SOURCE: Jordan, Constance. “Contract and Conscience in Cymbeline.” Renaissance Drama 25 (1994): 33-58.

In the following essay, Jordan examines the theme of verbal contracts in Cymbeline, focusing on the marriage of Posthumus and Imogen and Cymbeline's payment of the annual tribute to the Roman Empire.

Early modern bodies politic—of the family and of the state—were shaped by the terms of verbal contracts observed over time by the continuous consent of the parties to them. In large measure this compliance reflected the fact that what was contracted for were duties of no quantifiable value but rather in the nature of benefits. The services of love and fidelity were beyond institutional enforcement and perhaps even determination. Their very vagueness made performance an act of discrimination and more particularly of conscience. Within the family, certain kinds of material support were, of course, subject to court order; fathers were required to feed...