablet. His ignorance
forces him into a passive position; the lion's whelp cannot triumph through heroic action, but rather, in keeping with the
do-nothing ethic of the pastoral mode, he must "without seeking find and be embraced by a piece of tender air."
Posthumus's dream vision leaves a real book behind; the dream does interpenetrate with reality, and the religious vision
cannot be dismissed as fantasy. The introverted journey to the unconscious yields a product, a potentially meaningful
message from Jupiter in a dream to Posthumus awake, a message from the unconscious to the conscious. This dream
experience brings a sense of wonder and mystery to Posthumus's seemingly absurd life; there is a hint of a kind of
destiny, a golden chance, a comic end to his tragic life. And just as the book demonstrates the reality of the dream, so
does it imply the reality of the giver of the book (the great God). Similarly if we accept the spiritual reality of Posthumus's
dead family, we accept the reality of a life after death.
Imogen's awakening from her burial parallels Posthumus's awakening from his numinous dream. Her first words on
awakening suggest that she had been dreaming of the events that led up to her entrance into the cave world, namely what
happened to her on her way to Milford Haven to join up with Caius Lucius:
Yes sir, to Milford-Haven, which is the way?
I thank you: by yond bush? pray, how far thither?
‘Ods pittikins: can it be six mile yet?
I have gone all night: faith, I'll lie down and sleep. (IV.ii. 291-294)
At this point she sees the headless body of Cloten—"But, soft! no bedfellow! O gods and goddesses!" (IV.ii. 296)—and makes a beautiful dreamlike statement that epitomizes the double view of life inherent in tragicomedy:
These flowers are like the pleasures of the world;
This bloody man, the care on't. (IV.ii. 296-297)
She hopes that this headless man is but a dream, but she remembers her cave experience and reasonably concludes that this sweet pastoral interlude was the dream, and the terrible headless man the reality:
I hope I dream
For so I thought I was a cave-keeper,
And cook to honest creatures. But ‘tis not so:
‘Twas but a bolt of nothing, shot at nothing,
Which the brain makes of fumes. Our very eyes
Are sometimes like our judgements, blind. Good faith,
I tremble still with fear: but if there be
Yet left in heaven, as small a drop of pity
As a wren's eye, fear'd gods, a part of it!
The dream's here still: even when I wake it is
Without me, as within me: not imagin'd, felt.
A headless man? The garments of Posthumus? (IV.ii. 289-308)
Imogen's life as a cook and cave-keeper to honest creatures was but a dream, a "bolt of nothing, shot at nothing," just as Posthumus's sleeping dream and the mysterious book were "nothing" (V.iv. 147). The reality of the bloody man makes Imogen accept her cave-keeper life as having been a pastoral dream, a function of the mind's desire to escape from the cruelty of the present. Her experience in the cave is thus reconstructed as a pastoral fantasy, much like one she indulged in early in the play. When she had excessively praised Posthumus, her father replied, incredulous, "What? Art thou mad?" Imogen replied:
Almost, sir: heaven restore me! Would I were
A neat-herd's daughter, and my Leonatus
Our neighbor-shepherd's son! (I.ii. 78-81)
Imogen thus dismisses her cave-life as a fantasy, a dream of escape from the painful realities that confront her, a bolt of nothing. But ironically, her pastoral dream was real, just as Posthumus's dream, which left behind a real book, must have been real too. The dream world (the psychic world) is then not just fantasy, not just an escape from the pains of the real world, but is another reality. Cymbeline presents the pleasure worlds of pastoral innocence and the spiritual world of divine intervention as realities complementary to the painful "real" world. Shakespeare's most famous iteration of this old theme is, of course, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on." The basic equation (reality = dream) cuts two ways. In the first place, it suggests at the unreality of the real, the insubstantiality of the seemingly substantial pageant of life. But it also suggests that dreams are real. For Imogen in her confusion between dream and reality, the dream is "without me, as within me." Cymbeline finally forces us, as least for the duration of the play, to believe that the dream world (the psychic world) is real, that the within is as real (or even more real) than the without.
IV
When Morgan (Belarius) first sees Fidele (Imogen) in the cave, he perceives her spiritual qualities:
But that it eats our victuals, I should think
Here were a fairy . . . .
By Jupiter, an angel! or, if not,
An earthly paragon! Behold divineness
No elder than a boy! (III.vii. 12-13, 15-17)
While Fidele (Imogen) seems an angel, a fairy, a spirit, he (she) is also human, a body in need of food. Imogen also unites the spiritual and the natural in a chastity that is also sexy (cf. her "pudency so rosy"): "Were you a woman, youth," her brother tells her, "I should woo hard" (III.vii. 41-43). In leaving the sick Fidele to rest in the cave, Arvirargus declares, "How angel-like he sings!" His brother responds with praise of her cooking:
But his neat cookery! he cut our roots in characters,
And sauced our broths, as Juno had been sick
And he her dieter. (IV.ii. 48-51)
Imogen doesn't cook or sing in the play, but these descriptions of her emphasize how she combines the natural and the
spiritual. In her everyday life, she sings like an angel and cooks as if she were curing the sick Goddess.
Imogen's retreat to the country world of Milford Haven brings Cloten in search of her, and her brothers, for whom she
cooks, kill Cloten. Further, Cloten's "strange absence" (V.v. 57) defeats the Queen's plot to make him king and drives
the Queen to a despairing suicide. Thus out of Imogen's entry into the natural world of Milford Haven comes the defeat
of the evil Queen, the transformation of the negative female, the curing of the sick Juno.
The anima acts in a complementary fashion to the persona (Jung, Psychological Types 468). As we relate to the outer
world through our persona, we relate to the inner world through the anima; to the degree a man personifies traditionally
masculine qualities, the anima is correspondingly feminine. When a man too rigidly identifies with his persona, it is the
anima which can lead him back in touch with the unconscious, back into contact with the "children's land." Imogen thus
resembles the anima, the "soul image." Thus it is she who bridges the court and cave worlds—symbolically the conscious
and the unconscious worlds. She goes to the country, finds a cave world that unites the natural and the spiritual, just as
she herself unites the natural and the spiritual; in bringing Cloten after her, she accidentally activates forces which lead to
the death of the wicked Queen and the renewal of the Kingdom.
Frequently the anima is encountered only in projection, as when a woman seems to have a certain special sparkle. This
sparkle can be understood in terms of sexual appeal, and certainly Imogen is supposed to be beautiful and sexually
attractive. (That she is basically the only young woman in the play makes her, like Miranda, more easily evoke an almost
magical fascination.) While Imogen is obviously supposed to be beautiful, even sexy, she is also imaged in relation to the
air, to the fairy and the angel (spiritual winged creatures), as well as to the bird (specifically the phoenix bird). Iachimo
says in an aside, after first seeing her:
All of her that is out of door most rich!
If she be furnish'd with a mind so rare,
She is alone th' Arabian bird; and I
Have lost the wager. (I.vii. 15-19)
Beautiful within and without, spiritually and physically, she is the sole Arabian bird. The Phoenix "is said to have created itself, and to have come into being from out of the fire which burned at the top of the sacred Persea Tree at Heliopolis; it was essentially a Sun bird and was a symbol both of the rising sun and of the dead Sun-god, Osiris, from whom it sprang, and to whom it was sacred" (Green 27). Imogen is like the Phoenix, the divine bird that dies and is reborn. Thus Arviragus says, as he carries in the dead Fidele: "the bird is dead / That we have made so much on" (IV.ii. 118-119). Guiderius says, seeing Fidele alive at Cymbeline's court, "The same dead thing alive" (V.v. 123). The bird that dies in the setting sun is also evoked in the soothsayer's dream, which he tells to Caius Lucius just before they encounter Imogen collapsed upon the headless body:
Last night the very gods showed me a vision
(I fast, and pray'd for their intelligence) thus:
I saw Jove's bird, the Roman eagle, wing'd
From the spongy south to this part of the west,
There vanish'd in the sunbeams . . . . (IV.ii. 346-350)
Rather surprisingly, the soothsayer interprets his vision to mean success to the Roman host, while on the face of it, it
seems to point to some sort of death, albeit a death that can be followed by a rebirth, as the sun dying in the west is
reborn in the morning in the east. Caius Lucius tells the soothsayer, "Dream often so / And never false." Then he notices
the headless body and asks, "Soft ho, what trunk is here? / Without his top?" (IV.ii. 352-354). This image of the trunk
without its top parallels the image of the old cedar tree killed by having its branches lopped off; and as the tree
(symbolically Cymbeline) revives, so will the seemingly dead Posthumus be found alive, so will Imogen (Posthumus's
soul?) be reborn.
Lucius awakens the seemingly sleeping or dead Imogen and asks who she is. Imogen responds, "I am nothing or if not, /
Nothing to be were better" (IV.ii. 367-368). (Cymbeline abounds in uses of the word nothing: Imogen's "I am nothing" is
followed by her assertion "Nothing to be were better"—these echo her summary of her pastoral life as "a bolt of nothing
shot at nothing," and anticipate Posthumus's appraisal of his dream message as "nothing.") Just as the eagle "Lessen'd
herself and in the beams o' the sun / So vanished" (V.v. 72-73), so has Imogen in her journey to Milford Haven vanished
and become nothing. She suffers an ego death, loses her identity as Imogen and wakes up to identify herself as Fidele.
That Lucius awakens Fidele, awakens "faith," may be a kind of pun. (In The Winter's Tale, the final magic requires, as
Paulina puts it, that "you do awaken your faith.") Hazlitt points to the most obvious reason for Imogen taking the name
Fidele, asserting that in Cymbeline "the principal interest arises out of the unalterable fidelity of Imogen to her husband
under the most trying of circumstances" (8). And certainly her fidelity to Posthumus contrasts with his lack of faith in him.
But of course "faith" has religious overtones which go beyond the implications of marital fidelity. That Imogen is
transformed into Fidele, that she becomes "faith," underlines her spiritual significance in the play.
A further pun may be operative in her claim to serve Richard du Champ as page. The name, as has been pointed out,
can be translated as "Richard Field," the name of a printer who was probably Shakespeare's friend (Nosworthy 145).
Thus Shakespeare makes the angelic boy-girl, Imogen as Fidele, the page of a printer. Given Shakespeare's notorious
fondness for puns, this play on words may have been intended. If this pun is legitimate, perhaps the name Imogen also
can be amplified by the pun Imogen = imagine. This association would fit with the idea that Imogen is an anima figure,
and especially for a poet such as Shakespeare, an anima figure can be understood as a muse, an aid to imagination.
Imogen is of course something Shakespeare imagined, and she is explicitly imaged as a piece of air and as a spirit. She is
also the inspiration for or the speaker of the finest poetry of the play. She might then symbolize certain aspects of
Shakespeare's own anima, his imagination. We can perhaps relate the capacity for faith (Fidele) with Shakespeare's own
creative capacity. To allow a cohesive story to grow within the psyche requires faith—faith in the characters to speak
and act with a life of their own and faith in the natural mechanism of the story (the laws of aesthetic form). The poet must
have faith in the power of his unconscious to create airy nothings and to maintain their "reality" throughout a story. In the
Preface to the First Folio (1623) Hemminges and Condell picture Shakespeare's ease in composition: "Who, as he was
a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expressor of it. His mind and hand went together: And what he thought,
he uttered with that easiness, that wee have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." Shakespeare is thus imaged
as a poet with an astounding faith in the powers of his imagination.
The ease with which the characters in Cymbeline lose their identities, change names, or seem to die all suggest
Shakespeare's fascination with transformation into nothing. Perhaps related to this complex of ideas and images is Keats'
famous description of Shakespeare's genius as "negative capability," which I see as involving a negation of the ego. This
negation of the ego, bringing an ability to be "in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact
and reason," models not only artistic creation but also religious experience; in religious terms, man realizes his
insignificance before God; in psychological language, the ego realizes the power of the unconscious. The everyday model
for this process is, of course, sleep, where daily ego death (and, through dreams, possible contact with greater—or at
least other—powers) is restorative.
The images that structure Cymbeline circle around the process of renewal. Thus Nosworthy points out how we can
connect the Phoenix imagery to the tree imagery: the Phoenix's throne, "the sole Arabian tree," was a dry tree that was
mysteriously renewed. Thus the union of Imogen and Cymbeline is symbolically "the union of the Phoenix and 'the sole
Arabian tree,' and further the union of bird and sun. The restoration of Cymbeline's lost sons, too, is in exact accord with
the Phoenix myth since the tree is a dry tree which is mysteriously restored" (Nosworthy lccciv). Nosworthy even points
to an Elizabethan source which specifically says the cedar tree is the Phoenix tree (and King Cymbeline is imaged as a
seemingly dead cedar tree). Another scholar recounts a medieval tradition whereby the Tree of Life, dried by sin, is
renewed by the Phoenix, that is by Christ (Green 13). And indeed often "in Christian hermeneutics the Phoenix is made
an allegory of Christ" (Jung, Mysterium 336). But in Cymbeline it is the woman, Imogen, who replaces Christ as the
Phoenix, and the renewal of the tree (and thus of the individual) is accomplished in this life. Shakespeare is not writing an
allegory for a Christian religious experience; he is using archetypal symbols to describe a process of psychological
transformation which has as a parallel religious conversion; he is writing about what Jung called individuation. Thus
Posthumus is explicitly described as elect, but he has been elected by Imogen; it is her love for him that secures his
heaven on earth.
The myth of the Phoenix has as its archetypal content transformation achieved through death and rebirth. The Christian
tradition uses this image to symbolize rebirth in the other world. Thus the phoenix sometimes symbolizes "the soul and its
journey to the land of rebirth" (Jung, Mysterium 336). But the phoenix can also symbolize renewal in this life,
psychological transformation. For example, Jung identifies the symbol of the phoenix in one of his patient's dreams as
signifying the miracle of "transformation and rebirth," "the transformation of unconsciousness into illumination" (Jung,
Mysterium 77). Similarly the Phoenix in Cymbeline images a rebirth that is in this life.
At the core of the Phoenix myth is the idea that transformation demands death. As one Jungian analyst writes,
Each disillusionment is a real death, and the problems arise not from death itself, but from the failure to accept it. Neurosis seems, among other things, to be the end-effect of failing to accept the series of deaths which is the process of growth in man. The maintaining of security against death becomes the overwhelming concern, and for that reason, growth and transformation stop. For transformation, the law of life, depends on continual dying. The system that once held value inevitably loses it to another as we are led to wider and deeper awareness, that is, towards the true nature of things. (Hart 29)
Disillusioned by Imogen, Posthumus is finally driven to lose his illusions about himself. He seeks death and finds new life, new union with soul and wife. Posthumus becomes a peasant, loses his egotism and discovers his own neurotic nature. The turning point for him is when he falls into what he thinks will be his last sleep, and has a numinous dream: the god Jupiter descends to him in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle (and this firebird perhaps again echoes the phoenix motif). Imogen also dresses below her class (first as a franklin's housewife, then as a page), gives up certain illusions by becoming a cave dweller, suffers death and a dream-like experience, rebirth. After the ego dies, becomes nothing, connection with the Self (with the higher powers) is possible, renewal is possible.
V
In the performances of Cymbeline I have seen, two theatrical elements most vividly create on stage this feeling of
renewal: the dramatization of the pastoral formula and the epiphany of Jupiter.
In Act III, scene iii, the appearance of Belarius, Guiderius, and Arvirargus before Belarius's cave in Wales can seem to
the audience like the proverbial breath of fresh air. Not only the pastoral sentiments they express, but also their relatively
simple language and clothes and their evocation of a natural outdoor life, makes the audience relax. Thus Belarius's first
words are
A goodly day not to keep house with such
Whose roof's as low as ours! Stoop boys: this gate
Instructs you how t'adore the heavens; and bows you
To a morning's holy office. (III.iii. l-4)
The effect for me is very similar to that of the Bohemia scenes in The Winter's Tale. While the language of the court,
especially Leontes' complex "metaphysical" poetry, is a linguistic tour de force and is a great pleasure for the literary
reader, for the hearer it makes for considerable strain and tension. While the pastoral language of Cymbeline isn't as
wildly poetic as that of The Winter's Tale, nor the court language as intricately convoluted—although Iachimo's language
in I.vii approaches Leontes' packed poetic language—the theatrical effect of the pastoral juxtaposition is the same.
Indeed Cymbeline's pastoral scenes, which do play much better than they read, evoke the experience of relaxing in the
country. This experience is aptly imaged at the beginning of Sidney's Arcadia: Musidorus berating Pyrocles for his desire
to dally in Arcadia says to him, "You let your mind fall a sleepe" (Sidney 56). Pyrocles replies by arguing that "both the
minde it selfe must (like other thinges) sometimes be unbent, or else it will be either weakened, or broken." The
appearance of the naturally religious rustics in front of their cave serves to unbend the mind of the audience who have
been following in the early court scenes the complicated twists of plot and language.
I have several times gone to productions of Cymbeline with people who had never seen nor read the play. For them the
descent of Jupiter to Posthumus is indeed a wonder, a total surprise which leaves them open-mouthed. Barbara Mowat
has convincingly argued that the "effect of total surprise, which occurs often in both Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, is
almost unknown in Shakespearean drama outside the Romances" (Mowat 80). If the "effect created is that of wonder
and surprise, rather than of fulfilled expectations" (77), then this effect is even stronger when it involves the descent of the
supreme God! When this descent is well staged, your mouth does fall open, and you understand, a little, what it is like to
have a religious, numinous experience.
Since we cannot in any way anticipate, based on the previous action of the play, that Jupiter will descend from above,
we are forced to give up the illusion that we control or understand, we are forced to experience what Jung called the
"relativization of the ego." We are forced into an attitude much like the one Posthumus comes to: we must "without
seeking find"; we must trust, as Pisanio says, "Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer'd" (IV.iv. 46). Jupiter's
descent is a religious experience. Within the context of the play, the audience has, after all, been shown the reality of
God. And once you have seen, it is difficult not to believe.
Notes
1I use a broadly "Empsonian" definition of pastoral; thus Posthumus's trans-formation into an imprisoned peasant is a
pastoral journey as much as is Imogen's journey to the natural world in Milford Haven.
2For a detailed discussion of Protestant theology in Cymbeline see Homer Swander, "Cymbeline and Religious Idea and
Dramatic Design," in Pacific Coast Studies in Shakespeare, ed. Waldo F. McNeir and Thelma N. Greenfield (U of
Oregon: Eugene, 1966): 250-266.
3D. E. Landry, in "Dreams as History: The Strange Unity of Cymbeline," Shakespeare Quarterly 33 (1982), 68–79
argues that the play's "structural complexities" imply an equation: "dreams, which contain in however concealed a fashion
the facts of personal history, are to one's identity as a nation's past, recovered through legend and chronicle-history, is to
its sense of itself as a nation, a true community" (69). The intuition that a nation's myths and legends function for a nation
as a dream for a dreamer is common in Jungian psychology; this analogy was a presupposition for much of Joseph
Campbell's work.
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