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Cymbeline
Imogen Discovered in the Cave of Belarius by George Dawe
Cymbeline (pronounced /ˈsɪmbɨliːn/) is a play by William Shakespeare, based on
legends concerning the early Celtic British King Cunobelinus. Although listed as
a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify Cymbeline as a
romance. Like Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Winter's Tale, it deals
with the themes of innocence and jealousy. While the precise date of
composition remains unknown, the play was certainly produced as early as
1611.[1]
Sources
The plot of Cymbeline is loosely based on a tale by Geoffrey of Monmouth
about the real-life British monarch Cunobelinus. Shakespeare, however, freely
adapts the legend to a large extent and adds entirely original sub-plots.
Iachimo's wager and subsequent hiding-place within a chest in order to gather
details of Imogen's room derive from story II.9 of Giovanni Boccaccio's
Decameron.[2]
Date and text
Facsimile of the first page of Cymbeline from the First Folio
Cymbeline cannot be precisely dated. The Yale edition suggests a collaborator
had a hand in the authorship, and some scenes (e.g. Act III scene 7 and Act V
scene 2) may strike the reader as particularly un-Shakespearean when
compared with others. The play shares notable similarities in language,
situation and plot with Beaumont and Fletcher's tragicomedy Philaster, or Love
Lies a-Bleeding, (c.1609–10). Both plays concern themselves with a princess
who, after disobeying her father in order to marry a lowly lover, is wrongly
accused of infidelity and thus ordered to be murdered, before escaping and
having her faithfulness proven. Furthermore, both were written for the same
theatre company and audience.[3] Some scholars believe this supports a dating
of approximately 1609, though it is not clear which play preceded the other.[4]
Cymbeline was first published in the First Folio in 1623 but the first recorded
production, as noted by Simon Forman, was in April 1611.[5]
Some have taken the convoluted plot as evidence of the play's parodic origins.
In Act V Scene IV, "Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an
eagle: he throws a thunderbolt." After stating that Posthumus's fortunes will
improve, Jupiter returns to heaven on his eagle.
Though once held in very high regard Cymbeline has lost favour over the past
century. Some have held that Shakespeare, by frivolously spinning absurd tales,
merely wrote it to amuse himself.[6] William Hazlitt and John Keats, however,
number it among their favorite plays. It is sometimes referred to as a "problem
play", because its central character confronts a specific moral or social
concern.
The editors of the Oxford and Norton Shakespeare believe the name of Imogen
is a misspelling of Innogen—they draw several comparisons between
Cymbeline and Much Ado About Nothing, in which a ghost character named
Innogen was supposed to be Leonato's wife (Posthumus being also known as
"Leonatus", the Latin form of the Italian name in the other play). Stanley Wells
and Michael Dobson point out that Holinshed's Chronicles, which Shakespeare
used as a source, mention an Innogen, and that Forman's eyewitness account
of the April 1611 performance refers to "Innogen" throughout.[5] In spite of
these arguments, most editions of the play have continued to use the name
Imogen.
Characters
CYMBELINE, King of Britain
CAIUS LUCIUS, General of the Roman
Forces
QUEEN, Wife to Cymbeline
PISANIO, Servant to Posthumus
CLOTEN, Son to the Queen by a former
Husband
CORNELIUS, a Physician
IMOGEN / INNOGEN[7], Daughter to
Cymbeline by a former Queen
A Roman Captain
Two British Captains
POSTHUMUS LEONATUS, a Gentleman,
A French Gentleman, Friend to Philario
Husband to Imogen
BELARIUS, a banished Lord, disguised Two Lords of Cymbeline's Court
under the name of Morgan
Two Gentlemen of the same
GUIDERIUS & ARVIRAGUS, Sons to
Cymbeline, disguised under the names Two Gaolers
of Polydore and Cadwal, supposed
Lords, Ladies, Roman Senators,
Sons to Morgan
Tribunes, a Dutch Gentleman, a
Spanish Gentleman, a Soothsayer,
PHILARIO, Friend to Posthumus
Musicians, Officers, Captains, Soldiers,
[7]
Messengers, and other Attendants
IACHIMO / JACHIMO / GIACOMO ,
Friend to Philario
HELEN, a Lady attending on Imogen
Synopsis
Postumus and Imogen by John Faed
Posthumus, a man of low birth but exceeding personal merit, has secretly
married his childhood friend Imogen, daughter of King Cymbeline. Cymbeline,
upon finding out, banishes Posthumus from the kingdom. His faithful servant
Pisanio, however, remains.
Iachimo, a soldier in the Roman army, makes a bet with Posthumus that he can
tempt Imogen to commit adultery. Iachimo sneaks into her bedchamber and
examines her while she sleeps, stealing a bracelet. Then he tells Posthumus he
has won the bet, offering the bracelet as proof, along with details of Imogen's
bedchamber and naked body. Posthumus orders his faithful servant Pisanio to
murder the falsely besmirched Imogen. Pisanio warns her instead, then helps
her fake her death, and to disguise herself as a boy. He sends her to Milford
Haven on the West Coast of Wales. There she befriends "Polydore" and
"Cadwell" who, unbeknownst to her, are really Guiderius and Arviragus, her own
brothers.
Twenty years before the action of the play, two British noblemen swore false
oaths charging that Belarius had conspired with the ancient Romans, which led
Cymbeline to banish him. Belarius kidnapped Cymbeline's young sons in
retaliation, to hinder him from having heirs to the throne. The sons were raised
by the nurse Euriphile, whom they called mother and took her for such.
At the play's resolution, virtually the entire cast comes forth one at a time to
add a piece to the puzzle. Cornelius, the court doctor, arrives to dazzle
everyone with news that the Queen, Imogen's stepmother, is dead, reporting
that with her last breath she confessed her wicked deeds: she never loved old
Cymbeline, she unsuccessfully attempted to have Imogen poisoned by Pisanio
(without Pisanio's knowledge), and she was ambitious to poison Cymbeline so
Cloten, her own son, could assume the throne.
Cymbeline concludes with an oration to the gods, declares peace and
friendship between Britain and Rome, and great feasting in Lud's Town
(London), concluding "Never was a war did cease, / Ere bloody hands were
washed, with such a peace."
Performance
Following the performance mentioned by Forman, the play was revived at court
for Charles I and Henrietta Maria in 1634.[8] In the Restoration era, Thomas
D'Urfey staged an adaptation of Cymbeline, titled The Injur'd Princess, or The
Fatal Wager. John Rich staged the play with his company at Lincoln's Inn Fields;
the performance was not long-remembered, as Rich's company was less
famous for its work with Shakespeare than for its pantomimes and spectacles.
Theophilus Cibber revived Shakespeare's text in 1758. In November 1761, David
Garrick returned to a more-or-less original text, with good success: Posthumus
became one of his star roles.[9] Garrick rearranged some scenes; in particular,
he shortened Imogen's burial scene and the entire fifth act, omitting the dream
of Posthumus. The production was highly praised.
The play entered the Romantic era with John Philip Kemble's company in
1801.[10] Kemble's productions made use of lavish spectacle and scenery; one
critic noted that during the bedroom scene, the bed was so large that Jachimo
all but needed a ladder to view Imogen in her sleep.[11] Kemble added a dance
to the Cloten's comic wooing of Imogen. In 1827, his brother Charles mounted
an antiquarian production at Covent Garden; it featured costumes designed
after the descriptions of the ancient British by such writers as Julius Caesar and
Diodorus Siculus.
William Charles Macready mounted the play several times between 1837 and
1842.[12] At the Theatre Royal, Marylebone, an epicene production was staged
with Mary Warner, Fanny Vining, Anna Cora Mowatt, and Edward Loomis
Davenport.
Dame Ellen Terry as Imogen
In 1864, as part of the celebrations of Shakespeare's birth, Samuel Phelps
performed the title role at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Helen Faucit returned to
the stage for this performance.
The play was also one of Ellen Terry's last performances with Henry Irving at
the Lyceum in 1896. Terry's performance was widely praised, though Irving was
judged an indifferent Iachimo. Like Garrick, Irving removed the dream of
Posthumus; he also curtailed Iachimo's remorse and attempted to render
Cloten's character consistent. A review in the Athenaeum compared this
trimmed version to pastoral comedies such as As You Like It. The set design,
overseen by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, was lavish and advertised as historically
accurate, though the reviewer for the time complained of such anachronisms as
gold crowns and printed books as props.[13]
Similarly lavish but less successful was Margaret Mather's production in New
York in 1897. The sets and publicity cost $40,000, but Mather was judged too
emotional and undisciplined to succeed in a fairly cerebral role.
Barry Vincent Jackson staged a modern-dress production for the Birmingham
Rep in 1923, two years before his influential modern-dress Hamlet.[14] Walter
Nugent Monck brought his Maddermarket Theatre production to Stratford in
1946, inaugurating the post-war tradition of the play.
London saw two productions in the 1956 season. Michael Benthall directed the
less successful production, at the Old Vic. The set design by Audrey Cruddas
was notably minimal, with only a few essential props. She relied instead on a
variety of lighting effects to reinforce mood; actors seemed to come out of
darkness and return to darkness. Barbara Jefford was criticized as too cold and
formal for Imogen; Leon Gluckman played Posthumus, Derek Godfrey Iachimo,
and Derek Francis Cymbeline. Following Victorian practice, Benthall drastically
shortened the last act.[15]
By contrast, Peter Hall's production at the Shakespeare Memorial presented
nearly the entire play, including the long-neglected dream scene (although a
golden eagle designed for Jupiter turned out too heavy for the stage machinery
and was not used).[16] Hall presented the play as a distant fairy tale, with
stylized performances. The production received favorable reviews, both for
Hall's conception and, especially, for Peggy Ashcroft's Imogen.[17] Richard
Johnson played Posthumus, and Robert Harris Cymbeline. Iachimo was played
by Geoffrey Keen, whose father Malcolm had played Jachimo with Ashcroft at
the Old Vic in 1932.[18]
Hall's approach attempted to unify the play's diversity by means of a fairy-tale
topos. The next major Royal Shakespeare Company production, in 1962, went
in the opposite direction. Working on a set draped with heavy white sheets,
director William Gaskill employed Brechtian alienation effects, to mixed critical
reviews. Bernard Levin complained that the bare set deprived the play of
necessary scenic splendor.[19] The acting, however, was widely praised.
Vanessa Redgrave as Imogen was often compared favorably to Ashcroft; Eric
Porter was a success as Jachimo, as was Clive Swift as Cloten. Patrick Allen
was Posthumus, and Tom Fleming played the title role.
A decade later, John Barton's 1974 production for the RSC (with assistance
from Clifford Williams) featured Sebastian Shaw in the title role, Tim PigottSmith as Posthumus, Ian Richardson as Jachimo, and Susan Fleetwood as
Imogen. Charles Keating was Cloten. As with contemporary productions of
Pericles, this one used a narrator (Cornelius) to signal changes in mood and
treatment to the audience. Robert Speaight disliked the set design, which he
called too minimal, but he approved the acting.[20]
In 1980, David Jones revived the play for the RSC; the production was in
general a disappointment, although Judi Dench as Imogen received reviews
that rivalled Ashcroft's. Ben Kingsley played Jachimo; Roger Rees was
Posthumus. In 1987, Bill Alexander directed the play in The Other Place (later
transferring to the Pit in London's Barbican Centre) with Harriet Walter playing
Imogen, David Bradley as Cymbeline and Nicholas Farrell as Posthumus.
At the Stratford Festival, the play was directed in 1970 by Jean Gascon and in
1987 by Robin Phillips. The latter production, which was marked by muchapproved scenic complexity, featured Colm Feore as Jachimo, and Martha
Burns as Imogen. The play was again at Stratford in 2005, directed by David
Latham. A large medieval tapestry unified the fairly simple stage design and
underscored Latham's fairy-tale inspired direction.
At the new Globe Theatre in 2001, a cast of six (including Abigail Thaw, Mark
Rylance, and Richard Hope) used extensive doubling for the play. The cast
wore identical costumes even when in disguise, allowing for particular comic
effects related to doubling (as when Cloten attempts to disguise himself as
Posthumus.)[21]
The play is rarely performed, and has thus far never been filmed. Elijah
Moshinsky directed the 1983 made-for-television videotaped production,
ignoring the ancient British period setting in favour of a more timeless and
snow-laden atmosphere inspired by Rembrandt and his contemporary Dutch
painters. Richard Johnson, Helen Mirren, and Robert Lindsay play Cymbeline,
Imogen, and Jachimo, respectively, with Michael Pennington as Posthumus.[22]
Despite a lack of cinematic adaptations, there have been some well-received
major theatrical productions including 1998's Public Theatre production in New
York City directed by Andrei Serban. Cymbeline was also performed in
Cambridge in October 2007 in a production directed by Sir Trevor Nunn, who
sought to re-capture the essence of the play as a story narrative, and in
November 2007 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.
Adaptations and cultural references
Imogen by Herbert Gustave Schmalz
The play was adapted by Thomas d'Urfey as The Injured Princess, or, the Fatal
Wager; this version was produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, presumably
by the united King's Company and Duke's Company, in 1682.[23] The play
changes some names and details, and adds a subplot, typical of the
Restoration, in which a virtuous waiting-woman escapes the traps laid by
Cloten. D'Urfey also changes Pisanio's character so that he at once believes in
Imogen's (Eugenia, in D'Urfey's play) guilt. For his part, D'Urfey's Posthumus is
ready to accept that his wife might have been untrue, as she is young and
beautiful.[24] Some details of this alteration survived in productions at least until
the middle of the century.
William Hawkins revised the play again in 1759. His was among the last of the
heavy revisions designed to bring the play in line with Aristotelean unities. He
cut the Queen, reduced the action to two places (the court and a forest in
Wales).[25] The dirge "With fairest flowers..." was set to music by Thomas
Arne.[26]
Nearer the end of the century, Henry Brooke wrote an adaptation which was
apparently never staged.[27] His version eliminates the brothers altogether as
part of a notable enhancement of Posthumus' role in the play.
George Bernard Shaw, who criticized the play perhaps more harshly than he did
any of Shakespeare's other works, took aim at what he saw as the defects of
the final act in his 1937 Cymbeline Refinished; as early as 1896, he had
complained about the absurdities of the play to Ellen Terry, then preparing to
act Imogen.
Probably the most famous verses in the play come from the funeral song of Act
IV, Scene 2, which begins:
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
These last two lines appear to have inspired T. S. Eliot; in "Lines to a Yorkshire
Terrier" (in Five-Finger Exercises), he writes:
Pollicle dogs and cats all must
Jellicle cats and dogs all must
Like undertakers, come to dust.
The first two lines of the song appear in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. The
lines, which turn Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts to the trauma of the First World War,
are at once an elegiac dirge and a profoundly dignified declaration of
endurance. The song provides a major organizational motif for the novel.
At the end of Stephen Sondheim's The Frogs, William Shakespeare is
competing against George Bernard Shaw for the title of best playwright,
deciding which of them is to be brought back from the dead in order to improve
the world. Shakespeare sings the funeral song of Act IV, Scene 2, when asked
about his view of death (the song is titled "Fear No More").
The last two lines of the Act IV-scene 2 funeral song may also have inspired
the lines W. H. Auden, the librettist for Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress", puts
into the mouth of Anne Truelove at the end of the opera: "Every wearied body
must late or soon return to dust".[citation needed]
Fear No More
"Fear No More"
Desperate Housewives episode
Season 1
Episode no.
Episode 20
Written by
Adam Barr
Directed by
Jeff Melman
Production no.
120
Original airdate
May 1, 2005
Guest stars

Doug Savant as Tom Scavo

Christine Estabrook as Martha Huber

Harriet Sansom Harris as Felicia Tilman

Roger Bart as George Williams

Melinda McGraw as Annabel Foster

Richard Roundtree as Jerry Shaw

Jeff Doucette as Father Crowley

Brent Kinsman as Preston Scavo

Shane Kinsman as Porter Scavo

Lesley Ann Warren as Sophie Bremmer

Zane Huett as Parker Scavo

Lauren Cohn as Ginger

Bill Ferrell as Fireman

Nikki Snelson as Saleswoman

Pat Towne as Phil
Episode chronology
← Previous
Next →
"Live Alone and Like
It"
"Sunday in the Park
with George"
List of Desperate Housewives episodes
"Fear No More" is the 20th episode of the ABC television series, Desperate
Housewives. The episode was the 20th episode for the show's first season. The
episode was written by Adam Barr and was directed by Jeff Melman. It originally
aired on Sunday May 1, 2005.

Plot
Gabrielle throws a farewell party for Carlos who is off to prison for eight months.
At the party, she finds out she is pregnant and blames Carlos in front of all the
party guests. Bree and Rex unexpectedly run into George at the park and Rex
advises George to beat it. Bree tries to make amends by visiting George in the
pharmacy. He lies and tells her that he has found a girlfriend, Ginger who
stacks the shelves. Bree feels happy for George and invites him to come to
Carlos's farewell party. When Rex sees George at the party, he asks him why he
is there and proceeds to push both Bree and George into the pool. Zach
continues to stalk Julie who is not interested in being his girlfriend anymore.
Paul asks Edie why she broke into his house and Edie informs Paul it was
Susan's idea. Paul meets Susan and manages to lie once more about the Mary
Alice/Dana mystery. When Susan's kitchen goes on fire, she blames Paul
Young as the arson and goes to Mr. Shaw for background information on Mary
Alice and Paul. Later on we find out that it was Zach who started the fire. Tom's
ex-girlfriend, Annabel Foster, resurfaces at the firm which causes Lynette to
become jealous when she fears her marriage is in jeopardy.
Notes


This marks the 1st time since Every Day a Little Death , Christine
Estabrook has appeared as Mrs. Huber. Martha is again not seen until
season 5 episode "The Best Thing That Ever Could Have Happened"
Although credited, John Rowland (Jesse Metcalfe) does not appear in
this episode.
Title reference
The episode title Fear No More is a song in the Stephen Sondheim musical, The
Frogs. The lyric is actually a setting from William Shakespeare's play Cymbeline.