Innogen

In Cymbeline (1611?), Shakespeare, still innovating even at the end of his career, deepens the character of Innogen by supplying her with an unusual psychological trait. He presents her to us as an escapist or fantasist who leaps to imagine herself a different person in a different world. Here's Innogen early in the play, when she realizes that her cross-class marriage to Postumus (she's a princess, he's a poor but worthy gentleman) is at risk: "Would I were/ A neatherd's daughter, and my Leonatus/ Our neighbor shepherd's son." She fantasizes herself surrendering her nobility to become a peasant. A few moments later, she learns that her lover Leonatus and his rival the clotpoll Cloten have been in a sword fight and that Cloten has retreated. Innogen's reaction: "I would they were in Afric both together/ Myself by with a needle, that I might prick/ The goer-back". Why Africa? Because, among other reasons, it is far from the British court where Innogen's activities are heavily restricted. So in two short speeches Innogen has expressed willingness to being transformed in both class and geography. Shortly afterward, Innogen describes (in another "would that" imagining) how she would have stared at the retreating ship which takes Postumus into exile: "I would have broke mine eye-strings, cracked them,/ To look upon him till the dimunition/ Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle." Indifferent to physical pain, she now imagines herself transcending not only class and space, but also the limitations of her own body.

It was no accident that Shakespeare gave Innogen such freedom to re-invent herself, because in the scenes that follow, she will undergo a series of radical transformations -- from princess to a "franklin's wife," into a boy cooking fancy food for three cave-dwelling mountain-men, and then a dutiful page to the general of the invading Roman army, all the while avoiding betrayal, attempted rape and apparent poisoning. It's a lot for Innogen to deal with, but Shakespeare knew exactly what he was doing when he started her off with an imagination equal to the task.