Editing Cymbeline (section)

=== British identity ===
Similarities between Cymbeline and historical accounts of the [[Augustus|Roman Emperor Augustus]] have prompted critics to interpret the play as Shakespeare voicing support for the political notions of [[James VI and I|James I]], who considered himself the "British Augustus."{{sfn|Bergeron|1980|pp=31–41}} His political manoeuvres to unite Scotland with England and Wales as an empire mirror Augustus' ''[[Pax Romana]].''{{sfn|Boling|2000|pp=33–66}} The play reinforces the Jacobean idea that Britain is the successor to the civilised virtue of ancient Rome, portraying the parochialism and isolationism of Cloten and the Queen as villainous.{{sfn|Parolin|2002|p=188}} Other critics have resisted the idea that ''Cymbeline'' endorses James I's ideas about national identity, pointing to several characters' conflicted constructions of their geographic identities. For example, although Guiderius and Arviragus are the sons of Cymbeline, a British king raised in Rome, they grew up in a Welsh cave. The brothers lament their isolation from society, a quality associated with barbarousness, but Belarius, their adoptive father, retorts that this has spared them from corrupting influences of the supposedly civilised British court.{{sfn|Feerick|2016}}

Iachimo's invasion of Imogen's bedchamber may reflect concern that Britain was being maligned by Italian influence.{{sfn|Kerrigan|2010}} According to Peter A. Parolin, ''Cymbeline’s'' scenes ostensibly set in ancient Rome may be anachronistic portrayals of sixteenth-century Italy, which was characterised by contemporary British authors as a place where vice, debauchery, and treachery had supplanted the virtue of ancient Rome.{{sfn|Parolin|2002|p=188}}{{sfn|Floyd-Wilson|2003}} Though ''Cymbeline'' concludes with a peace forged between Britain and Rome, Iachimo's corruption of Posthumus and metaphorical rape of Imogen may demonstrate fears that Great Britain's political union with other cultures might expose Britons to harmful foreign influences.{{sfn|Parolin|2002|p=188}}{{sfn|Ziegler|1990|pp=73–90}}