Cymbeline Read Online Free PDF Page A

typeface. There is a degree of subjectivity about which directions are of which kind, but the procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an Aside? (often a line may be equally effective as an aside or a direct address—it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a may exit or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.
    Line Numbers are editorial, for reference and to key the explanatory and textual notes.
    Explanatory Notes explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to nonstandard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.
    Textual Notes at the end of the play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign, with “F2” indicating a correction that derives from the Second Folio of 1632, “F3” a correction introduced in the Third Folio of 1664, and “Ed” one that derives from the subsequent editorial tradition. The rejected Folio (“F”) reading is then given. Thus for Act 1 Scene 6 line 125: “ illustrous = Ed. F = illustrious” means that the Folio text’s “illustrious” has been rejected in favor of the editorial correction “illustrous.” F’s reading gives exactly the opposite sense to that required by the context of the passage.

KEY FACTS
    MAJOR PARTS: (
with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes onstage
) Innogen (16%/118/10), Posthumus Leonatus (12%/77/8), Iachimo (12%/77/6), Belarius (9%/58/6), Cymbeline (8%/81/6), Cloten (7%/77/7), Pisanio (6%/58/10), Guiderius (5%/62/6), Queen (5%/27/5), Arviragus (4%/46/5), Caius Lucius (3%/25/5), Cornelius (2%/13/2), First Gentleman (2%/10/1), First Jailer (1%/9/1), Second Lord (1%/20/3), Philario (1%/14/2).
    LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 85% verse, 15% prose.
    DATE: 1610. Simon Forman attended a performance in April 1611; composition apparently postdates Beaumont and Fletcher’s
Philaster
(1608–10); probably belongs to the months when the theaters were reopened in spring 1610 after a long period of closure due to the plague; the emphasis on Wales may suggest composition around the time of the investiture of Henry as Prince of Wales in June 1610; perhaps performed at court during the winter of 1610–11.
    SOURCES: The plot involving Cymbeline, Guiderius, Arviragus, and the Romans in Britain is derived from a rudimentary outline in Holinshed’s
Chronicles
(1587 edition); the heroic defense of the lane in the battle is imported from elsewhere in Holinshed. The story of the wager on a virtuous wife’s chastity goes back to Giovanni Boccaccio’s
Decameron
(2nd Day, 9th novel) via an anonymous prose romance,
Frederyke of Jennen
(1560 edition). The idea of combining pseudohistory with romance may have been inspired by Beaumont and Fletcher’s recent play
Philaster
, a pioneering work of Jacobean tragicomedy with a girl disguised as a boy, a mischief-making older woman, a virtuous lady accused of an illicit sexual liaison, a contrast between a noble hero and an ignoble prince, the forbidden marriage of a princess to a commoner, a movement from court to country, and elements of masque form. Some scholars, however, propose that
Cymbeline
influenced
Philaster
rather than vice versa.
    TEXT: First Folio of 1623 is the only text. Probably set from a transcript by Ralph Crane, scribe to the King’s Men. Fairly well printed text, though some