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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 40 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Cymbeline
| Which Roman deity makes a literal appearance in this play? | Cymbeline
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Jupiter. Jupiter. Juno and Ceres appear in The Tempest. Diana makes a literal appearance in Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
| What is the name Imogen uses when she disguises herself as a man? | Cymbeline
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Fidele. Fidele. The other names are as follows: Cesario---used by Viola in Twelfth Night. Ganymede---used by Rosalind in As You Like It. Sebastian---used by Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
| If I were to say the name 'Cadwal', who am I referring to? | Cymbeline
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Arviragus. Cadwal is the name Belarius gives the younger prince. Guiderius is given the name 'Polydor'.
| What is the name of the town that Posthumus tells Imogen to meet him? | Cymbeline
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Milford Haven. All of the action begins to center around Milford Haven by the end of Act III.
| What does Posthumus command Pisanio to after after discovering 'Imogen's faithlessness'? | Cymbeline
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Kill her.. Posthumus instructs Pisanio to kill her.
| What is the name of the General of the Roman Forces in this play? | Cymbeline
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Caius Lucius. It is Caius Lucius. Caius Martius is the Roman soldier who would become Coriolanus. Lucius Brutus was a tribune in Coriolanus. Finally, Marcus Cassibelan is the uncle of Cymbeline who began paying the tribute to Rome.
| What is the cause of the war between Cymbeline and the Romans? | Cymbeline
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Cymbeline refuses to pay tribute.. In Act Three, we discover that Cymbeline along with the Queen and Cloten, refuse to pay the tribute that they have paid to Rome in years past.
| What object does Iachimo steal from the sleeping Imogen in her bedchamber? | Cymbeline
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A bracelet. The ring is what Imogen gives to Posthumus. The bracelet or 'manacle of love' as Posthumus calls it in Act One, is what he gave to Imogen and Iachimo steals.
On her breast. Iachimo discovers this fact when he looks over the sleeping Imogen in Act II Scene ii.
| What is in the vial that Cornelius the doctor gives to the Queen? | Cymbeline
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Sleeping Potion. Cornelius lets us know in an aside that although the Queen requests poison, the doctor does not trust her and puts in a strong sleeping potion which simulates death.
| Who owns the Italian house which becomes the setting of the bet on Imogen? | Cymbeline
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Philario. Philario is the friend of Posthumus' father who allows Posthumus to stay with him. We are in his house in Act I Scene iv when the bet is made.
| Why was Posthumus Leonatus given his first name? | Cymbeline
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His father died before his birth.. It was a Roman custom to name children born after the death of their natural born fathers 'Posthumus'. The first scene explains this.
| What is Cymbeline's demeanor at the opening of the play? | Cymbeline
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Angry. The first line of the play is 'You do not meet a man but frowns.' The Queen says to Posthumus 'Marry yet The fire of rage is in him'. And Cymbeline's angry first entrance confirms what has been spoken before.
| Which Shakespearean commentator remarked of "Cymbeline" that he would not "waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation"? | Cymbeline
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Samuel Johnson. Various influential critics have been more positive than Johnson: Leavis, for example, believes that "Cymbeline" "contains a great variety of life and interest...out of the interplay of contrasting themes and modes we have an effect as...of an odd and distinctive music".
| Which episode in "Cymbeline" has traditionally been thought by critics not to be Shakespeare's own work? | Cymbeline
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Posthumus's dream-vision in gaol. The dream-vision of his dead relations that Posthumus experiences in prison is written in a strange kind of doggerel completely unlike Shakespeare's usual late style. The authenticity of the other three options given above has never been questioned.
| Which character in the play disguises himself/herself as the youth "Fidele"? | Cymbeline
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Imogen. It reminds us once again of the versatility of those Shakespearean boy-actors who played the women's parts. A boy playing a girl playing a boy...
Polydore and Cadwal, who have fallen in love with the "youth" who is really - unbeknownst to them all - their long-lost sister, cannot contain their grief when "he" is found apparently dead. The eighteenth-century poet William Collins, inspired by Shakespeare's play, wrote a lyrical dirge lamenting the supposed death of "Fidele", which captures the fairy-tale elegiac note quite well.
the long-lost sons of Cymbeline. They think they are Belarius's sons, but they are really royal princes all the time (Guiderius and Arviragus are their real names).
| To which Welsh port does Posthumus sail on his way back from Italy to Cymbeline's court? | Cymbeline
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Milford Haven. I read somewhere that Milford Haven claims to have the second deepest harbour in Europe, but if Shakespeare had heard about this bit of folklore, he decided not to use it.
| Which character says to the Roman envoy who has come to Britain to demand tribute money, "We will nothing pay for wearing our own noses; ... if Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light"? | Cymbeline
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Cloten. Cloten's quite impressive bravado here helps to make him a slightly more rounded character. His days are numbered, though: he is presently to be beheaded outside Belarius's cave in Wales while wearing Posthumus's clothes, and to be mistaken for the corpse of Posthumus by the distraught Imogen.
| How does the song begin which is sung below Imogen's window? | Cymbeline
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Hark! hark! the lark at Heaven's gate sings. The original musical setting for this song, by Robert Johnson, has survived, and it is a delight. (The words were set to music again 200-odd years later by Franz Schubert. Lucky song.)
| To whom does Cloten say of Imogen: "If you can penetrate her with your fingering, so; we'll try with tongue too: if none will do, let her remain"? | Cymbeline
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his musicians. Cloten's crude sexual innuendo only emphasises what a hopeless suitor he is.
blue. "White and azure lac'd with Heaven's own tinct", rhapsodises Iachimo. A wee problem, perhaps, for aspiring Shakespearean actresses with brown eyes.
| How does Iachimo secrete himself into Imogen's bed-chamber? | Cymbeline
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hiding in a trunk. When, with Imogen asleep in her bed, Iachimo slowly levers open the lid of the trunk and looks around him, it can be a stunning "coup de theatre". I saw the late Emrys James do it brilliantly at Stratford-upon-Avon in the 1970s.
| Why does Iachimo leave his Italian home to visit Britain? | Cymbeline
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he wants to win a bet with Posthumus. Iachimo wants to prove to Posthumus, by fair means or foul, that his wife has been unfaithful to him.
| What is the heroine's name in "Cymbeline"? | Cymbeline
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Imogen. Imogen is one of Shakespeare's most admirable women characters - honest, loyal, brave, resilient, practical, adventurous, lyrical - and beautiful, too. She has attracted the attention of some of Britain's leading actresses over the centuries: perhaps the most celebrated Imogen of all was Ellen Terry in London in the 1890s, of whom it was memorably recalled by the playwright and critic Harley Granville-Barker that her voice "seemed to fill the Lyceum Theatre with dancing sunbeams".
| Why is the hero of the play called Posthumus? | Cymbeline
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for both of these reasons. "Posthumus" seems a slightly unlikely name for a hero, but his second name -"Leonatus" - makes him sound more heroic.
the British King. Truculent and ineffective in his personal life, Cymbeline is neither a hero nor a villain, but rather a kind of flawed figurehead: a fairy-tale king.
| At the time of the play's action, which Caesar is ruling the Roman Empire? | Cymbeline
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Octavius. The play is set in the uneasy period between the two Roman invasions of Britain, when the Celtic chiefs were supposed to be sending tribute money to Rome in order to keep the Caesars quiet.
| How was the play - surprisingly in view of its happy ending - listed upon its first publication, in the posthumous "First Folio" of Shakespeare's collected works in 1623? | Cymbeline
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as a tragedy. Presumably the editors - Shakespeare's old friends Heminge and Condell - had either never seen "Cymbeline" performed, or had never stayed to the end. The play is a glorious mixture of comedy, history, tragedy and romance, with a blissfully happy ending. It could best be described, perhaps, as a dramatised fairy-tale.
| What sources did Shakespeare use for the plot of "Cymbeline"? | Cymbeline
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both Boccaccio and Holinshed. He took some historical background from Holinshed's "Chronicles", and part of the plot from Boccaccio's "Decameron". Other parts of the plot were apparently taken from an anonymous play of 1589.
| What is the generally-accepted date for the composition of William Shakespeare's "Cymbeline"? | Cymbeline
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1610-11. The well-known astrologer of the period, Simon Forman, records having attended a performance of the new play in 1611. Unfortunately for scholars, he gives no details, not even mentioning the name of the theatre in which the performance occurred (it was probably either the Globe or the new indoor Blackfriars Theatre).
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