Cymbeline

Drama of the Week

BBC

Drama, Fiction

3.9 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2024

⏱️ 121 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Shakespeare's exhilarating late play of lovers under strain and leaders under pressure. Staged in an alternative present-day Britain.

An ineffectual ruler governs a divided, insular Britain, alienated from the rest of Europe. That ruler, Cymbeline (Michael Maloney), refuses to pay the taxes demanded by a foreign power, clinging to mythical notions of sovereignty. "Britain's a world by itself and we will nothing pay for wearing our own noses." But Cymbeline's judgement is clouded by grief, having lost his two older children as babies. When his daughter Imogen (Lydia Wilson) rebels and marries boyfriend Posthumus (Daniel Rock) in secret, Cymbeline is enraged and banishes Posthumus. But waiting in the wings is a power-hungry figure, plotting to seize control by any means necessary.

Adapted and directed for radio by Emma Harding

Introduced by Professor Edith Hall

Imogen ..... Lydia Wilson

Cymbeline ..... Michael Maloney

Posthumus Leonatus ..... Daniel Rock

Iachimo ..... Philip Arditti

Queen ..... Amanda Lawrence

Cloten ..... Will Close

Caia Lucius ..... Greta Scacchi

Pisanio ..... Ayesha Dharker

Belarius ..... Ifan Huw Dafydd

Guiderius ..... Zak Ghazi-Torbati

Arviragus ..... Matthew Aubrey

Cornelia ..... Nadia Williams

Philario ..... Harry Taurasi

Jailer. .... Philippe Spall

Sue Sayer ..... Sara Gregory

Original music composed by Joseph Howard, performed by Zak Ghazi-Torbati, Joseph Howard and Eosaph Caimbeul.

Shakespeare consultant, Paul Prescott

Production co-ordinator, Eleri Sydney McAuliffe

Sound design, Catherine Robinson

A BBC Audio Drama Wales production

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Helena Bonkarter and this is history's secret heroes.
0:07.0	In this series we'll hear stories of daring secret missions and rarely heard tales from World War II, like Emily, the enigmatic high-ranking
0:17.2	codebreaker, and Tremont, the escape artist, interned in a German camp.
0:24.0	Tales of danger, dynamism and downright determination.
0:27.8	The new series of history's secret heroes.
0:30.5	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:33.0	BBC Sounds,
0:35.0	BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts.
0:38.0	This is Drama of the Week.
0:41.0	Shakespeare wrote foreplay set in the historical Roman world,
0:45.2	Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Anthony and Cleopatra
0:49.0	followed by Simbeline.
0:51.7	Simbeline was probably written in 1610.
0:55.8	The London theatres were being reopened after a long closure enforced during the vicious
1:01.0	outbreak of plague in 1609 a circumstance which resonates today
1:05.9	after we were locked out of our places of public entertainment by the COVID-19 epidemic.
1:11.6	Cymboline stages a later period of Roman, or rather Roman epidemic. England and Wales during Augustus' rule at around the assumed date of the birth of Jesus.
1:24.9	It explores friction between Britons and continental Europeans, a friction with which we're all too
1:31.4	familiar in the wake of the Brexit vote.
1:34.7	The historical English king, whose real name was Kinnebelinas, falls out with Rome under
1:40.3	pressure from his obsessively nationalist wife and stepson he refuses to pay tribute
1:46.1	but events persuade him to rejoin the Roman Empire to secure peace
	...

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