The Queen summons a court physician named Cornelius to bring her a potent poison, claiming that she only intends to use it as an ingredient for harmless experiments. In an aside, he explains that he has given her a sleeping potion instead of a genuine poison, explaining his rationale by using a paradox:
I do know her spirit,
And will not trust one of her malice with
A drug of such damned nature. Those she has
Will stupefy and dull the sense awhile,
Which first perchance she’ll prove on cats and dogs,
Then afterward up higher. But there is
No danger in what show of death it makes,
More than the locking-up the spirits a time,
To be more fresh, reviving. She is fooled
With a most false effect, and I the truer
So to be false with her.
Claiming that he knows her true, wicked “spirit,” the physician notes that the Queen cannot be trusted with “a drug of such damned nature,” and reveals that he has given her a potion that “dulls the senses” that she can test out on “cats and dogs.” The sleeping potion, he reasons, will fool her with “a most false effect,” and as a result, he will be “the truer” by being “false with her.” Cornelius, then, paradoxically claims that he will be “true” by lying to the queen. Here, his paradox relies on different interpretations of the word “true.” Though usually a person who is “true” tells the truth rather than lying, here he has had to lie in order to be “true” to his own values.
Under the mistaken impression that Imogen has been murdered on his orders, Posthumus immediately regrets his actions, wishing that he had died instead of her. He expresses his sorrow using a paradox:
Gods! if you
Should have ta'en vengeance on my faults, I never
Had lived to put on this: so had you saved
The noble Imogen to repent, and struck
Me, wretch more worth your vengeance. But, alack,
You snatch some hence for little faults; that's love,
To have them fall no more: you some permit
To second ills with ills, each elder worse,
And make them dread it, to the doers' thrift.
But Imogen is your own: do your best wills,
And make me blest to obey!
Calling to the gods, he argues that they should have killed him for his own “faults” so that Imogen would have been spared and given time to “repent” for her own relatively minor sins. He notes that the gods punish those who have only committed “little faults” much more quickly than they do those who have committed far worse crimes. Paradoxically, he reasons that this is because they more quickly punish those whom they prefer. Those individuals, like Imogen, are killed before they can commit additional sins, keeping their souls relatively clean. Others, however, are permitted to live longer so that they can sin again and again, getting worse and worse each time until they truly dread their eternal punishment. Posthumus’s paradoxical claim that those who are killed early in life are favored by the gods rests on the assumptions that sin is inevitable and that those who live into old age merely add to their list of mistakes and evil deeds.
Wallowing in his guilt and misery after instructing his servant Pisanio to murder Imogen, Posthumus makes the suicidal decision to rejoin the Roman army just as a British victory appears inevitable. He is captured alongside the other Roman soldiers, including the military general Lucius, and is imprisoned as he awaits execution. He then reflects upon the paradox that “bondage” can be a way to gain “liberty”:
Most welcome, bondage, for thou art a way,
I think, to liberty. Yet am I better
Than one that’s sick o’ th’ gout, since he had rather
Groan so in perpetuity than be cured
By th’ sure physician, Death, who is the key
T’ unbar these locks. My conscience, thou art fettered
More than my shanks and wrists. You good gods, give me
The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,
Then free forever [...] Must I repent,
I cannot do it better than in gyves,
Desired more than constrained.
Unlike the other captured soldiers, Posthumus bids a “welcome” to his own “bondage,” which he describes paradoxically as a means of gaining “liberty.” Generally, “liberty” is thought of as the opposite of “bondage,” a state of freedom both in action and in movement. Posthumus, however, argues that his imprisonment will free him from life itself. While a person who is ill, he suggests, would rather “groan in perpetuity” than “be cured / By th’ sure physician” (by which he means “Death”), Posthumus welcomes Death as a liberator, who holds the “key” to “unbar” the locks tying him to life and therefore to suffering. Begging the gods to kill him, he reasons that he must repent first, and that a prison is as good a place as any for repenting.
