6. Cymbeline, by William Shakespeare, pp. 152-196

Act V 

 
Scene I

Posthumus is back in Britain and the Romans have got him. He is wearing "Italian weeds," and is supposed to be fighting on their side. But sometime in the two acts he has been gone, he has somehow undergone a change of heart about Imogen, or at least about having Pisanio kill her: "Every good servant does not all commands: / No bond, but to do just ones." He looks at the "bloody cloth" Pisanio has sent him as evidence that he has done the deed, and wishes that the gods had "saved / The noble Imogen, to repent, and struck / Me, wretch, more worth your vengeance." And so he decides to change his clothes, dress as "a Briton peasant," and "die / For thee, O Imogen," or at least for her country.

Scene II

And look who else has undergone a change of heart: Iachimo, with the Roman army, fights a skirmish in which the disguised Posthumus disarms him but spares his life, leaving him to soliloquize:

The heaviness and guilt within my bosom 
Takes off my manhood: I have belied a lady, 
The princess of this country; and the air on't 
Revengingly enfeebles me, or could this carl, 
A very drudge of Nature's, have subdued me 
In my profession?

The battle resumes when Iachimo exits, but the Britons retreat and Cymbeline is captured. Then Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus enter and call on the Brits to stand and fight. Posthumus joins them and the tide of battle turns. They rescue Cymbeline and exit. Then Caius Lucius enters, accompanied by Iachimo and Imogen, who is still disguised as Fidele and has joined Lucius's service. They flee from the victorious Britons.

Scene III

Posthumus enters with a British lord, who had been one of the troops that retreated from the Romans. Posthumus explains how he has come across "an ancient soldier" and "two striplings" who were standing their ground and that he joined them to turn a retreat into a victory. The lord marvels that such a reversal of fortune should have come about with "A narrow lane, an old man, and two boys," but his surprise brings out Posthumus's irritation with the man: "you are made / Rather to wonder at the things you hear / Than to work any." He imagines the lord making up rhymes about it: "Two boys, an old man twice a boy, a lane, / Preserv'd the Britons, was the Romans' bane." The lord gets uneasy at Posthumus's angry sarcasm, especially when Posthumus keeps speaking in rhyme, and exits.

Posthumus now decides that the best thing to do now is die, to end his life "by some means for Imogen," so he puts off his disguise as a British peasant and becomes a Roman again, expecting to be captured by the Britons and executed. Sure enough, two British captains and their soldiers enter, talking about the valor of "the old man, and his sons," as well as the "fourth man, in a silly habit." ("Silly" means "simple" here -- i.e., the peasant clothes Posthumus was wearing.) Posthumus yields to them, and is handed over to the British when Cymbeline and company appear.

Scene IV

Posthumus, in chains, longs to be freed by death. He falls asleep and has a vision in which his father, Sicilius Leonatus, his mother, and his two brothers who were killed in battle appear, and speak a rather ricky-ticky rhyming account of Posthumus's marriage and Iachimo's villainy, then call on Jupiter to right the wrongs done to him. As Nosworthy observes, there are a lot of critics who question whether Shakespeare wrote the scene. Then "Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The Ghosts fall on their knees." He admonishes the "petty spirits of region low" for offending his "hearing" -- which maybe hints that Shakespeare knew the verse in their plea wasn't top-notch stuff -- then tells them everything will turn out all right, gives them a "tablet" to lay on Posthumus's breast in which he explains the future, and flies off again, charging them "no farther with your din / Express impatience, let you stir up mine. They leave the document and vanish.

Posthumus wakes from his dream, expecting as usual to find that it was just a dream, but discovers "A book?" He reads the prophecy in it, which has to do with "a lion's whelp" being "embrac'd by a piece of tender air," and "a stately cedar" having its long-dead "lopp'd branches" restored, and decides he is still dreaming because he can't make sense of it.

His jailers enter and tell him to prepare to be hanged. (The First Gaoler is one of those annoyingly garrulous "comic relief" characters like, Nosworthy suggests, the Porter in Macbeth.) Then a messenger arrives to say that Posthumus is to be taken to the king.

Scene V

Nosworthy mentions that one scholar has counted "twenty-four distinct denouements" in this scene. You could say it moves at twenty-four revelations per minute.

We start with Cymbeline wishing that they could find the fourth "poor" soldier who aided Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus, but Pisanio says that there's no trace of him. So Cymbeline goes ahead and proclaims the three "the liver, heart, and brain of Britain" and knights them. Then comes the first revelation, when Cornelius arrives to report that the Queen has died. Moreover, on her deathbed she revealed that she never loved Cymbeline, that she had Imogen poisoned, that she was planning to give Cymbeline a slow poison that would weaken him gradually while she made him promise to name Cloten his heir. But when Cloten disappeared she "repented / The evils she hatch'd were not effected: so / Despairing died."

Then the Roman prisoners, including Posthumus and the disguised Imogen, enter. Caius Lucius pleads for Cymbeline to spare his page, "a Briton born," meaning Fidele/Imogen. Cymbeline looks at Fidele and thinks he looks "familiar," and decides not only to pardon him but also to do him a favor, whatever he requests. Lucius tells Fidele not to beg for his master's life, "And yet I know thou wilt," but he's surprised when Imogen says she won't do that: "The boy disdains me," Lucius says, "He leaves me, scorns me." But Imogen asks the king if she can make her request privately.

As Imogen and Cymbeline confer, Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus express surprise that Fidele is alive, and Pisanio wonders what she is up to. When they have finished speaking, Cymbeline asks Iachimo to step forward, and Imogen asks his where he got the diamond he is wearing. And Iachimo launches into a florid confession that is, as Nosworthy says, "at once boastful and apologetic." It was "Leonatus' jewel," he says, and he got it by "villainy." He embroiders the tale so much that Cymbeline keeps interrupting is with "Come to the matter" and "Nay, nay, to th' purpose." Among other things, Iachimo says, "mine Italian brain / Gan in your duller Britain operate most vilely," and he pauses to relish his own scheme in obtaining the bracelet: "(O cunning, how I got it!)"

At the end of Iachimo's confession, Posthumus steps forward to reveal his identity, and to denounce not only Iachimo but also himself, breaking down in grief: "O Imogen! / My queen, my life, my wife, O Imogen, / Imogen, Imogen!" But when Imogen steps forward to try to calm him, Posthumus lashes out in his grief, thinking that the "scornful page" has something to do with Iachimo's plot. He hits her and she falls.

Pisanio comes forward then to beg someone to help Imogen and to reveal her identity: "O, my lord Posthumus! / You ne'er kill'd Imogen till now." But when she revives, Pisanio is the one who has some 'splainin' to do. (What? Shakespeare's the one who is turning tragedy into farce, with more revelations than an episode of "I Love Lucy.") She accuses him of trying to poison her with the Queen's drugs. Whereupon Cornelius remembers "one thing which the queen confessed," which is that if Pisanio gave Imogen what the Queen told him was medicine, "she is serv'd / As I would serve a rat." But he goes on to say that he suspected that the Queen was up to no good, so he made up a potion that would produce only the temporary illusion of death.

This revelation causes an aha! moment for Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus, who have been wondering how their Fidele, whom they left for dead, has shown up with Caius Lucius. Imogen now embraces Posthumus, who has suddenly recognized that Fidele is really his wife. "Hang there like fruit, my soul," he tells her, "Till the tree die," which was one of Tennyson's favorite Shakespeare lines, Nosworthy tells us.

Meanwhile, Cymbeline is still trying to fit all the missing pieces together, starting with Cloten. Pisanio does what he can to explain Cloten's disappearance, saying that he "came to me / With his sword drawn, foam'd at the mouth, and swore, / If I discover'd not which way she was gone, / It was my instant death." So he gave Cloten the letter in which Posthumus claimed to be in Milford-Haven, and Cloten borrowed Posthumus's clothes and headed off there "With unchaste purpose." Other than that, he doesn't know what happened to him.

Guiderius does know, however, and steps up to say, "I slew him there." Cymbeline, who has just knighted Guiderius, is appalled; this means he'll have to execute Guiderius. Imogen, meanwhile, realizes that the headless body she was lying next to was Cloten's, not Posthumus's. But when Cymbeline orders Guiderius seized, Belarius steps up to tell Cymbeline, "Stay, sir king. / This man is better than the man he slew." At risk of being executed himself, he reveals not only that he is Belarius, "a banish'd traitor" in Cymbeline's words, but that the young men who think they are his sons are in fact Cymbeline's.

The king admits, "I lost my children: / If these be they, I know not how to wish / A pair of worthier sons." Belarius has proof, he says: Arviragus "was lapp'd / In a most curious mantle, wrought by th' hand / Of his queen mother, which for more probation / I can with ease produce." And Cymbeline remembers that "Guiderius had / Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star," which of course this Guiderius also has. Cymbeline is happy with this denouement, and inclined to forgive Belarius for the kidnapping. His only regret, he says, is that Imogen has "lost  by this a kingdom."

Imogen now wangles a pardon for Caius Lucius, and Iachimo kneels before Posthumus, returning his ring and giving Imogen "the bracelet of the truest princess / That ever swore her faith." Posthumus replies, "The power that I have on you, is to spare you: / The malice towards you, to forgive you. Life / And deal with others better." Cymbeline then pardons the Roman prisoners, but Posthumus has a question for Lucius's soothsayer, whose name turns out to be Philarmonus: What does this message from Jupiter mean?

Philarmonus reads it and explains that the "lion's whelp" is Posthumus himself, whose name, Leonatus, means lion-born. "The piece of tender air," he claims, refers to Imogen, asserting that the Latin for woman, mulier, is derived from mollis (i.e., tender) aer (air). The "stately cedar" is Cymbeline, who has had his "lopp'd branches," Guiderius and Arviragus, restored to him. And finally, he recalls the earlier prophecy that he had interpreted as meaning a Roman victory. In fact, he says, it was a prophecy of a peace between Rome and Britain:

                                      For the Roman eagle, 
From south to west on wing soaring aloft, 
Lessen'd herself and in the beams o' the sun 
So vanish'd; which foreshow'd our princely eagle, 
Th' imperial Caesar, should again unite 
His favor with the radiant Cymbeline, 
Which shines here in  the west. 

So let's go celebrate, says Cymbeline, "Never was a war did cease / (Ere bloody hands were wash'd) with such a peace." 
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Act V of this 1982 BBC-TV production begins at about 2:04:57.

Richard Johnson as Cymbeline; Helen Mirren as Imogen; Michael Pennington as Posthumus; Claire Bloom as the Queen; Paul Jesson as Cloten; Robert Lindsay as Iachimo; John Kane as Pisanio; Hugh Thomas as Cornelius; Geoffrey Lumsden as Philario; Patsy Smart as Helen; Alan Hendrick as the Frenchman; Graham Cowden as Caius Lucius; Michael Gough as Belarius; Geoffrey Burridge as Guiderius; David Creedon as Arviragus; Marius Goring as Sicilius Leonatus: Michael Hordern as Jupiter

3. Cymbeline, by William Shakespeare, pp. 47-77

Act II 

Scene I

Cloten has been playing bowls and gambling -- and losing. As usual, the First Lord eggs him on as the Second Lord mutters deprecatory asides. One of Cloten's complaints is that is that some "whoreson jackanapes" had the effrontery to complain about his swearing, but since he was not of Cloten's rank he couldn't challenge him to a duel: "I had rather not be so noble as I am: they dare not fight with me, because of the queen my mother."

The First Lord changes the subject, asking if he has heard of the arrival of Iachimo, "a stranger that's come to court to-night." He is "an Italian ... and 'tis thought one of Leonatus' friends." So Cloten swaggers off to "see this Italian," proposing to gamble with him and win back what he lost at bowls. The Second Lord stays behind to marvel "That such a crafty devil as is his mother / Should yield the world this ass!"

Scene II

Imogen enters "in her bed," which probably means that there is an inner stage with a curtain that can be drawn across it to reveal or conceal a bed (or a throne, or some other cumbersome bit of scenery).  She has been reading and is ready to go to sleep, and asks her lady-in-waiting, whom she calls Helen, what time it is. "Almost midnight," Helen replies, so Imogen tells her to wake her at four.

When she is asleep, Iachimo emerges from the trunk she has agreed to stash in her bedroom. He begins to extol her beauty, but forces himself to remember his "design. / To note the chamber: I will write all down." He proceeds to catalog the furnishings of the room, but more particularly to look for some detail that will prove to Posthumus that he has slept with Imogen. He finds what he wants: the bracelet Posthumus gave her, and slips it from her wrist. He also observes "On her left breast / A mole cinque-spotted: like the crimson drops / I' th' bottom of a cowslip." And he notes that she is reading "The tale of Tereus, here the leaf's turn'd down / Where Philomel gave up." The tale from Ovid's Metamorphoses is one of rape, which Iachimo is figuratively committing.Then the clock strikes three and he realizes it's time to get back in the trunk.

Scene III

Cloten has lost at gambling again, though presumably not to Iachimo, who as we have seen has been otherwise occupied. So he comes to woo Imogen, having been "advised to give her music a mornings, they say it will penetrate." And as if we don't know already what he means by "penetrate," he tells the musicians, "Come on, tune: if you can penetrate her with your fingering, so: we'll try with tongue too."

The musicians sing "Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings," after which Cloten dismisses them. The Second Lord observes that the king is approaching, which pleases Cloten: "I am glad I was up so late, for that's the reason I was up so early." He greets Cymbeline and the Queen, and the king approvingly notes his attempt to woo Imogen.

A messenger arrives to say that ambassadors from Rome have arrived, including Caius Lucius. Cymbeline notes that "he comes on angry purpose" -- we learn that the Romans are there to collect tribute money that the Britons have been withholding. Cymbeline tells Cloten to finish up his wooing and join them at court: "we shall have need / T' employ you towards this Roman."

Left alone again, Cloten plans to worm his way into the favors of Imogen's attendants, but the lady who answers to his knock on the door is wary of him. Imogen appears anyway, but makes it clear that she isn't going to respond to this fool's blandishments:

                                           learn now, for all, 
That I, which know my heart, do here pronounce, 
By th' very truth of it, I care not for you, 
And am so near the lack of charity 
(To accuse myself) I hate you: which I had rather 
You felt than make't my boast.

Cloten reminds her that she should be obedient to her father's wishes, and proceeds with a putdown of Posthumus, "that base wretch, / One bred of alms, and foster'd with cold dishes, / With scraps o' th' court." She retorts that even if he were "the son of Jupiter," Cloten would be "too base / To be his [Posthumus's] groom." Posthumus's "meanest garment, / That ever hath but clipp'd his body, is dearer" to her than Cloten.

She calls for Pisanio, and as Cloten repeatedly sputters, "His garment!" she sends Pisanio to look for the bracelet that she has discovered is missing. And she presciently observes, "I hope it be not gone to tell my lord / That I kiss aught but he." She leaves Cloten still exclaiming "'His mean'st garment!'" and vowing to be revenged.

Scene IV

Back in Rome, Posthumus and Philario are discussing the journey of Caius Lucius to demand the tribute, with Philario expressing his confidence that Cymbeline will yield. Posthumus is not so sure: He thinks there will be war, and that the Britons are not afraid of the Romans. "Our countrymen / Are men more order'd than when Julius Caesar / Smil'd at their lack of skill, but found their courage / Worthy his frowning at."

Iachimo returns, but he has no news of Caius Lucius's mission. Instead, he delivers the news that he has won Posthumus's ring. Posthumus, of course, thinks he's kidding: "The stone's too hard to come by." But Iachimo replies, "Not a whit, / Your lady being so easy." Posthumus warns him not to joke about it, but Iachimo insists that he's serious. He describes the bedchamber with its tapestry of "Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman" -- the point being that Iachimo was Imogen's Roman -- and the sculpture on the fireplace of "Chaste Dian, bathing," an ironic jab at Imogen's purported lack of chastity.

Posthumus says that anyone could have described the room to him, but then Iachimo produces the bracelet. Posthumus is thunderstruck, but decides that "May be she pluck'd it off / To send it me." Iachimo asks if she mentions doing so in the letters he has brought Posthumus from Britain. "O, no, no, no, 'tis true," admits Posthumus, and he gives Iachimo the ring.

Philario intervenes to urge Posthumus not to be so hasty: Maybe one of Imogen's maids stole it and gave it to Iachimo. But when Iachimo swears, "By Jupiter, I had it from her arm," Posthumus is convinced: Such an oath on the most high god makes him believe that Iachimo is telling the truth, as in fact he is. He doesn't swear that she gave it to him, just that he "had it from her arm." When Philario again counsels Posthumus to "be patient," Iachimo delivers the coup de grâce: Imogen has a mole under her breast.

That's enough for Posthumus. He is so convinced of Imogen's guilt that he tells Iachimo "I will kill thee if thou dost deny / Thou'st made me cuckold." He exits in a fury, only to return after Philario and Iachimo have left and to launch into a maddened soliloquy about the faithlessness of not only Imogen but of all women. There is a note of sexual frustration in all of this, as Posthumus recalls the times when Imogen refused to have sex with him:

Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain'd, 
And pray'd me oft forbearance: did it with 
A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't 
Might well have warm'd old Saturn; that I thought her 
As chaste as unsunn'd snow. 

But now here she is having sex with "This yellow Iachimo," which awakens in Posthumus prurient imaginings: "Perchance he spoke not, but / Like a full-acorn'd boar, a German one, / Cried 'O!' and mounted." And he storms off in a rage of misogyny.
_____
Act II of this 1982 BBC-TV production begins at about 36:53.

Richard Johnson as Cymbeline; Helen Mirren as Imogen; Michael Pennington as Posthumus; Claire Bloom as the Queen; Paul Jesson as Cloten; Robert Lindsay as Iachimo; John Kane as Pisanio; Hugh Thomas as Cornelius; Geoffrey Lumsden as Philario; Patsy Smart as Helen; Alan Hendrick as the Frenchman; Michael Gough as Belarius; Geoffrey Burridge as Guiderius; David Creedon as Arviragus; Marius Goring as Sicilius Leonatus: Michael Hordern as Jupiter

2. Cymbeline, by William Shakespeare, pp. 1-46

Act I 

Scene I

We open in Britain, at the palace of King Cymbeline, where two Gentlemen are discussing the news. Actually, the First Gentleman is reporting it, while the Second Gentleman just eggs him on with questions. Cymbeline's daughter has married "a poor but worthy gentleman," much to the king's displeasure: He had planned for her to marry his new wife's son. So he has banished the poor gentleman and imprisoned his daughter.

Everyone at court is upset at the banishment of the gentleman, one Posthumus Leonatus, who is well thought of. The First Gentleman comments, "I do not think / So fair an outward, and such stuff within / Endows a man, but he." His father, Sicilius, fought the Romans with Cymbeline's father, who bestowed on Sicilius the surname Leonatus. Sicilius died broken-hearted when his other two sons were killed in battle, and when his wife died giving birth, Cymbeline decided to raise the baby and called him Posthumus. Cymbeline had two sons of his own, but they were kidnapped from their nursery twenty years ago. Otherwise, he had only the daughter whom Posthumus has married.

Scene II

That daughter enters now. Her name, we will learn, is Imogen. Or maybe it's Innogen, which is the way the name is spelled in Holinshed and in Simon Forman's account of watching the play sometime before his death in 1611. There is also a reference to Innogen, Leonato's wife, in the 1600 quarto of Much Ado About Nothing, though she doesn't actually appear in the play. Given these facts, and the suggestive parallel of Innogen/Leonato with Imogen/Leonatus, many scholars have assumed that Shakespeare wrote "Innogen," and that a transcriber or typesetter misread his -nn- as an -m-. So you'll find the character called Innogen in some recent editions, such as The Oxford Shakespeare. Still, the mistake (if it was one) gave rise to a long theatrical tradition that's hard to break on speculative grounds. "Imogen" has the authority of the First Folio behind it, and out of respect to the late Imogene Coca and the town in Iowa named Imogene, I think we should stick with it.

Anyway, she enters now with her stepmother, the Queen, and Posthumus, who is getting ready for his exile. The Queen assures her that Imogen is not "After the slander of most stepmothers, / Evil-ey'd unto you," and tells Posthumus, "So soon as I can win th' offended king, / I will be known your advocate." Don't buy it for a moment. Imogen certainly doesn't, and when the Queen leaves, she refers to her assurances that she's on their side as "Dissembling courtesy!" She tells Posthumus that he had better hurry and leave, and he tells her that he is going to Rome, to a friend of his father's named Philario.

The Queen returns to tell them to hurry up, and in an aside lets us know that she has tipped off Cymbeline to their whereabouts. When she exits, Imogen gives Posthumus a diamond ring that belonged to her mother and tells him to "keep it till you woo another wife, / When Imogen is dead." He protests against such a morbid thought, and gives her a bracelet, "a manacle of love," in exchange.

They are discovered by the king, who orders Posthumus to be gone, and calls Imogen a "disloyal thing" who's making him age rapidly. She stands her ground and when he says she could have married "the sole son of my queen," replies, "I chose an eagle, / And did avoid a puttock." (I.e., a kite, a lesser bird in the hierarchy of raptors.) She says it's his "fault that I have lov'd Posthumus: / You bred him as my playfellow."

The Queen returns in the midst of this quarrel and tells them to calm down. Cymbeline storms off, and Pisanio, Posthumus's servant enters to report that the Queen's son -- his name, we'll learn, is Cloten -- drew his sword in a challenge to Posthumus, but that Posthumus "rather play'd than fought" and some gentlemen prevented the duel. Imogen expresses her scorn for Cloten, and asks why Pisanio hasn't gone with Posthumus. He tells her that Posthumus sent him to serve Imogen in his absence.

Scene III

Cloten and a pair of attendant lords discuss the set-to with Posthumus, the First Lord urging Cloten to change his shirt because "the violence of action hath made you reek," the Second Lord mocking Cloten in sarcastic asides. It's a brief scene that serves mainly to establish that Cloten is a fool and a braggart.

Scene IV

Pisanio has witnessed Posthumus's departure, and Imogen begs him for a fuller description of what he saw. Then she is summoned to the queen.

Scene V

We are in Rome, where Philario awaits Posthumus's arrival. With him are Iachimo, a Frenchman, a Dutchman, and a Spaniard, but the last two have no lines and are clearly superfluous to any staging of the play. Iachimo reports that he has seen Posthumus in Britain, where his reputation was growing, and asks why he is going to stay with Philario. "His father and I were soldiers together," Philario explains as Posthumus enters.

The Frenchman is already acquainted with Posthumus, having met him when he was a "young traveller" in Orleans. Posthumus and another Frenchman came close to fighting a duel because Posthumus had boasted that the woman he loved, namely Imogen, was "more fair, virtuous, wise, chaste, constant, qualified and less attemptable than any the rarest of our ladies in France."

The account of this earlier quarrel inspires Iachimo to provoke Posthumus to a wager. Noticing the diamond ring that Imogen gave Posthumus, Iachimo suggests that just as the ring might be stolen, so might "a cunning thief, or a (that way) accomplished courtier" steal away Posthumus's beloved's virtue. Posthumus assures him that he's not afraid of losing either his ring or Imogen. Iachimo persists: He will wager half his estate against Posthumus's ring that he can steal Imogen's virtue.

Philario tries to put an end to this bet: "Gentlemen, enough of this, it came in too suddenly, let it die as it was born, and I pray you be better acquainted." But Posthumus won't back down either: "My mistress exceeds in goodness the hugeness of your unworthy thinking. I dare you to this match: here's my ring." Iachimo accepts: "If I bring you no sufficient testimony that I have enjoy'd the dearest bodily part of your mistress, my ten thousand ducats are yours, so is your diamond too." Fine, says Posthumus, and if you don't seduce her, we'll have a sword because you dared insult her.

As they exit, the Frenchman asks if they are really going to go through with this bet, and Philario indicates that Iachimo isn't the type to back down on a wager.

Scene VI

Back in Britain, the Queen meets with a physician named Cornelius who gives her a box of drugs she has requested: "most poisonous compounds, / Which are the movers of a languishing death." She has been studying how to make perfumes and preservatives with Cornelius, and has asked for the chemicals because she wants to "try the forces / Of these thy compounds on such creatures as / We count not worth the hanging (but none human)."

When Pisanio enters, Cornelius reveals in an aside before he exits that he doesn't trust the Queen, and that the drugs he has given her will only "stupefy and dull the sense awhile," and that "there is / No danger in what show of death it makes, / More than the locking up the spirits a time, / To be more fresh, reviving." Meanwhile, the Queen is attempting to persuade Pisanio to help her get Imogen to accept Cloten as her lover, telling him she'll reward him whereas his current master, Posthumus, is a loser.

She gives Pisanio the box of drugs Cornelius brought her, claiming that it contains medicines "which hath the king / Five times redeem'd from death." When he has gone, she calls him "A sly and constant knave" who is loyal to Posthumus, so if he takes the drugs in the box, that will be one less person working to bring Imogen and Posthumus together. And if Imogen doesn't come around to her plan to unite her with Cloten, she'll "taste of" the drugs too.

Scene VII

Imogen soliloquizes about her sad lot: She has "A father cruel, and a step-dame false," and she has "A foolish suitor" in Cloten, even though she is already married. Moreover, her husband has been banished. She wishes she had been kidnapped like her brothers. Then Pisanio enters with Iachimo, whom he describes as "a noble gentleman of Rome," who "Comes from my lord with letters."

She welcomes and thanks Iachimo, who, while she reads her letter, comments in an aside on her beauty: "If she be furnish'd with a mind so rare, / She is alone th' Arabian bird; and I / Have lost the wager." So he has to come up with something quick.

When she is finished with the letter, Iachimo begins to rattle on in praise of her to the point that she finally asks, "Are you well?" Iachimo sends Pisanio away to check on his own manservant whom he describes as "strange and peevish." Imogen asks how Posthumus is doing, and Iachimo tells her he is "merry" and "gamesome" and is known as "The Briton reveller." This doesn't comport with her impression of Posthumous who "did incline to sadness." But Iachimo goes on in this vein, until he says he pities Imogen.

She is puzzled, and demands to know, "Why do you pity me?" She doesn't get a straight answer from him, however, until she insists, "discover to me / What both you spur and stop." So Iachimo tells her that if he had "this cheek / To bathe my lips upon," meaning hers, he wouldn't "Slaver with lips as common as the stairs / That mount the Capitol." He implies that he would be faithful to Imogen whereas Posthumus is consorting with prostitutes. He wouldn't be telling her this, he claims, "but 'tis your graces / That from my mutest conscience to my tongue / Charms this report out."

"Let me hear no more," Imogen urges. But he persists, urging her to "Be reveng'd" on Posthumus for his infidelity. She's astonished at the suggestion: "if it be true, / How should I be reveng'd?" Why, he says, how else but by loving him:

I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure, 
More noble than that runagate to your bed, 
And will continue fast to your affection,
Still close as sure.

This is too much for Imogen, who calls out for Pisanio. She suddenly realizes what Iachimo is up to:

Away, I do condemn mine ears, that have 
So long attended thee. If thou wert honourable, 
Thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue, not 
For such an end thou seek'st, as base, as strange. 
Thou wrongst a gentleman, who is as far 
From thy report as thou from honour, and 
Solicits here a lady that disdains 
Thee, and the devil alike.

She'll tell the king what Iachimo is, she threatens, and calls out for Pisanio again.

But Iachimo wriggles out of the trap. "O happy Leonatus!" he says. He was just kidding around. Posthumus "is one / The truest manner'd," and he only told her all that "To try your taking of a false report." He begs her pardon, and she gives it.

Then, he says, he had really meant to ask a favor from her: He and Posthumus and "Some dozen Romans" have pooled their money to buy a gift for the emperor, and he needs to store it someplace safe. Well, says Imogen, what could be safer than my bedchamber? So Iachimo says he'll have the trunk in which the gift is stored sent to her room, "only for this night: / I must abroad to morrow." If she has a letter to send to Posthumus, she should do it tonight.

She says she'll write it tonight, and to have the trunk sent to her room.
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Cymbeline isn't performed a lot, but there is a BBC-TV production from 1982. The complete film appears below. 
Richard Johnson as Cymbeline; Helen Mirren as Imogen; Michael Pennington as Posthumus; Claire Bloom as the Queen; Paul Jesson as Cloten; Robert Lindsay as Iachimo; John Kane as Pisanio; Hugh Thomas as Cornelius; Geoffrey Lumsden as Philario; Patsy Smart as Helen; Alan Hendrick as the Frenchman; Michael Gough as Belarius; Geoffrey Burridge as Guiderius; David Creedon as Arviragus; Marius Goring as Sicilius Leonatus: Michael Hordern as Jupiter