The Idea Of Appearance In The Play Cymbeline

One of the themes that I thought was very interesting in Cymbeline was the idea of appearance and how it affects your life. This would be very easy to play out in the theatre because you could place a heavy influence on costuming. Almost every character in the play makes judgements about other characters based on how they appear to be, instead of their actual character. This leads to it being much easier to deceive others in this play. Appearance and deception go hand in hand for this play. If I were staging this play I would want to focus on how appearance is much different than what is actually going on, and how if you fall for the appearance, over reality, it is that much easier to deceive a person.
A lot of the deception comes from the clothing that people see, they are so quick to automatically trust what they see. For instance, the queen’s lost children are not recognized until much later because they are dressed up in mountain clothes. Similarly, when Imogen dresses in pants and crops her hair she is immediately taken as a young boy. Imogen herself
The costuming would reflect that which the characters believe, such as dressing Imogen to look up like a boy when the others believe her to be one. The difference would be that the lighting around her would change to red, to show her deception. In instances of lying like this the addition of red lighting would allow the audience to better understand that deception is a foot and that the characters are once again believing what they believe instead of what they feel. Another instance of red lighting would be when Iachimo says to Posthumous that he has slept with Imogen. Just because characters perform as if they are a certain thing, does not make it true. The audience’s perception of these characters needs to be clarified so that they can understand the influence of appearance and