“Love is merely a madness…”
Probably written somewhere between 1598-1599, William Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy As You Like It closes out the golden decade of Shakespeare’s plays in the 1590s. The source for the play was a prose romance entitled Rosalynde, Eupheus Golden Legacie by Thomas Lodge (likely written between 1586-1587) which was, itself, based on a 14th century Middle English romance entitled “The Tale of Gamelyn.” Mr. Lodge had penned his story while on a voyage to the Canary Islands, and for the most part, Shakespeare’s rendition of the story remains largely consistent with Lodge’s original version (almost to the point of plagiarism) –including its setting, plot, and characters –except for a few notable additions, particularly the elusive characters of Jacques and Touchstone, neither of whom serve to advance the plot of the play, but both offer differing philosophical schools of thought and commentary on the action of the comedy (Jacques, a lord accompanying the Duke in the forest, is akin to a nihilist, and Touchstone, a fool in the usurper’s court, is something of a pure materialist).
As You Like It is set in an unnamed French duchy in an unknown time period near the “Forest of Arden,” perhaps located somewhere in Northern France. It is a comical parody of a pastoral play wherein a group of courtiers are forced to flee their corrupt court and seek refuge in the nearby Forest of Arden. The almost mythical Forest of Arden in the play may refer to the Ardennes in France, or it may also be a nod to the name “Arden” which was Shakespeare’s mother’s maiden name, or even the former forest of Arden in Warwickshire near Stratford-upon-Avon where Shakespeare grew up. The latter two anecdote suggests As You Like It is a deeply personal play for Shakespeare.
In the tradition of pastoral poetry, As You Like It is a play about the tension between the court and country (or the city and the farm). Traditionally, pastoral poetry venerates the farmland. It praises shepherds and goatherds, and celebrates the romantic vision of an easy, rustic life –a purely innocent and morally virtuous existence– where love is incorruptible and the common man possesses a certain organic wisdom and honor. Ironically, this highly idealized form of poetry has often emerged not from working farmers and shepherds themselves, but rather from highly educated and refined urbanites in countries with decadent and corrupt courts. For example, pastoral poetry flourished in the era of the late Roman Republic and into the early Imperial era (from poets such as Virgil in his Eclogues and Ovid in his Metamorphoses, both of which echoed forbears like Theocritus and Hesiod). Of course, in Shakespeare’s own day, pastoral poetry had found a new home within the court of Elizabeth –a highly insular, exclusive court that was rife with corruption, conspiracies, and back-stabbing. It was the age of Sir Philip Sydney’s prose pastoral romance The Arcadia, Edmund Spenser’s Shepheardes Calendar (in some ways an imitation of Virgil) and his pastoral poetry in Book VI of The Faerie Queen, as well as the love poetry of Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh, and later Andrew Marvell and John Milton. Pastoral poetry is predicated on the conservative Golden Age fantasy, Rousseau’s dream of an innocent return to nature. It is Arcadia, Plato’s City of Pigs, the Garden of Eden, and the fabled Shangri-la. At root, it is a myth. Pastoral poetry sets up an overly simplistic and romanticized contrast between a corrupt court and an innocent countryside; and it often invokes the emotion of belatedness, nostalgia, and loss, wherein an idyllic dream becomes preferable to the perceived ugliness of reality. As Shakespeare so masterfully accomplishes in his other plays, in As You Like It he uses a popular poetic tradition, namely pastoral poetry, with the intent of examining, criticizing, and satirizing it.
In order to properly examine As You Like It, we must first get a handle on the political circumstances in which the play is set. Prior to the start of the play, a coup has occurred in this particular French court. The “tyrant” Duke Frederick has overthrown his older brother Duke Senior (sometimes listed as Duke Ferdinand), and has banished him into exile in the Forest of Arden where three or four of his “loving lords” live “like the old Robin Hood of England” having escaped the “painted pomp” of the court while their former lands enrich the new Duke –“Are not these woods more free from peril than the envious court?” In this case, banishment is a form of liberation for the exiles. All the while, many young men continue to flock to Duke Senior in his Ovidian “golden world” of nature. Meanwhile, Duke Frederick’s court is filled with nastiness and flattery. It is, in a word, wholly corrupt. And this corruption spills forth among the citizens of the duchy, as in the case of the de Boys family. Orlando is the youngest son of the late Sir Rowland de Boys (a deceased lord who was an ally of Duke Senior and an enemy of Duke Frederick). Presently, Orlando’s elder brother Oliver is withholding Orlando’s inheritance and his late father’s promise for Orlando’s education. Like Hamlet, Orlando lacks advancement in life. He feels like the “stalling of an ox” without his education, and he says, “the spirit of my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude. I will no longer endure it, though yet I know of no wise remedy how to avoid it” (1.1.21-23). Orlando complains about it to his family servant Adam, a loyal and elderly wise counsel who accompanies Orlando throughout the play (even contributing his life’s savings to Orlando’s cause). Here, we see the ordinary bonds which typically unite people have been broken –brother has been turned against brother, lord has been turned against lord, and servant has been turned against master. Throughout the duchy, the younger generation has grown resentful of the tyranny of the older men –Orlando is being denied his birthright, however he is still compelled to assert himself in another arena (namely on the wrestling mat). But why has Oliver prevented his younger from receiving an education? Is it because Oliver is also resentful? He despises his little brother for being “gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly belov’d” by the heart of the people. He is envious of his brother’s natural gifts and seeks to disrupt them. In this particular form of tyranny, the characters with natural virtues are not given their due credit, and are instead banished from the duchy. Orlando’s natural virtue is considered villainous in Duke Frederick’s corrupt court, and thus it becomes a vice. It is an inversion of natural values in a world of confinement, and it does not allow for wisdom and truth to emerge. Here, nature cannot take its course when healthy, youthful impulses cannot flourish. Thus, a retreat into nature seems like a deliverance.
“And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good everything” (2.1.15-17).
With a somewhat similar structure to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It features a political impasse which leads the characters to flee into a lush, green, natural world where they can finally be more honest with one another, as well as with themselves, before they quickly discover that the retreat into nature isn’t as desirable as they initially anticipated. By the end, they ultimately agree to return to the city in love and happiness. In Shakespeare’s comedies like A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As Your Like It, he shows us that he is not simply a romantic primitivist. While criticizing the tyranny and corruption of the court, Shakespeare also recognizes the stultifying simplicity of the countryside, and he shows us that there is a necessary education and refinement required for human growth as offered through the court. But when the court becomes corrupted, in order to better understand politics, the characters must rediscover an understanding of nature (or what modern thinkers might call the “state of nature”) in order to relieve themselves of ressentiment.
However, in addition to understanding nature, one must also have an understanding of love (or “eros”) –a wild, irrational impulse most common among the youth that often transcends political and cultural boundaries. In As You Like It, eros strikes Duke Senior’s only daughter, Rosalind, who has remained behind in the court of the usurper Duke Frederick. This fact puzzled me in the play. Why would Duke Senior leave behind his only daughter (and therefore his only heir) within the court of his tyrannical brother? Wouldn’t he insist that Rosalind join him in exile? And likewise, why would Rosalind not wish to flee into the Forest of Arden with her father? Was she held against her will by Duke Frederick? Or was she driven by political ends, namely Celia’s pledge to make her heir to her father’s reign? At any rate, flanked by her close friend and cousin Celia (the only daughter of Duke Frederick), Rosalind watches the wrestling match between Orlando and the reigning champion Charles, and she immediately falls in love at first sight with Orlando (particularly when he removes his shirt). And as a result, Duke Frederick banishes Orlando, and he later banishes Rosalind, as well, out of fear that she is outshining Celia in favor with the people. Like Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (and to an extent Macbeth), Duke Frederick believes he can simply control eros by separating and banishing young lovers. Perhaps a more astute politic in this situation might have sought to celebrate the union of Rosalind and Orlando, welcoming them into his court as a reaffirmation of his own rule. But Duke Frederick is envious of the natural superiority of Rosalind, even though his daughter Celia is described as taller. Yet the bond between cousins Rosalind and Celia is described as an unshakable relationship “whose loves are dearer than the natural bond of sisters.” They are inseparable –a pair of ladies who have “slept together,” and are inseparable like Juno’s swans. We can infer that when Rosalind’s father Duke Senior was overthrown and exiled, Rosalind’s bond with Celia was so great that she chose to remind beside her beloved cousin. And likewise, when Rosalind has been banished from the duchy by Duke Frederick, Celia likewise makes the decision to flee into the forest, as well, rather than stand beside her father. Both of these daughters clearly have a rebellious spark in them –they are not particularly keen to follow their respective father’s political machinations. At any rate, both ladies escape into the Forest of Arden together alongside the court’s fool Touchstone, a witty sensualist and strict materialist (as his name suggests, he also serves to test the authenticity of other characters in the play). What does Touchstone think of the pastoral life? He says “…in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd’s life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes against my stomach” (3.2.13-20).
In order to protect themselves on this dangerous journey through the forest, Rosalind assumes the visage and identity of a young man named “Ganymede” –a nod to the ancient Greek myth. Ganymede was said by Homer to be among the most beautiful of mortals and was kidnapped by Zeus/Jove to be the page and cup-bearer of the gods (the name Ganymede carries with it all manner of homoerotic undertones). And Celia assumes the identity of “Aliena” (which is Latin for “stranger”). Her new name brings to mind characters like the Athenian Stranger as featured in the dialogues of Plato.
Once inside the forest, Orlando and Adam are reunited with Duke Senior and his merry men. Although one of his companions is a lugubrious, fatalistic, wallowing fellow described as “melancholy Jacques” (pronounced “Jake-ess” according to Touchstone). He represents a strange addition to the play made exclusively by Shakespeare. Jacques is a rudderless and hopeless character, he represents a kind of cynical intellectual detachment from life, and most other characters do not seem to agree with him since he is a lonely voice preaching an unhappy criticism of life. He says he enjoys feeling sad (or at least he loves it better than laughing), and “’tis good to be sad and say nothing.” But what is this kind of melancholy he possesses? Why is he such a sorrowful fellow? He responds as follows:
“I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is
emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor
the courtier’s, which is proud; nor the soldier’s, which
is ambitious; nor the lawyer’s which is politic; nor the
lady’s, which is nice; nor the lover’s, which is all these;
but it is melancholy of mine own, compounded of
many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed
the sundry computation of my travels, in which my
often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness” (4.1.10-18).
Jacques is disillusionment personified. He has spent too much time in philosophic rumination and all his worldly travels have ensured that he has now lost touch with joy in life. At first, he believes Duke Senior and his men are tyrants for intruding upon the natural kingdom when he pities a murdered deer they killed for food, but later after speaking with the “motley fool” Touchstone (a conversation which occurs offstage) Jacques suddenly wishes to be a fool, as well, because at least a fool can be honest. In dialectic with Duke Senior, Jacques delivers his famous and bitterly nihilistic speech about the Seven Ages of Man. At first, Duke Senior reminds Jacques that “we are not all alone unhappy” because “this wide and universal theatre presents more woeful pageants than the scene wherein we play” (2.7.136-139). In other words, Duke Senior argues that their plight in the woods is not as gloomy as it might seem. But to this Jacques responds:
“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,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In a fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays is part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is the second childishness and mere oblivio,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything (2.7.146-173).
In this famous monologue, Jacques diminishes the whole of human existence to mere role-playing, artificiality, fraudulence, fakery, and ugliness. To admit “all the world’s a stage” is to deny greater depth and meaning to the human experience as if it is all merely a grand performance. While Jacques possesses an excessively ponderous temperament, he is assuredly not a philosopher. He is a brooding despiser of life. In fact, Jacques is a lost soul, evidently in search of his place in the world (appropriately, the etymology of Jacques’s name points toward Jacobus and Yaakov or “Jacob” in the Hebrew, meaning something akin to “he who supplants” or even “one who follows”). Thus, Jacques is hardly an independent freethinker, despite his great efforts to make us think so. Rosalind later notes that men like Jacques bear too much extremity in one direction, lacking Aristotelian moderation, and they are “abominable fellows” who “betray themselves to every modern censure worse than drunkards.” She says she “had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad.” Per usual, Rosalind is one of the more prudent characters in the play. And since Shakespeare’s own name could possibly be a corruption of the French name, Jacques Pierre, one is left to wonder whether the character of Jacques might represent the playwright’s extended reflections on his own temperament.
At any rate, as the rest of the characters roam about in the Forest of Arden, they encounter all manner of amusing people, many of whom are stultified rustics who lack the wit, refinement, and sophistication of the court. The countryside is hardly the Arcadian paradise they had imagined it to be. Here, they find people hungry, tired, and uncivilized. For example, they meet a simpleton farm girl named Audrey who falls in love with Touchstone (though he merely wants to have sex with her) and they are soon set to be married by a bumbling, incompetent vicar named Sir Oliver Mar-text from the next village. Then an equally uncultivated, lowbrow country man named William appears, apparently in love with Audrey (William is likely an inside joke on William Shakespeare himself, making his namesake an ignorant country bumpkin of low qualities). There is also an elder shepherd named Corin (a parody of the wise old shepherd archetype who often appears in the classical works of pastoral literature). He is one of the first characters to recognize the incompatibility between the court and the country. Notably, out here in the fields and trees, Shakespeare revises his narrative style from the stately iambic pentameter of the court, to the free-wheeling prose spoken by the crude lower classes. As is often the case in Shakespeare, verse is used by the refined aristocracy, while the ordinary people speak in the common tongue.
During this lengthy pastoral interlude, the budding romance between Orlando and Rosalind is explored in greater depth as Rosalind (posing as Ganymede) uses this opportunity to test her would-be-lover Orlando. An uneducated man, we find Orlando writing poorly written poetry and hanging it on trees. Note that this gesture of solitary love, pining from a distance, would have been honored and revered throughout the European tradition of courtly love, as in the case of Petrarchan love poetry, but in Shakespeare it is mocked and ridiculed as feeble and antithetical to real life. Indeed, Rosalind/Ganymede regards it as silly, but she still wishes to know Orlando’s true thoughts and feelings. Is he trustworthy? Will he be reliable? Should she marry him? Is he an honest lover. Rosalind/Ganymede reveals herself to be somewhat prudent in matters of love. Rather than eagerly sacrificing herself for the sake of love (a la Romeo and Juliet) she prefers to test her lover, to see if he truly is worthy of her hand in marriage. It is a rare opportunity granted to a paramour –and Rosalind exploits the situation in order to concoct a mock “cure” for Orlando’s lovesickness so long as he promises to redirect his love toward Ganymede, pretending “he” is Rosalind. She says, “I would cure you if you would but call me Rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me” (3.2.433–35). It sets up a hilarious gender swap and dramatic irony as we in the audience are aware of Ganymede’s true identity (an argument is to be made regarding the extent to which Orlando might be aware of this whole ruse). At any rate, whereas Orlando professes his love for Rosalind, stating things like “I would kiss before I spoke” and pledging to love Rosalind “for ever and a day,” and claiming “neither rhyme nor reason can express how much,” Rosalind/Ganymede corrects his idealism with a dose of pragmatic realism by reminding him that marriage is long, infatuation wears off, and people change over time.
“…men are April when they woo, December
when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids,
but the sky changes when they are wives. I will be more
jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his
hen, more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more
new-fangled than an ape, more giddy in my desires than
a monkey. I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the
fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be
merry. I will laugh like a hyena, and that when thou art
inclined to sleep” (4.1.137-146)
Of course, this amusing love test is interrupted when yet another country bumpkin arrives on the scene, a rough-and-tumble shepherdess named Phoebe (from the Greek for “bright” or “radiant”) who instantly falls in love with Ganymede (unaware that she is secretly Rosalind) all the while, a sheepish shepherd-boy named Silvius (whose name points us toward the image of “woods” or “forests”) is desperately in love with Phoebe. It creates a complex love triangle of objects and subjects. Phoebe bitterly rejects Silvius, and likewise Rosalind/Ganymede bitterly rejects Phoebe. At the same time, Duke Frederick has angrily banished Orlando older brother Oliver so that he will hunt down his younger brother (giving him twelve months to do so). But when Oliver arrives in the Forest of Arden, he is suddenly rescued by Orlando in a dangerous confrontation with a lioness from which he sustains an injury on his arm and bears a blood-stained napkin (or at least this is the story we are told by Oliver since it all occurs offstage –do we trust him?). Oliver then immediately falls in love with Celia/Aliena. Perhaps one of the more disorienting elements in As you Like It is that many of the key moments in the play occur offstage and we are merely informed of what happened by other characters. We are forced to rely on their testimony alone. In this particular sequence of events recounted by Oliver, perhaps it is possible to interpret Orlando and Oliver as being fully aware of Rosalind’s disguise as Ganymede. And perhaps Rosalind is also impressed with Orlando’s ability to concoct a believable story about a confrontation with a lioness, and to issue an apology without actually appearing himself, and lowering himself to begging for forgiveness. In this way, Orlando shows greater tact and diplomacy than it might have initially seemed –perhaps this impresses Rosalind.
In the end, despite Orlando’s tardiness and preliminary silliness in love, Rosalind/Ganymede claims to have studied under an uncle who was a great magician (an obvious lie). And she pledges to produce the circumstances that will allow for several grand weddings, including her own. What finally convinced her of Orlando’s integrity? When she disappears and returns to reveal her true self –as Rosalind—she hails the weddings of herself and Orlando, Oliver and Celia (no longer as Aliena), Audrey and Touchstone, and Silvius and Phoebe (since Phoebe was persuaded to marry Silvius only if she was made to realize Ganymede was ineligible for marriage). They are all wedded by Hymen, the ancient Greek god of marriage (the only supernatural deity who appears in the play; a god of classical antiquity who restores order to the chaos at the end of the play). And as we reach the conclusion, the second son of the late Sir Rowland de Boys, Jacques de Boys, mysteriously arrives on the scene (he is the younger brother of Oliver and older brother of Orlando). Jacques de Boys has been entirely absent for the whole play up until this point. He claims that Duke Frederick had recently entered the forest after hearing of so many men being drawn to his brother in the forest, but when the usurping Duke had arrived at the edge of the forest he met an “old religious man” who inexplicably converted him “both from his enterprise and from the world” (once again, a critically important event happens offstage and we merely learn about it second-hand). Do we believe Jacques de Boys’ story? And who was this religious hermit who supposedly converted Duke Frederick to a religious life? Could it have been one of the men in the forest, such as Jacques or Touchstone? Was Rosalind involved? Regardless, the comedy ends with a wholesome reunion of Duke Senior righting all wrongs and returning all stolen lands to their former owners before appointing Orlando as his heir (Orlando is now his son-in-law). All the characters decide to return to the city and leave the country behind –all except melancholic Jacques who decides to join Duke Frederick in pursuit of the solitary the monastic life. Shakespeare reserves the religious, ascetic rejection of the world for only the most odious, useless characters in the play –Duke Frederick and Jacques. The rest will carry on the important work of restoring the city.
A passing reader might interpret As You Like It as a defense of the country as superior to the corruption of the court, however careful readers will note that the reunion at the conclusion of the play presents a triumphant return to the court. Shakespeare brilliantly illuminates the tensions between both court and country in this play, giving praise to each as well as critiquing their respective deficiencies. Yet he reserves his harshest rebuke for the anti-life characters like Jacques and Duke Frederick –both of whom are sent away in the end to live a vain, isolated life like a religious monk. The religious life is not to be celebrated in a Shakespearean comedy. In As You Like It, Shakespeare questions whether or not it is possible to combine the refinement and civility of the court with the natural, spontaneous, organic character of the natural world. How can the city be fashioned to harmonize with the natural world? In the play, Shakespeare seems to be less than entirely convinced of the unsophisticated, supposedly morally innocent, less corrupted world of the country. Like Aristotle, Shakespeare sees the proper place of human nature as within the bounds of civilization, rather than in a fantastical escapist fantasy to the natural world. Mankind is naturally clothed, not naked; and the highest love is courtship, which emerges from the learned traditions and refined artisanship of the city, rather than from the mere biological necessity found in nature. Shakespeare reserves his greatest praise for Rosalind, a truly impressive woman who is not easily swayed by passing erotic attachments. Recall that it was she who first suggested a disguise when traveling into the forest (she is cunning and cautious), and her character is key to restoring the city in the end (Shakespeare permits Rosalind the rare permission to opportunity to present the closing epilogue in which she offers a separate closing plea to both women and men in the audience). Her preferred manner of speaking is not as a beggar, but rather as someone who ‘conjures’ an image for the audience to guide them (perhaps not unlike Prospero in The Tempest) –she charges women to enjoy as much of this play as pleases them, and she charges men, who are often “simpering” in love toward their women, that the play may please them, as well, alongside their beloveds. Therefore, the title “As You Like It” reminds us to take what we please from this merry comedy under the direction of a skilled magician like Rosalind.
For this reading I used the impressive Arden edition of Shakespeare’s As You Like It along with Paul Cantor’s excellent lectures and Marjorie Garber’s essential essays.