Imogen was the daughter of King Cymbeline

Cunobelinus

Cunobeline or Cunobelinus was a historical king in pre-Roman Britain, known from passing mentions by classical historians Suetonius and Dio Cassius, and from his many inscribed coins...

, in Shakespeare's play, Cymbeline

Cymbeline

Cymbeline , also known as Cymbeline, King of Britain or The Tragedy of Cymbeline, is a play by William Shakespeare, based on legends concerning the early Celtic British King Cunobelinus. Although listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify Cymbeline as a romance...

. She was described by William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...

 as "perhaps the most tender and the most artless" of all Shakespeare's women.

Name

According to some modern editions of Shakespeare's plays, notably the 1986 Oxford Edition, the correct name is in fact Innogen, and the spelling "Imogen" is an error which arose when the manuscripts were first committed to print. The name Innogen is mentioned as a ghost character

Ghost character

In playwriting, a ghost character is a character who is mentioned as appearing on stage but neither says nor does anything but enter, and possibly exit. They are generally interpreted as editing mistakes, indicative of unresolved revisions to the text...

 in Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....

. Imogen in Cymbeline is paired with a character with the epithet

Epithet

An epithet or byname is a descriptive term accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It is also a descriptive title...

 "Leonatus".

Actions in the play

Imogen is princess of Britain, and the virtuous wife of the exiled Posthumus, whose praise of her moral purity incites Posthumus's acquaintance Iachimo to bet Postumus that he can seduce her. When he fails, Iachimo hides in her bedchamber and uncovers her body while she sleeps, observing details of a mole on her breast which he then describes to Posthumus as proof that he had slept with her. Posthumus plots to kill his wife, but the designated killer reveals the plot to Imogen and advises her to hide; she escapes to the woods dressed as a man and falls in with a family who help her. Taking a drug, she falls into a coma and is presumed dead by the family, who cover her body and sing a song over her. When she wakes she finds the headless body of Cloten, a brutish character who had planned to rape her while wearing Posthumus's clothes, but had been killed in a fight with one of the men who took her in. She mistakes the headless body for that of her husband. After the battle at the climax of the play she confronts Iachimo who confesses his lies. She is reunited with Posthumus, her father (King Cymbeline), and discovers two of the men who took her in are actually her long lost brothers.

Literary allusions

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

 alludes to Imogen in The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine...

when Dorian describes Sibyl Vane, the actress he is infatuated with.

'It must be, if you say it. And now I am off. Imogen is waiting for me. Don't forget about tomorrow. Good-bye.'(Ch. IV)

Stephen Dedalus alludes to Imogen in Ulysses

Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

, referring to the episode in which Iachomo observes the mole on her breast: "Ravisher and ravished, what he would, but would not, go with him from Lucrece's bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen's breast, bare, with its mole cinquespotted."

E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster

Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...

 alludes to Imogen in Where Angels Fear to Tread

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Where Angels Fear to Tread is a novel by E. M. Forster, originally entitled Monteriano. The title comes from a line in Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism: "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread"....

when describing Lilia's sadness in her marriage: "Not Cordelia nor Imogen more deserves our tears."

A character in Anthony Trollope's

Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...

 Barchester Towers

Barchester Towers

Barchester Towers, published in 1857, is the second novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". It is possibly Trollope's best known work...

mentions Imogen: "Imogen was true, but how was she rewarded? Her lord believed her to be the paramour of the first he who came near her in his absence."