ABSTRACT
Cymbeline, among other things, dramatizes a fictional conflict between Britain and Rome in the Augustan period. The chapter analyzes how the centre-margin dichotomy becomes unstable in Cymbeline and considers how the Jacobean context. It explores the relationship between Wales and Cymbeline's kingdom of Britain. The term 'Wales' is, of course, anachronistic within the world of the play. In Cymbeline Shakespeare presents Augustan Rome as an empire suffering from revolts in peripheral provinces. In the middle part of Cymbeline, Milford Haven becomes a focus of the characters' actions. Cymbeline, thus, does not make his lords escort Lucius all the way through to Milford, but only to the Severn — to the border between Loegria and Cambria set by Brute. In Cymbeline Wales is not only administratively outside of Cymbeline's kingdom, but also a land of a potentially different culture and even a different race.
