Henry William Bunbury. The Supposed Death of Imogen, with Belarius and the Two Sons of Cymbeline, 1792-96.


Pen and ink with wash, approximately 13.5 x 17.5 inches. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon.


In Act IV, Scene ii, of Cymbeline Imogen, disguised a the boy Fidele, takes a potion that makes her appear dead. She is discovered by Belarius, a banished nobleman who now lives in the forest under the name "Morgan" with his two "sons" who are really Guiderius and Arviragus, the sons of Cymbeline and the brothers of Imogen.

One wonders how carefully Bunbury had read the play before he picked up his paints. Imogen is dressed here as a woman, but she is still disguised in the play as a boy. The three men are plain rustics--men of the forest--not eighteenth-century London dandies. Another false note is the basket of flowers that Arviragus says in the play he will gather later to "sweeten thy sad grave." Their next duty is to fetch the headless body of Cloten, which they will lay next to Imogen; it is then that they cover the bodies with a "few flowers" before they exit.

This is one of twenty-two Shakespeare illustrations by Bunbury. Bunbury's Shakespeare drawings were commissioned by Thomas Macklin who, like John Boydell, enlisted artists to produce pictures to be engraved for a larger market; the twenty-two illustrations by Bunbury were engraved in 1792-96. Macklin also published a series of illustrations for the Bible as well as a set of one hundred pictures entitled The Poets' Gallery. Like Boydell, he had engaged the talents of many artists working at the end of the eighteenth century (Christian 168).