Cymbeline · Chapter
Scene III explained
Imogen, deeply longing for her banished husband Posthumus, questions Pisanio about his departure and expresses her grief and unspoken farewells.
What happens
Imogen, deeply longing for her banished husband Posthumus, questions Pisanio about his departure and expresses her grief and unspoken farewells. She is interrupted by a lady summoning her to the queen, and she instructs Pisanio to carry out her previous orders.
Themes in this chapter
Love and Fidelity
Imogen's passionate recollection of Posthumus's departure and her vow to think of him at set hours underscores her unwavering devotion.
Power and Political Conflict
Imogen's father Cymbeline interrupts her farewell, symbolizing the oppressive political forces that separate the lovers.
Characters to notice
Key passages
“I would thou grew’st unto the shores o’ the haven, And question’dst every sail: if he should write, And not have it, ’twere a paper lost, As offer’d mercy is.”
I wish you were rooted to the harbor shore, questioning every sail, because if he writes and you don't receive it, it would be like losing a chance at salvation.
Imogen expresses her desperate anxiety about missing any letter from Posthumus.
“I would have broke mine eye-strings; crack’d them, but To look upon him, till the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle, Nay, follow’d him, till he had melted from The smallness of a gnat to air, and then Have turn’d mine eye and wept.”
I would have strained my eyes until they broke, just to keep watching him as he shrank to the size of a needle, then a gnat, then vanished into air, and only then would I have turned away and wept.
Imogen vividly describes how she would have watched Posthumus until he disappeared from sight entirely.