Cymbeline

The BBC's intention is to put Shakespeare's plays on the screen, not to 'improve' them. Certainly I could argue that a little adaptation here or there, a few edits impossible on stage, and armies fighting out battles in outside locations would make the thing more enjoyable, but it really would be wrong for the BBC to have done this, even if they could afford to. What we have here is what Shakespeare wrote and we see it as he intended, with the limitations but also the opportunities for imaginative descriptions for an actor to get his teeth into. 'Cymbaline' is too long a play and relies as often is the case in Shakespeare on luck, mix-ups and quickness to mistrust. Unfortunately it does it rather lumberingly at times. And how anyone could mistake Helen Mirren for a boy, let alone her own father not recognise her is dodgy enough; the BBC could at least have disguised her a little more! Overall the production was good, with the performances of Mirren and Gough and Jesson particularly working for me. I thought Lindsay good enough, but Pennington sadly subdued on all but a few occasions. In short, a play I'm not fond of was done almost as well as I could imagine it being done.

This play was first staged in the early 1600s and inevitably it has lost something in transportation through time and space to a BBCTV studio. The atmosphere doesn't feel right even though the costumes and sets are not bad. As for the plot, King Cymbeline (Richard Johnson) is not a happy bunny when his daughter Imogen (Helen Mirren) marries beneath her station. He banishes the husband from the kingdom and puts Imogen under the wing of her treacherous stepmother (Claire Bloom). From there the story takes many twists and turns. Robert Lindsay puts in a fine performance as a baddie, and it's nice to see Michael Gough, Patricia Hayes, Marius Goring and Michael Hordern popping up here and there. The play is not one of Shakespeare's greatest hits though, and this 1980s TV version only just held my attention; it seemed dull in parts.

Though orthodox theory deems William Shakespeare's Cymbeline as one of his latest works, the play is so cumbersome in its plotting that, as suggested by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, it is more likely to have been a redraft of an earlier anonymous work, An history of the cruelties of a Stepmother shown at the palace at Richmond in 1578. In Cymbeline, first printed in the First Folio of 1623, King Cymbeline's Queen (who is the prototype of the wicked stepmother) wishes to marry her uncouth son Cloten to Cymbeline's daughter Imogen, performed in the BBC's 1982 production by the great Helen Mirren. Imogen, however, has chosen the worthy Posthumus (Michael Pennington) who has been rejected by King Cymbeline (Richard Johnson) and the Queen (Claire Bloom) because of his status as a commoner.

The main thrust of the story, however, has its sources in Boccaccio's Decameron, a 14th century tale that was also used as a source for All's Well That Ends Well. The story tells of a jealous husband who makes a bet on his wife's fidelity and is tricked into believing that she was unfaithful. Shakespeare takes this story set in Italy and transports it to Roman Great Britain at the beginning of the Christian era. Cymbeline is modeled after the real King Cunobelin but the Queen, her son Cloten, and Imogen are all inventions of the playwright. The real King, however, did have two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus, who play a prominent role in the play but again Shakespeare takes extravagant liberties with history. The dramatist has the King's sons abducted from the Court in early childhood and have been brought up ignorant of their ancestry for twenty years by Belarius, whom the King had banished from Court.

The play has many parallels with the life of Edward de Vere, too numerous to mention, and can be used as a case study for those favoring the Oxfordian point of view but is beyond the scope of this review. The play contains one of the most beautiful of all of Shakespearean songs, "Fear no more the heat of the sun" sung in a duet by Guiderius and Arviragus.

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.

Cymbeline, like many other of this author's works, uses the device of a woman, Imogen, posing as a page boy, in order to pretend that she is dead. This would have been very tricky in the Elizabethan days since only boys were used to play girls. So we have the case of a boy pretending to be a girl who, in the play, pretends to be a boy which he in fact was in the first place.

Another theme that is consistent with the dramatist is the overweening jealousy of a judgmental husband who wrongfully accuses a pure and innocent girl of infidelity, a jealousy encouraged by Iachimo (Robert Lindsay) who is reminiscent of Iago in Othello. This will make for interesting biographical material if the authorship question is ever sorted out. While Cymbeline receives a good performance by the BBC ensemble cast, Helen Mirren is unbelievable in the role of a page boy, the BBC making no effort whatsoever to disguise her. To have us believe that the King would not recognize his own daughter can only be described as ludicrous.

The BBC Shakespeare series often posed a problem - low budgets, stage-bound performances, odd camera-work, leaden pace - but this version of Cymbeline, one of my favourites of Shakespeare's lesser known plays, is not that bad.

Certainly it suffers from the same low budget and lack of location work, but it manages to transcend this with a largely excellent cast. Richard Johnson and Michael Gough, Claire Bloom and Helen Mirren, Paul Jesson and Graham Crowden, especially, keep the verse moving and get truly inside their characters. Mirren is heartbreaking as Imogen, with her husband exiled, and herself assuming a new identity in the wild when her life is in danger.

Some scenes work less well than others - the dream of Posthumous when he sees father, mother, and Jupiter (the scene gives Marius Goring and Michael Hordern a chance to shine, but it is preposterous), and the final scene's poor acting from Michael Pennington - usually reliable he goes too OTT here. But the scene with Imogen and the corpse she thinks is her husband ... and the mock-seduction scene with her asleep and Iachimo in wicked mode (Robert Lindsey, not that believable in much of this play but good in this scene).

This Cymbeline is good, mainly because it is really the only time the difficult play has been put on the screen. Within the BBC series it is one of the better ones, not too stagy, not too bland.

And the musical arrangement of 'Fear no more the heat o'the sun' is beautiful.

Cymbeline has been described as an experimental tragi-comedy, or among the first dramatic romances, but neither is adequate to describe the perfection of the final scene of the play when Shakespeare weaves golden unity from the chaos of loose threads. Mr. Moshinsky breathes life into this production by using the palette of the great Dutch Masters whose paintings minutely chronicle the mundane but serve as visual metaphors for the existence of the transcendent which underscores every moment. In a great cast, two performances really stand out. Helen Mirren's Imogen, the symbol of fidelity, resonates with tragic depth and constancy. The range of her voice is given full sweep especially in the ironic scene in the cave after she awakens from her drugged sleep. Claire Bloom's Queen, a very glacial villainess, scared me much more than if she had been portrayed as a stock evil step-mother.