As You Like It in a poetic nutshell:
"As You Like It" isn't 'real' -
But the pastoral ideal
(Deeply rooted in our senses)
Speaks to modern audiences.
Sell your house and go abroad...
Buy somewhere you can afford...
What provides the motivation?
Lower levels of taxation?
Legacy? Retirement?
In this play it's Banishment! ***
As You Like It (hereafter AYLI), a play which pokes fun of the conventions of romantic love, is often thought to be one of WS's best comedies. It also explores the evils of primogeniture, the system where the oldest son gets all the property leaving the other siblings with nothing but their big brother's (possible) generosity.
The play also exploits the 'pastoral' convention, e.g. people wearing disguises. An extreme example of this is where Rosalind dresses herself up as a man and then role-plays herself back again in order to teach Orlando how to woo her.
This play, which has been described by critic John Russell Brown as a 'light-footed gaiety, warmth and confidence' was probably written in 1599-1600 during a period of a wish to return to the pastoral life - 'to fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.' Therefore, it is not surprising that most of the action takes place in the Forest of Arden, a Warwickshire forest well-known to the Bard. (See my previous blog entry.) It was also good luck that this play was included in the First Folio (1623) as it wasn't included in any of the quarto editions.
The Plot: Celia's father, Frederick has usurped the rightful duke who is Rosalind's father. Rosalind remains at court with her friend and cousin, Celia, but then is later banished with Celia to the same forest. Orlando, a young noble meets Rosalind in disguise and falls in love with her, but when he hears that his older brother, Oliver, plans to kill him, he also flees to the forest. There Rosalind persuades Orlando to pretend that she is really Rosalind, and to make love to her. Later she tells him the truth and is restored to her father and marries Orlando.
At the same time, Celia is paired off with the now repentant Oliver while Touchstone pairs off with Audrey and Silvius does the same with Phebe. In the end, Duke Frederick repents of his original usurpation and, restores Rosalind's father as Duke Senior. In Shakespearean tradition, this comedy is all very complicated and in my eyes at least, not very credible.
Even if most people don't know this play well, they'll certainly know the beginning of one of its most-quoted speeches:
All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...
And from here on, Jaques, a cynical, sentimental malcontent goes on to set out the seven stages of a man's life from the 'mewling and puking' infant to the 'mere oblivion' of the aged man. This life-journey travels via the 'whining school-boy', the 'lover, sighing like a furnace,' 'the soldier... seeking the bubble reputation,' the justice with his 'fair round belly' to the lean and slipper'd' sixth ages with his 'spectacles on nose and pouch on side' and 'his shrunk shank.'
The idea of comparing life to a stage was not an original Shakespearean one and he may have been aware of Pythagoras who said the same some two thousand years earlier. In addition, WS's theatre, the Globe may have used the motto, Totus mundus agit histrionem' - All the world plays an actor, a phrase attributed to the Roman courtier, Petronius in the first century C.E.
The fact that WS used this idea in AYLI was also not a first for him. About five years earlier in 1594-5 in The Merchant of Venice, WS has Antonio say,
I hold the world but as the world, Gratanio;
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.
Ten years later in Macbeth, WS returns to the idea of life being like a play, when at the end of the play, the world-weary Scottish king in my favourite speech in my favourite play says in Act V, sc.5:
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
And now you'll hear no more from me until next time when I'll deal with Mrs. Shakespeare, alias, Anne Hathaway (or was that her real name?)
Tell me, if all the world's a stage, how come all the clowns are
employed in this office?
For comments etc, please write on my Facebook page or send to: wsdavidyoung@gmail.com Thank you.
***From: Shakespeare in a Nutshell:A Rhyming Guide to All the Plays by James Muirden, Constable, 2004
"As You Like It" isn't 'real' -
But the pastoral ideal
(Deeply rooted in our senses)
Speaks to modern audiences.
Sell your house and go abroad...
Buy somewhere you can afford...
What provides the motivation?
Lower levels of taxation?
Legacy? Retirement?
In this play it's Banishment! ***
As You Like It (hereafter AYLI), a play which pokes fun of the conventions of romantic love, is often thought to be one of WS's best comedies. It also explores the evils of primogeniture, the system where the oldest son gets all the property leaving the other siblings with nothing but their big brother's (possible) generosity.
The play also exploits the 'pastoral' convention, e.g. people wearing disguises. An extreme example of this is where Rosalind dresses herself up as a man and then role-plays herself back again in order to teach Orlando how to woo her.
This play, which has been described by critic John Russell Brown as a 'light-footed gaiety, warmth and confidence' was probably written in 1599-1600 during a period of a wish to return to the pastoral life - 'to fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.' Therefore, it is not surprising that most of the action takes place in the Forest of Arden, a Warwickshire forest well-known to the Bard. (See my previous blog entry.) It was also good luck that this play was included in the First Folio (1623) as it wasn't included in any of the quarto editions.
The Plot: Celia's father, Frederick has usurped the rightful duke who is Rosalind's father. Rosalind remains at court with her friend and cousin, Celia, but then is later banished with Celia to the same forest. Orlando, a young noble meets Rosalind in disguise and falls in love with her, but when he hears that his older brother, Oliver, plans to kill him, he also flees to the forest. There Rosalind persuades Orlando to pretend that she is really Rosalind, and to make love to her. Later she tells him the truth and is restored to her father and marries Orlando.
At the same time, Celia is paired off with the now repentant Oliver while Touchstone pairs off with Audrey and Silvius does the same with Phebe. In the end, Duke Frederick repents of his original usurpation and, restores Rosalind's father as Duke Senior. In Shakespearean tradition, this comedy is all very complicated and in my eyes at least, not very credible.
Even if most people don't know this play well, they'll certainly know the beginning of one of its most-quoted speeches:
All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...
And from here on, Jaques, a cynical, sentimental malcontent goes on to set out the seven stages of a man's life from the 'mewling and puking' infant to the 'mere oblivion' of the aged man. This life-journey travels via the 'whining school-boy', the 'lover, sighing like a furnace,' 'the soldier... seeking the bubble reputation,' the justice with his 'fair round belly' to the lean and slipper'd' sixth ages with his 'spectacles on nose and pouch on side' and 'his shrunk shank.'
The idea of comparing life to a stage was not an original Shakespearean one and he may have been aware of Pythagoras who said the same some two thousand years earlier. In addition, WS's theatre, the Globe may have used the motto, Totus mundus agit histrionem' - All the world plays an actor, a phrase attributed to the Roman courtier, Petronius in the first century C.E.
The fact that WS used this idea in AYLI was also not a first for him. About five years earlier in 1594-5 in The Merchant of Venice, WS has Antonio say,
I hold the world but as the world, Gratanio;
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.
Ten years later in Macbeth, WS returns to the idea of life being like a play, when at the end of the play, the world-weary Scottish king in my favourite speech in my favourite play says in Act V, sc.5:
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
And now you'll hear no more from me until next time when I'll deal with Mrs. Shakespeare, alias, Anne Hathaway (or was that her real name?)
employed in this office?
For comments etc, please write on my Facebook page or send to: wsdavidyoung@gmail.com Thank you.
***From: Shakespeare in a Nutshell:A Rhyming Guide to All the Plays by James Muirden, Constable, 2004
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