in England, Macbeth slew Macduff’s wife and children, and after in the battle Macduff slew Macbeth. Observe also how Macbeth’s queen did rise in the night in her sleep and walk, and talked and confessed all, and the doctor noted her words.
Note. Forman naturally commits many errors of detail, but his terse, biblical narrative gives an unrivaled impression of what a contemporary audience got from a play of Shakespeare.
XIII. Cymbeline, 1610–1611.
Undated entry in Forman’s Diary, probably belonging to the months between XII and XIV.
Of Cimbalin King of England. Remember also the story of Cymbeline, King of England in Lucius’ time: how Lucius came from Octavius Cæsar for tribute, and being denied [Cæsar] after sent Lucius with a great army of soldiers, who landed at Milford Haven, and after were vanquished by Cymbeline and Lucius taken prisoner. And all by means of three outlaws, of the which two of them were the sons of Cymbeline, stolen from him when they were but two years old by an old man whom Cymbeline banished; and he kept them as his own sons twenty years with him in a cave. And how one of them slew Cloten, that was the Queen’s son, going to Milford Haven to seek the love[1] of Innogen, the King’s daughter, whom he had banished also for loving his daughter. And how the Italian that came from her love conveyed himself into a chest, and said it was a chest of plate sent from her love and other’s to be presented to the King; and in the deepest of the night, she being asleep, he opened the chest
- ↑ I.e. lover (Posthumus).
