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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Cymbeline
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(c.1609) Play by *Shakespeare about love tested to melodramatic limits and surviving. A faithful wife, Imogen (daughter of an early British king, Cymbeline) undergoes a series of horrifying experiences. She is the victim of a pretended seduction by Iachimo (who hides in a trunk in her bedroom to discover details such as a mole on her breast which will back up his lies); she then escapes an attempted murder arranged by her jealous husband, Posthumus; and has a spell hiding in Wales, disguised as a male page (Fidele), during which she wakes to find beside her a headless corpse which she takes to be that of her husband. With something of a strain to credulity, all ends happily.
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Cymbeline, known to historians as Cunobelin, was king of the region round Colchester early in the 1st century AD. He was father of *Caratacus and of Adminius, whose tomb was possibly the one discovered at *Verulamium in the early 1990s. Another royal tomb, assumed to be of a member of Cunobelin's family, was excavated near Colchester in 1992.
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