In the remote countryside far from Cymbeline’s court, Belarius has raised Cymbeline’s sons Arviragus and Guiderius, keeping their true identities a secret even to them. When the two young men express their interest in traveling far from home and offering their services to the crown, Belarius delivers a long speech in which he satirizes what he perceives to be the superficiality and corruption of life at court:
This service is not service, so being done,
But being so allow'd: to apprehend thus,
Draws us a profit from all things we see;
And often, to our comfort, shall we find
The sharded beetle in a safer hold
Than is the full-wing'd eagle. O, this life
Is nobler than attending for a cheque,
Richer than doing nothing for a bauble,
Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk:
Such gain the cap of him that makes 'em fine,
Yet keeps his book uncross'd: no life to ours.
At court, Belarius claims, doing good “service” for the crown is not nearly as important as being perceived as helpful because appearances are more important than actions in such a superficial environment. Further, life at court can be perilous despite its apparent glamour. While a “full-wing’d eagle” might be the more majestic animal, he reasons, a “sharded beetle” (or dung-beetle) often has a greater sense of security. Hoping to discourage their interest in the royal courts, Belarius suggests that courtiers must labor incessantly to pay for their luxurious lifestyles, “rustling” for “silk” that they cannot afford and entering into debt to purchase expensive, fashionable clothing. Belarius's satirical critique of the royal courts is conventional, and many other plays and poems written in Shakespeare’s day similarly associate the courts with vanity, extravagance, and waste.
