Prophetic Promise: The Lineal Return of ‘lopp’d branches’ in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline

Abstract This paper identifies the early‐modern conception of prophecy as a word‐magic performed across generations, a verbal promise that anticipates its own realisation in posterity. Just as Francis Bacon upheld the generative force of prophetic utterances by noting their ‘springing and germinant accomplishment throughout many ages’, Shakespeare’s romances seek to preserve prophecy’s poetic power to travel back and forth between different temporal perspectives, reconnect ruptured lineal ties, and repair divided Kingdoms. Cymbeline begins with a series of semiotic disruptions, in which lineal bonds appear obscured or illegible, forming misleading impressions of familial estrangement, untraceable ancestry, and infidelity. To mend these severed relationships, the play faithfully submits to divine providence through the, albeit contaminated, pastoral to revive a primitive faith in words. As the play returns to a time before the rifts of the past – rediscovering the Kings ‘two sons’ who ‘from their nursery/ Were stol’n …/ Some twenty years’ ago (I.i.59–62) – Posthumus’ ancestors appear in a prophetic dream‐vision. These departed relatives leave behind an oracle that renders tangible a prophetic word‐magic, one with the capacity to regraft ‘lopp’d branches’ – like Cymbeline’s lost heirs – back ‘to the old stock’ (V.iv.140–2).