Did Shakespeare Base Imogen in Cymbeline on a Real Tudor Woman?
- Mar 24
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 1
Compare how Mary de Vere set out to defy her brother, a duchess, and Queen Elizabeth I to choose her own husband
In Cymbeline, Shakespeare builds his plot around a Tudor reality: a young noblewoman is told by her father whom she will marry. His heroine, Imogen, refuses and risks everything.
Her defiance feels so real that we are immediately on her side. How did Shakespeare achieve that emotional intensity, the charged argument between Imogen and her father, the precise personality characteristics of a woman who would risk exile, even ruin, rather than marry a boasting fool, no matter how illustrious his family?
It is almost too real to be imagined.
Unless it was real, drawn from the life of a historical woman at Elizabeth I's court.
The last post promised more Shakespearean heroines inspired by real Tudor noblewomen. 👉Shakespeare Was a Feminist. Really. Among the historical noblewomen in Elizabeth's court, was there one whose story matches Imogen's closely enough to make us wonder?
There is. Here name was Mary de Vere.
🍎 Avoiding the Rotten Apple
In Cymbeline, although she’s intelligent, loyal, and politically aware, Imogen’s father, the King of Britain, intends to marry her to Cloten (rhymes with “rotten”), the boorish son of his second wife. How rotten is Cloten? Apart from his gambling, arrogance, cowardice, lack of honor, hotheadedness, stupidity, swearing, violence and clumsy sexual innuendos, he’s a great guy.
Needless to say, Imogen has other plans. Her heart already belongs to a court outsider named Posthumus Leonatus. While brave, honorable and accomplished, with impressive military skills, Posthumus isn’t the son-in-law her father had in mind for his little princess.
💓A Real Love Match That No One Wanted Except the Lovers
You may already know Lady Mary de Vere, the young woman who received passionate, smuggled love letters. 👉 Love in Lockdown: How Peregrine Bertie Wrote a Secret Love Letter to Mary de Vere; and 👉 Canterbury Cathedral, Tudor Heroines, and My Writing Life.
As in other Tudor noble families, after the deaths of their parents, Mary’s brother, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford inherited the right to arrange her marriage. And he had someone in mind. Like Imogen, Mary had someone different in mind.
His name was Peregrine Bertie.
Like Posthumus, Peregrine was a court outsider. He’d been born in Germany because of his parents’ exile there for religious reasons during Mary I’s reign. 👉 Why Religion Was Such a Dangerous Mess in Elizabeth I's England, and How the Fitzalan Chapel Still Shows Her Plan for Fixing It. His formidable mother, Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk was one of England’s two remaining duchesses. His father, Richard Bertie’s blood wasn’t so blue. The son of a stone-mason, Richard's rise from a relatively humble position in the Duchess’ household was via a wedding ring. The widowed Duchess had fallen in love with him and married him as her second husband.
Kind of a reverse Cinderella. (The Duchess ignored the scandal because she could. She was a duchess.)
Despite their own love match, Peregrine’s parents also made betrothal plans for their only son. Peregrine refused that match at about the same time Oxford betrothed Mary to Gerald Fitzgerald, Lord Garret, heir to the Irish Earl of Kildare.
When the romance between Mary and Peregrine leaked, Peregrine suddenly found himself exiled from Mary, under house arrest at home, and writing that passionate love letter that sounds very like what Posthumus wrote to Imogen.
A pile of minor historical coincidences? Perhaps. Just keep them in mind.
⚔️ Four People Who Could Stop Her
Mary de Vere was not merely an earl’s daughter. She had been sworn in as a Lady of the Queen’s Privy Chamber, a prestigious post that kept her physically close to the Queen. It also meant that her marriage required approval at the highest level.
Four people stood between Mary and the man she wanted. At least three of them were fierce adversaries:
The Queen
Her brother
The Duchess
The Duchess’ husband (although we suspect that good Master Bertie agreed with whatever the Duchess wanted)
But Mary de Vere possessed tactical instincts worthy of a military commander, and she wasn’t going quietly to Ireland.
👫“You Bred Him as My Playfellow”
One of the most striking exchanges in Cymbeline occurs when the king throws this line at Imogen about her refusal to marry Cloten:
“Though took’st a beggar, wouldst have made my throne a seat for baseness.”
Compared to the Earl of Kildare’s heir, Peregrine looked socially thin and financially fragile, at least until his mother died.
Imogen reminds her father that Posthumus was raised at court with her.
“It is your fault that I have loved Posthumus.
You bred him as my playfellow…”
Oxford, Peregrine and Mary also grew up in close proximity, within the same Protestant, humanist circles, under the watchful eye of William Cecil Lord Burghley, his wife Mildred Cooke Cecil and her sister, Elizabeth Cooke Hoby. Mary’s and Peregrine’s attraction wasn’t sudden. They had had a thing for each other for years.
Add more coincidences to the pile.
🦅 Knowing Your Falcons from Your Puttocks
The words Imogen then launches at Cymbeline are very telling, if you know a thing or two about birds of prey. Shakespeare’s court audience did, because they hunted with them.
“I chose an eagle,
And did avoid a puttock.”
A puttock is a scavenger, and as apt a description of Lord Garret as of rotten Cloten.
In 1594, Queen Elizabeth I wrote to her Lord Deputy in Ireland instructing him to use “all good means” (i.e., force) to deal with Lord Garret (by then, Earl of Kildare), “let him know how the world speaks of him” (i.e., the court’s gossiping and it’s not complimentary), and to end the “ill-usage” that his wife “had long endured” at his hands in Ireland. (Spoiler alert: Garret had married Frances Howard, not Mary, and he was really rotten to her).
The Queen commanded that long-suffering Frances promptly be sent home to her parents in England until her husband mended his ways. Her Majesty had been hearing daily about Kildare’s misuse of his wife and her Majesty had heard enough.
On the other hand, an eagle, like a peregrine falcon, was a royal bird, trained to hunt, swift and noble in bearing.
Elizabethan audiences would have understood the symbolism immediately.
Peregrine.
In other words, Mary was right about choosing Peregrine over Lord Garret, just as Imogen was right about choosing Posthumus over Cloten.
Another coincidence? Or is something more deliberate going on?
📜 Calculated Courage
Imogen defies her father. She accepts exile and wanders in search of Posthumus, rather than submit to marrying Cloten.
Mary, too, risked all to marry Peregrine. And if she lost, she would lose publicly.
We know how Mary escaped her unwanted betrothal from three extraordinary 1577 letters the Duchess, a woman who married for love the second time around, wrote to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, a man personally acquainted with the dire consequences of marrying for love (or was it lust?) against his own father’s wishes. 👉 Cecil, In Love!
Mary de Vere did not act on romantic whim. She acted on calculated courage.
That is what heroines do.
🤨 Did Shakespeare Base Imogen's Details on Mary de Vere, or Is This Just Another Coincidence?
Imogen, as brave, intelligent and steady under pressure as Shakespeare created her, is no one’s passive victim.
Mary emerges from the historical record with similar qualities. Courageous, intelligent and exceptionally politically skilled, she also possessed the risk tolerance to try to control her own future.
Was Mary de Vere the model for details about Imogen?
History rarely gives us such tidy answers to Elizabethan secrets. But, it does add yet two more “coincidences”.
Imogen, exiled and weary, is overjoyed when she discovers two brothers she’d never met.
After the death of her parents, Mary moved in with Elizabeth Cooke Hoby, sister to Burghley’s wife, Mildred Cooke Cecil. Elizabeth Hoby had lost her own two daughters and felt so warmly towards Mary that she referred to Mary as “my daughter”. Her two sons became as close as brothers to Mary.
How do we know?
The elder, Edward Hoby, later named his only child “Peregrine,” like Mary’s husband.
And Shakespeare named Imogen’s husband “Posthumus,” like Elizabeth Hoby’s younger son.
Neither “Peregrine” nor “Posthumus” is a common English name. That they appear together, in an intimate circle of Elizabeth I’s courtiers and closely associated with both Imogen and Mary de Vere, is rarer still.
Is the stack of "coincidences" high enough yet to think Shakespeare gave Imogen's story the details of Mary de Vere's life?
You decide. Let me know.
💋 The Scandal and the Next Secret
Next, the Duchess herself will reveal the scandalous part of Mary’s story. Once you spend a little time with the Duchess, you will see why she was a fearsome opponent and how much was required of Mary to win her over.
Then, for an extra fun, we’ll explore whether the Duchess’ role in Mary’s affair was inspiration for another, unconventional Shakespearean heroine in The Winter’s Tale, or just another coincidence.
But for now, the battlefield positions are set.
The stakes are as high as Peregrine’s and Mary’s hearts.
He is locked up. His parents hold the key.
Mary is alone, surrounded by three powerful adversaries standing between her and her happy ending.
How will our heroine get the man she wants?
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