v^ THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE GENERAL EDITOR : W. J. CRAIG CYMBELINE 'U THE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE CYMBELINE EDITED BY EDWARD DOWDEN I METHUEN AND CO. 36 ESSEX STREET: STRAND LONDON 1903 CONTENTS I'AGK Introduction • vii Cymbeline I Additional Note • • .212 INTRODUCTION The play of Cymbeliyte was printed for the first time in the Folio of 1623, where it is placed among the tragedies, and is the last play in the volume. It is there divided throughout into acts and scenes. I have found the text often difficult to ascertain, and have felt how much cause there is to regret that we possess no Quarto, by which to test the readings of the Folio and correct some of its errors. It has seemed best to be con- servative of the original text, where very strong reasons do not appear for departure from it. But I have accepted some alterations in punctuation suggested by Vaughan and others —alterations which in some instances affect the mean- ing of the passages. With respect to the collation of the Folios, for which I have used my own copies of F 2 and F 4, and the Cam- bridge edition and Mr. Craig's New Shakspere Society edition for F 3, I have noted what appears to me of im- portance and nothing more. It would have been easier to have asked the printers to set up Mr. Craig's complete collation, than to pick out the various readings which seem to me to deserve attention. The variations of the later Folios from the first do not in my eyes possess in general vii VIU INTRODUCTION even the value of editorial alterations, for the greater number of them are due to the carelessness of seventeenth-century printers. But as the text is difficult and has caused much throwing about of brains, I have been somewhat liberal in recording the conjectures of critics. A hesitating conjecture of my own with reference to the words of Imogen, marked with an obelus in the Globe Shakespeare, as probably corrupt : Think that you are upon a rock, and now Throw me again, has received some countenance, which I did not expect, from the article " lock " in the New English Dictionary, This additional evidence I have given in a note at the end of the volume. To ascertain the precise date at which Cymbeline was written is not possible ; but we have a description of it by Dr. Simon Forman, the celebrated astrologer and quack- doctor, who died on the 1 2th of September i6i i. Forman's manuscript, " The Booke of Plaies and Notes thereof," is in the Bodleian Library, and it has been printed in the "Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1875-76." He saw at the Globe Theatre on April 30, 161 1, a performance of a Richard the Second (which was not Shakespeare's play); on May 15, 161 1, at the Globe, Shakespeare's Winter^s Tale\ then, in Forman's manuscript, there follows "of Cimbalin King of England," which un- fortunately is not dated ; and the notes close with a description of Macbeth, "at the glob. 1 610, the 20 of Aprill." Forman's account of the action of Cymbeline is full and accurate ; the only divergence from the play as we have it, which deserves mention, is that the name of the INTRODUCTION ix heroine appears as Innogen. The dated notes belonging to the years 1 6 1 o— 1 1 , it is probable that Cymbeline was seen by Forman in one or other of those years. But the argument that the play must then have been a new play because he de- scribes it in detail has little weight, for Macbeth is described even more fully, and Macbeth was probably written some years before the date at which Forman saw it acted. In Cymbeline^ II. iv. 70, 71, mention is made of Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman, And Cydnus swell'd above her banks ; and again in IV. ii. 252, 253, we read : Thersites' body is as good as Ajax', When neither are alive. There is little force in the inference that these passages imply a date close to the date of Antony and Cleopatra or of Troilus and Cressida, for Shakespeare knew North's translation of Plutarch long before Antony and Cleopatra was written, and the names of Thersites and Ajax were doubtless familiar to him long before he dramatised a portion of the Troy legend. But it is certainly noteworthy that in The Winter's Tale Shakespeare incidentally makes use of a passage from the novel of Boccaccio, from which he derived part of the plot of Cymbeline. In Boccaccio's story Ambrogiuolo (the original of Shakespeare's lachimo) is impaled on a stake, his body is smeared with honey, and is destroyed by wasps, hornets, and flies. lachimo is not so punished, but Autolycus oi The Winter's Tale (iv. iv. 812-821) alarms the Clown " with a horrible picture of the fate in store for him : He [the old man] has a son who shall be flayed alive; then — X INTRODUCTION 'nointed over with honey, set on the head of a wasp's nest," and after further tortures, he shall be " with flies blown to death." It is probable that Cymheline preceded at no great distance The Winter's Tale^ which Simon Forman saw acted in May 1611, and that in this passage the dramatist was turning to good account a recollection of the story of Boccaccio, which he had read with care while engaged in the creation of Cymbeline. Those metrical tests which are of chief value in study- ing the chronology of Shakespeare's later plays lend confirmation to the opinion based on external evidence, that 1609 or 1 6 10 as a date for Cymbeline cannot be far astray. In the percentage of lines that run on without a pause at the end of the verse, of lines that have weak or light endings, and of lines in which the double or feminine ending appears, Cymbeline^ The Winter's Tale^ and The Tempest lie close together. The exact figures will be found in my Shakespeare Priyner. These plays, together with the Shakespearian part of Pericles—the earliest of the four form the group to which the name of " Romances " has been given. I must repeat here what I have elsewhere written {Shakespeare Primer 54-56): "From the y pp. tragic passion which completed its climax in Timon of Athensy we suddenly pass to beauty and serenity; from the plays concerned with the violent breaking of human bonds, to a group of plays which are all concerned with the knitting together of human bonds, the reunion of parted kindred, the forgiveness of enemies, the atonement for wrong— not by death, but by repentance—the reconciliation of husband with wife, of child with father, of friend with friend. Pericles is a sketch in which only a part of the — INTRODUCTION xi subject of these last plays is clearly conceived ; it is in some respects like a slighter and earlier Tempest^ in which Lord Cerimon is the Prospero. It also contains hints afterwards worked out in The Winters Tale] the reunion of the Prince of Tyre and his lost Thaisa is a kind of anticipation of the rediscovery by Leontes of the wife whom he had so long believed to be dead. Posthumus's jealousy, his perception of his error, his sorrow, and his pardon, may be contrasted with the similar series of incidents in The Winter's Tale^ and the exquisitely impul- sive and generous Imogen may be set over against the grave, statue-like Hermione, whose forgiveness of her hus- band follows the long years of suffering, endured with noble fortitude. Prospero is also wronged ; his enemies are in his power ; but he has employed his supernatural ministers to lead them to penitence rather than to bring them to punish- ment. He has learned that ' the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.' In these plays there are two sets of dramatis personce: the sufferers, aged and experienced Pericles, Prospero, Belarius, Hermione, afterwards (in King Henry VIII) Queen Katherine ; and the young and beauti- ful children in the brightness of the morning of life Marina, Miranda, Perdita, Arviragus, and Guiderius ; and Shakespeare seems to render homage to both : to the aged sufferers for their virtue and patience and sorrow ; to the young men and maidens for their beauty and their joy. There is a romantic element about these plays. In all there is the same romantic incident of lost children re- covered by those to whom they are dear—the daughters of Pericles and Leontes, the sons of Cymbeline and Alonzo. In all there is a beautiful romantic background of sea and — xu INTRODUCTION mountain. The dramas have a grave beauty, a sweet * serenity, which seem to render the name comedies ' inap- propriate ; we may smile tenderly, but we never laugh loudly, as we read them." In one of the most interesting and suggestive of recent studies in Elizabethan drama. Professor Thorndike's The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere} the writer gives in summary the results of his examination of the " General Characteristics of Shakspere's Romances," as follows : " In our analysis we have found varied and ingenious plots, tragic and idyllic scenes furnishing emotional variety v'and contrast, telling situations, emphasised denouements, '' characterisation sacrificed to convention and situation, a versification perceptibly designed for stage effect, and con- siderable pageantry taken from the court masques. In all these, and in more specific ways as well, the romances not only differ from Shakspere's preceding work, they resemble the contemporary romances of Beaumont and Fletcher" (pp.