ABSTRACT
Heroism is a key characteristic of Cymbeline's Britons, and it played a crucial role also in the construction of Britain in the period of the play's composition, although it is an ethos we tend today to associate more with Henry Frederick than with his father, King James. Cymbeline's heroes are much more equivocal embodiments of knightly virtue. Yet when it came to defending Britain's borders, martial heroism was in no way a concept to which James was opposed, and to this Cymbeline stands testament as much as do Jonson's masques or James's parliamentary speeches. Cymbeline was first performed in a period when Welsh writers were highlighting the heroism of their nation in an attempt to triangulate the Anglo-Scottish union debate. Certainly Britain's 'legitimacy' after 1603 was underwritten by the heroism of what Harbert calls its 'three warlike Nations', and I have suggested above that James was as ideologically committed to the rhetoric of heroism as was his son, Henry Frederick.
