The name is absent

The Elizabethan Imogen         9

But what is this book she has been reading? Does it fall
within the appropriate category? Or, like the speaker in The
Book of the Duchess, has she bid one “reche me a book a
romaunce, . . . to rede, and drive the night away”?³⁸ We get
the answer from Iachimo when he comes out of hiding and
looks at the book:

She hath been reading late

The tale of Tereus; here the leafs turn’d down
Where Philomel gave up.³⁹

Thus we see that not only is her reading not of the frivolous
sort, but that it is quite in keeping with the kind of exercise
suited to the mind of a properly reared young lady.

Singing is another feminine accomplishment much ad-
mired by the Ehzabethans,-and it is one of Imogen’s ac-
complishments; when she is disguised as a boy, her brother
Arviragus says that she sings like an angel.⁴⁰ Bruto attests the
fact that men consider it a great ornament for a woman to
be able to sing, although he himself is afraid that such a
talent may lead to mischief by tending toward licentious-
ness.⁴¹

Not only does Imogen have the essential personal virtues
of beauty, chastity, silence, good disposition, and others,
but she also has the necessary practical virtues. To illustrate,
—she sews, as can be readily deduced from the ease with
which she uses the figure of the needle. In one scene she says
to the Queen,

Your son’s my father’s friend; he takes his part. . . .

I would they were in Afric both together;

Myself with a needle, that I might prick

The goer-back.⁴²

In another scene she bewails the absence of her husband,
saying,

I would have broke mine eye-strings; cracked them, but

To look upon him, till the diminution

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