Shakespeare takes the leitmotifs of his life work - father/daughter conflict, the loss of a son, a husband's intense jealousy and the reunion of siblings - and through dreams brings about perhaps the happiest ending in the canon. To me, as a father with grown children, this desire late in life to recast the past is completely understandable and compelling. Not because I have bad relations with my children - I am blessed with a loving son and daughter - but because I suspect we all as parents wish we had done a better job: taken more care, been more generous and shown more understanding. I believe Shakespeare has cast himself as Cymbeline. His own life journey has become the source material for this historical romance.

 

If Cymbeline is informed by a personal desire by the writer to rewrite the past, translating an angry patriarch to a more giving and tolerant parent, it also entails parallel political and religious transformations. Cymbeline at the start of the play is an absolutist tyrant who employs torture against his enemies. Just like King James, who compared kings to gods, he tolerates no opposition and has little in common with his subjects, such as the "base" Posthumus. This play eerily foreshadows the revolutionary times that would follow Shakespeare's own. The most strident of the aristocratic faction in Cymbeline, Prince Cloten, is eventually beheaded after attacking a "slave." He is shocked that the commoner is not afraid of his royal person. Ironically, the audience knows that the commoner is the true heir to the throne. But the beheading of an arrogant prince, like King James's own son Charles, would become reality in only thirty years' time.

 

In battle, Cymbeline is captured by the Romans and saved by those he has wronged or neglected. At the end of the play he knows that he owes his crown to them: an old man, two boys and a peasant. We now have a monarchy made possible only with the support of commoners, a constitutional monarchy. In the spirit of justice and forgiveness, Cymbeline releases all the Roman prisoners, saying, "Pardon's the word for all." This tyrannical patriarch has grown wise, gentle and more democratic.

 

The gods of this pre-Christian world undergo a similar renovation. The ghosts of Posthumus's family come back to him in a dream from the Fields of Elysium to complain bitterly at the injustice they see in Jupiter's treatment of their son and brother. They want mercy from the Thunder God. Jupiter appears and tells them that "whom best I love, I cross, to make my gift, the more delayed, delighted." Just as love overcomes revenge in Cymbeline's life, so social justice ends tyranny in the body politic, and mercy subsumes "harsh injuries" from the heavens.

 

This movement - personal, political and religious - is of a piece in Cymbeline. And while it may have been a movement born of a dream, it brings with it a vision that promises a new pax Romana in the years to come. Or so perhaps Shakespeare dreamed. For the unlikely events and reconciliations of the play seem to underline its dreamlike qualities, its

 

Or rather the stories. Shakespeare seems to be challenging himself to see how many different narrative threads he can weave together. The ingredients are familiar: lost children, disguise, mistaken identity, moles as recognition tokens, a ring and a bracelet as plot devices, a wicked queen who dabbles in poison, and a poison that is really a sleeping drug. In the opening scene the main storyteller admits that one particular turn in the plot is incredible but adds, "Yet it is true, sir," and his listener replies, "I do well believe you." That is the spirit we need to bring to the play.

 

At the start the main story is that of Innogen, King Cymbeline's daughter, who has offended her father by marrying Posthumus, the man she loves, instead of her stepmother's son, a combination of dolt and thug appropriately named Cloten. Her disobedience is particularly serious given that her two brothers were stolen in infancy, leaving her heir to the throne, and Cymbeline, having only one child left, is determined to exert his power over her. He sends Posthumus into exile, and Innogen's anguish at losing her husband is only the beginning of her problems.

 

In Rome, Posthumus's idealistic view of his wife is countered by the cynicism of Iachimo, who declares that given half a chance he could seduce her. Nothing personal; he could do the same to any woman. Posthumus bets on his wife's virtue as though at some level he is not sure of it himself, and Iachimo travels to Britain, where Innogen rebuffs his attempt at seduction and he has to win the bet by subterfuge. Thinking Iachimo has succeeded, Posthumus, his idealism turned to its opposite, flies into a jealous rage in which he denounces all women and sends orders to his servant Pisanio to kill Innogen.

 

As Innogen, a British princess, is threatened by a Roman seducer, Britain itself is threatened by a Roman invasion. A small island - in Innogen's words, "In a great pool a swan's nest" - is up against the might of the Empire. The solution for both stories lies hidden in a remote corner of the island, the mountains of Wales. Fleeing the court in disguise, Innogen comes upon her lost brothers, stolen in infancy by Belarius and now living with him in a cave, surviving by hunting, a basic wilderness life far from the danger and intrigue of the court. They themselves do not know their true identities, even their true names; and Innogen, dressed as a boy, comes to them as a stranger. Yet through all the layers of deception, and without knowing the literal truth, she and her brothers instinctively recognize each other, feeling an irresistible pull of family affection.

 

Innogen, beset by adversaries - her father, her stepmother, her unwanted suitor, even the husband she loves - has come at last to a place where she is welcomed and loved. She reacts by falling ill. In the early scenes she was strong-minded, standing up to her attackers and taking no nonsense from anyone. It's as though now that the pressure is off, her immune system, which has been working overtime, collapses. But at least her restoration has begun, though more trials lie ahead.

 

The lost princes also have a role in the war story. While Belarius extols the virtues of the simple life, they are frustrated by it, longing for action in a larger world. As they recognize Innogen without knowing the literal truth, they sense their own true natures, and when war breaks out they come out of hiding and join with Belarius to turn the tide of battle, making a heroic stand that turns a British defeat into a British victory. It's as though something hidden in the land has emerged to save it; and there's also something in the air. Among the Roman invaders is Iachimo, repentant for his betrayal of Innogen, and feeling in defeat that the very air of Britain has enfeebled him.

 

Iachimo is not the only character who undergoes a remarkable change of heart. Posthumus, thinking his order to kill Innogen has been carried out, is stricken with remorse even before he learns that Iachimo was lying and joins the war on the Roman side, hoping to die for her. Cymbeline makes the most startling turnaround. Having won the war, which started over Britain's refusal to pay tribute to Rome, he submits to Caesar and promises to pay the tribute after all. Looking back, we see that the hawkish spirit that started the war belonged to the Queen and Cloten, the sort of patriots who give patriotism a bad name.

 

And the division between Rome and Britain was never that strict: Posthumus's father fought the Romans, yet the Roman Philario became his friend, and the exiled Posthumus stays in Philario's house; Cymbeline himself was trained by Caesar in his youth; and even as the war breaks out Cymbeline and the Roman ambassador Lucius treat each other with courtesy and mutual respect. Posthumus comes to Britain as a Roman soldier, turns British to fight for his country, then turns Roman again in order to die. Shakespeare seems to be looking forward to a world in which international borders dissolve and national identities become less important than our common humanity.

 

As in the characters we see instincts at work that go beyond conventional wisdom and daylight reality, as a latent power lies hidden in Britain itself, so the play as a whole keeps probing below waking life into a world of dream, vision and nightmare. We first touch on this world when Iachimo emerges from hiding into Innogen's bedroom, closely examining not just her room but also her body. She has fallen asleep after reading the story of the rape of Philomel, and Iachimo's invasion of her space seems like her own nightmare being acted out as she sleeps. She wakes to find her bracelet, a love-token from Posthumus, gone. In a later scene she wakes to find herself beside a headless corpse that wears her husband's clothes; this time the nightmare invades her waking mind.

 

Posthumus himself, in prison and awaiting death, dreams of his lost family. His father and brothers died before he was born, and his mother died giving birth to him. Now they appear to him, pleading with Jupiter to end his sufferings, giving Posthumus a brief glimpse of the family he never knew. Then Jupiter himself appears, and while he promises to restore Posthumus's fortunes, his manner is not benevolent but angry: how dare mere mortals question him? If this is a vision of the god who rules our lives, the effect is not reassuring. The mortals do better on their own in the final scene: having told stories to the audience, they now start telling stories to each other, and acting as a group they unravel the complex tangle of the play's many story lines. The god vanishes, the people and their stories remain.

 

The Roman soothsayer has had a vision in which he sees an eagle vanishing into the sun. He takes this as a sign of the final union of Rome (the eagle) with Cymbeline (the sun). But the disappearance of the eagle may signify more than that: Rome is not just united with Britain but absorbed into it, as Britain in the future was to absorb the stories of Rome and make them its own stories - such as the plays of William Shakespeare. Even so the strange stories of Cymbeline remain to haunt us, embodying our own dreams and nightmares: our fear of loss, our need of forgiveness, our hope for a better world. The stories may be incredible; but there is something in us that wants, and needs, to believe them.

 

Alexander Leggatt is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Toronto.

 

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