Cymbeline - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

is continued until with M 'Tis mine!" he Cornea forward C.
All three are the unaltered Cumberland directions. The
next direction in the printed text, at "Screw'd to my
memory", is altered by the prompter:
Goes to the liable U. of the bed and takes up «
book.
121.
This at least shows that where a Cumberland direction is not
altered, the Sadler's Wells production used it. There was
one book, and it was by or on the bed; it was the book
Imogen had been reading, and perhaps lay on the coverlet,
rather than on some bedside table. At least ve are told
what the situation was not, even if what it was is not clear.
A characteristic of the promptbook is that Cumberland's
directions are altered primarily because they do not coincide
with scenic arrangements. There is little alteration in
such directions as affect the acting business, and the movements
of lachimo and Imogen in these two scenes are by and
large those of the acting edition, together with a number of
details which descend frcu nacready. i'he settings of the
play and its text were most at variance with these authorities
in the scene of "Pidele's" supposed death, where the
book inserts pages from a complete text, giving a fuller
version of the funeral, parted over the pages of the
Cumberland edition.
The chamber scene closes unremarkably: lachimo crosses
to the trunk with "May bare the raven's eyo ; , and as he says
"liell is here 1 ' the Clock Strikes. Be the.; ^;ets into the
trunk and the scene closes.
The conservatism of the text lies in its omission of the
^aoler, the vision, the soothsayer and the last two stanzas
of the dirge, in tne cutting of Cloten's part, and the