h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Cymbeline 1982 BBC Complete Shakespeare

Masques, Gods and goddesses, Roman legions, Machiavellian Italians, and a cast left over from King Lear. It’s a fairy tale somewhat akin to All’s Well That End’s Well, including the convoluted ending with its revelation upon revelation. Think Hercule Poirot in the last chapter and you have it. Hercule Poirot meets King Lear. Edited in the style of ‘Carry on up the Haven’. Be fair, after 26 days I am getting a little punch drunk. (Note to self: stop drinking so much punch)

Imogen, a beautiful princess, is in love with Posthumus, a young man raised in her father’s court. They are secretly betrothed but King Cymbeline is enraged. He was planning to marry her to Cloten the son of his second wife, called Queen. I’m fairly sure she wasn’t Queen Queen, just Queen, but you shouldn’t risk offending royalty.

Posthumus is banished, but before he goes he exchanges tokens with Imogen, his bracelet for her ring (are you sniggering, boy?). Then he heads for Italy. Probably in a time machine, as the Britain he leaves is first century AD and the Rome he arrives in is seventeenth century AD. At least it is in the BBC production. Whilst in Rome Posthumus boasts of Imogen’s purity whereupon an evil Machiavellian Italian bets him he can seduce her.

Meanwhile back at the castle, Cloten continues to pursue Imogen without success and his mother, Queen Queen, who has been dabbling in dark arts and is undoubtedly the Wicked Stepmother who so oppressed Snow White in another popular franchise, has obtained from ‘The Doctor’ a deadly potion, or so she thinks. ‘The Doctor’ doesn’t trust her and gives her instead a potion that makes it look as though a person has died but they wake up 24 hours later, feeling refreshed and ready for anything. I think it may be hot chocolate powder.

The depraved Italian Silvio (no hang on that’s another one) Iachimo, arrives in the British court and attempts to tempt Imogen (he makes a tempt? Please yourselves) by pretending that Posthumus has forgotten her and is knocking about with some light wench in the Piazza. Naturally she is horrified, no doubt imagining some perverted sexual practices involving take aways. I know I did. He suggests that what is good for the gander is good for the goose. She rejects him, disgusted that he should have such foul chat up lines. He responds by saying that he was only testing the truth of her declared loyalty and that he was fibbing about Posthumus. He then asks Imogen if she would mind looking after his chest. She agrees and has it taken to her bedchamber.

Obviously Iachimo is hiding in the chest and when she is asleep, returns the favour by looking after her chest (ooh no, titter ye not), noting down certain privy marks to prove he has bedded her. He then rushes back to Rome and proves to Posthumus’ dissatisfaction that Imogen is unfaithful. Posthumus vows revenge and sends a servant to kill her. Luckily this is the good servant (there is always one good and faithful servant who usually ends up dying. It's what the working classes were created for) and he persuades Imogen to run away to Milford Haven ostensibly to meet up with Posthumus, but mostly so the servant can come up with a cunning plan.

Why Milford Haven? Well there’s this tribute demanded by the Romans that the Brits are refusing to pay. Sort of like an ancient European Union budget subsidy. Well the Brits aren’t paying it so the Romans have landed with an army. That’s ancient Romans in this part of the story, subjects of the Emperor Augustus.

Back to the plan. Imogen should dress up as a boy and find out the Roman general, get into his service and find Posthumus and prove her innocence. Great idea Will, I’m surprised no one thought of that before. She calls herself Fidele, and wandering cold and hungry through the woods, finds a lonely house. Inside there are three bowls of porridge sitting on a …..no that’s a different story. She finds an old man and his two ‘sons’. They are in quotes because they aren’t his real sons. They are the King’s sons, Princes stolen from their cradles twenty years before by the old guy because the King had banished him for an alleged treachery. He protested his innocence and then stole the two sons; I rest my case m’lud.

They settle down together and live happily ever … well for a few dramatic hours at least. The lost Princes go for a walk rejoicing over their new ‘brother’, I can’t wait for bath night, they will rejoice even more. They bump into Cloten who has followed Imogen with the intention of killing Posthumus, raping Imogen on the corpse and then taking her back to court and marrying her. And they say violent movies don’t have a significant effect on young boys.

To help him in this plan he is wearing a set of Posthumus' old clothes. Why? I don’t know, it’s a mystery (tm copyright Tom Stoppard). Anyway he meets the brothers, acts in an arrogant and aggressive fashion (who made you Prince then? I didn’t vote for you) and gets his head chopped off. They then rush back home only to find that Fidele, (he that is really Imogen, keep up) feeling a bit under the weather, has taken the powder that the servant gave her.

Did I mention the powder? Remember a few days ago the Queen obtained what she thought was deadly poison? Well she passed it on to the servant that Posthumus had sent to kill Imogen and told him it was a pick me up. He had passed it to Imogen with the same recommendation. Now she has swooned as if dead, which would be a handy thing to do if you were trying to avoid an unwanted marriage, except you need to let the right people know about it first. I am talking to you Juliet Capulet.

Grief stricken, the boys lay her to rest outside alongside the headless body of Cloten. Refreshed, she wakes only to find the body next her that she assumes is Posthumus. Distraught she heads for Milford hoping for death. Or at least the closest that any Welsh seaside town can offer.

Her ‘brothers’, who could dispense with the quotes because they really are her brothers, also head to Milford to fight the Romans, along with their ‘father’ who still retains all rights to his quotes, and Posthumus who has decided to die in battle because he thinks Imogen is dead. This plot would never work after the invention of Twitter.

The Romans appear to have the upper hand in the battle but it’s a game of two halves and the four plucky Brits rally the troops and rout the Romans. Try saying that after a couple of hits of magic cocoa powder. Posthumus, dressed as a Roman, surrenders to Cymbeline in hopes that he will be executed and find peace. He is imprisoned, and whilst he sleeps his mother and father turn up as ghosts as do his two brothers, no quotes and not to be confused with Imogen’s two ‘brothers’ who are actually his brothers in law; and alive which disqualifies them from being ghosts.

And they call Britain the land of equal opportunities? Pah. They plead for the Gods to intervene and so Jupiter sweeps in on the back of an eagle and drops a book into his lap prophesising that all will be well. The gift of a sonic screwdriver might have been more useful.

We are into the final scene. The one where Inspector Poirot gathers everyone together and reveals what has really happened. News comes of Queen Queen’s suicide, before which (obviously) she confesses her evil plots. The King will execute all the prisoners but, taken with Fidele’s beauty agrees to spare ‘his’ life and grant ‘him’ a boon. Fidele demands of Iachimo where he got Posthumus’ ring from (oh behave) and he confesses that he tricked it out of Posthumus. Posthumus then reveals himself (oooh matron) and the old man of the woods, remember him, the ‘father’, reveals that his two ‘sons’ are really the lost princes. Fidele then reveals that she is a girl, to the deep disappointment of at least thirty percent of the court, and in joy Cymbeline decides he will pay the tribute to Rome as a gesture. Though not the gesture that Mr Farrar would have liked to make.

And they all lived happily ever after, although Imogen was often troubled by the number of times Posthumus asked her to dress up as a boy ‘for old time’s sakes’.

That was hilarious! But I still don't understand the plot. No! No, it's al right, don't try to explain it again. Put away that graph paper.

Don't worry about not understanding. This was written late in Will's career, and some scholars think he may have lost the plot. The evidence of this work suggests he hadn't remembered where.

Deb

[Amy P]