As You Like It – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Act 1, Scene 1 (673-77, Orlando rebels against his older brother Oliver’s mistreatment, and demands his inheritance; Oliver schemes with Charles the Wrestler to deal with the young man at the next public match.)

The light pastoral quality of As You Like It is particularly enjoyable. Many of Shakespeare’s comedies mix dark and light moods, but in this one the forecast is “mostly clear and sunny.” It’s a mature play from 1599 or early 1600, which makes it roughly kin to Hamlet. It’s based on a pastoral romance by Thomas Lodge named Rosalynde; or, Euphues’ Golden Legacy (1590), [1] and pastoral itself is an ancient subgenre going at least as far back as the Greek poet Theocritus (3rd BCE), who wrote the Idylls, [2] and Longus, author of Daphnis and Chloe. [3]

Shakespeare gives us Orlando and Rosalind, a central pair of lovers driven from their urban setting by powerful, ungenerous characters. In Orlando’s case, that would be his selfish brother Oliver, and in Rosalind’s, it’s Duke Frederick the usurper. Their remedy is to explore the nearest green place they can find—a place that isn’t subject to the limitations and ill will of the city and court.

What they find is the Forest of Arden, which turns out to be a magical space where the lovers can set themselves playfully against the constraints of gender and explore the rituals of romantic love and courtship. In Arden we will hear some fine perspectives on court, country, love, and life not only from Rosalind and Orlando but also from Celia (Rosalind’s friend) and from Touchstone the Clown and Jaques the melancholy traveler, along with Corin the shepherd.

Even the “baddies” get something from Arden: Duke Frederick the usurper and Oliver, Orlando’s stingy brother, undergo sudden transformations for the better in the Forest, and the play’s several marriages (including that of the rustics Silvius and Phoebe) pave the way for a renewal of social and political harmony at court.

As always, comedy is about the accommodation of individual desire to social demands, and, to some extent, vice versa. It’s also about the generous, perhaps even providential disposition of time itself. In Shakespeare’s comedies, you do what Viola does in Twelfth Night: commit your cause to time, stay open to experience (a classical virtue—just ask Odysseus), and hope for the best. [4]

As always with Shakespeare, we can look for the playwright both to inhabit his artistic forms with genuine passion and to treat them from a certain distance, whether friendly or satirical—he wasn’t one to be reduced to the moods or demands of any narrow setting or set of conventions, so in As You Like It, we’ll see the pastoral ideal of unspoiled, natural innocence laughing at itself from time to time.

Well, the bad characters in comedy tend to be stick figures whose villainous behavior is rooted in insecurity and selfishness, and that’s what we have in Orlando’s older brother Oliver and the usurping Duke Frederick. We aren’t dealing with the ancient problem of evil here, at least not in a serious way. From the outset, we can see that Oliver is jealous of his brother’s virtues, and holds to an economy of scarcity model of status and virtue: more love and honor for another person means less for him.

Orlando deals with Oliver boldly after what has obviously been a great deal of indifference and snubbing: “The courtesy of nations / allows you my better … but the same / tradition takes not away my blood …” (674, 1.1.39-41). Oliver promptly calls upon Charles the Wrestler to deal with this young whippersnapper, calling his brother “an envious emulator of every man’s good / parts, a secret and villainous contriver against me, his natu- / ral brother” (676, 1.1.123-25).

On the whole, in comedies such characters as Oliver are bogeymen, not complex evildoers. Oliver is simply an uncharitable brother. [5] Comedies don’t represent the social order or human nature as intractable—there would be no point in bothering with comedy if that were the case. We don’t need to worry about providing compensation for insupportable loss, as in King Lear or Oedipus the King.

The goal is instead to restore happiness to individuals and smooth functioning to the social order, and to allow people to hope for better things to come. A key concept is balance: how can we bring people together in such a way as to achieve happiness and harmony, even if perfection may be beyond our reach?

Coleridge says that literary symbols can “balance or reconcile opposite or discordant qualities.” That’s more or less what comedy does: often by strategies involving parallels, contrasts or antithesis, it reconciles and balances out individuals who might otherwise stay in conflict, and makes possible a dynamic but sustainable social order. In the first scene, Celia and Rosalind give us a fine example of true friendship that further condemns Oliver’s vicious dislike of his brother. Celia and Rosalind are cousins, not sisters, but their reciprocal generosity is no less complete for it.

Act 1, Scene 2 (677-83, Orlando wrestles Charles and wins; Rosalind, the exiled Duke Senior’s daughter, is love-struck by Orlando’s unlikely victory; Orlando is tongue-tied and doesn’t know how to respond to Rosalind’s attraction.)

As for the attraction between Rosalind and Orlando during his participation in a wrestling match, well, as Marlowe’s poem “Hero and Leander” (1598) runs, “Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?” [6] (Phoebe will later quote these lines at 712, 3.5.81). This notion is typical in comedy. The ancient idea is that love strikes people first through the eyes, as if the lovers had been struck with Cupid’s arrow. That the idea is advanced is no guarantee, however, that it is the only or controlling notion about love in the play.

Accordingly, the love between Rosalind and Orlando begins with sudden attraction, although for the audience the experience is more drawn out since it is distributed across Rosalind’s viewing of the wrestling match between Orlando and Charles later in the second scene. Orlando doesn’t yet know himself and can hardly speak to his new admirer, but Rosalind sees his integrity and potential along with his youth. When he wins, she says, “Sir, you have wrestled well and overthrown / More than your enemies” (682, 1.2.223-24).

It is improbable for Orlando to win his match against the powerful Charles, but the big fellow is an important device in that Orlando’s desperation drives him to the match, and his victory secures him Rosalind’s heart. The text doesn’t say exactly how Orlando defeats Charles, though the BBC version starring Helen Mirren as Rosalind makes Orlando’s victory a matter of clever strategy, not brute strength. [7]

Act 1, Scene 3 (683-86, Duke Frederick banishes Rosalind; Rosalind and Celia decide to go to the Forest of Arden and look for Duke Senior, with Rosalind dressed for security’s sake as a man; Touchstone the Fool agrees to accompany them.)

Duke Frederick is a competitive, ill-spirited ruler. Like Oliver, he obviously believes in an economy of scarcity when it comes to virtue: he tells Celia regarding her friend, “She robs thee of thy name, / And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous / When she is gone” (684, 76-78). Frederick is little more than a straw man, and while his threat to Rosalind sounds awful, it rings hollow: “if that thou beest found / So near our public court as twenty miles, / Thou diest for it” (684, 39-41). We might as well queue the campy “ominous organ music” that should accompany such a threat.

It doesn’t take Rosalind and Celia long to work out a strategy to beat Frederick: Celia says they ought to go “seek my uncle in the forest of Ardenne” (685, 1.3.103), that uncle being the banished Duke Senior (Rosalind’s father). Rosalind chimes in with an addition she thinks will make the journey safer: “Were it not better / Because that I am more than common tall, / That I did suit me all points like a man …” (685, 1.3.110-12). And they’ll take Touchstone with them for company. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine this silly-sardonic character providing much security.

ACT 2

Act 2, Scene 1 (686-87, the exiled Duke Senior and his courtiers ponder life in the forest, the theme being, “the uses of adversity”; they are treated to a story about the melancholy Jaques.)

There are different perspectives to be heard about the Forest of Arden, and in this scene we hear the view of the banished Duke Senior regarding “the uses of adversity” (643, 2.1.12). He considers the Forest a place to gain spiritual insight, and seems to like living there for a time. It suits his contemplative nature, and in this he is almost a Renaissance Henry David Thoreau: he has no difficulty finding “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in everything” (686, 2.1.16-17).

But his is not the only perspective, as we will find in later scenes of Act 2 and throughout the play. Perhaps there’s just a touch in Duke Senior’s statement of the sort of idealism or spaciness that sometimes gets Shakespeare’s rulers booted from office—in a less light-hearted vein, one thinks of the poet-king Richard II, or of Prospero, who lost his dukedom in The Tempest partly because he spent more time reading his books than dealing with the responsibilities of power. [8]

All the same, not much is made of that problem in As You Like It. The comic dispensation of the play keeps Duke Senior from ending up like some of Shakespeare’s signally incompetent sovereigns, and in truth, most of us probably like Duke Senior the better because he doesn’t resort to cut-rate stage-Machiavellian tricks to get his dukedom back.

Act 2, Scene 2 (687-88, Duke Frederick suspects that Orlando has made away with Celia; he sends agents to question Oliver sharply and demand that he produce Orlando.)

Duke Frederick’s always bad temper is boiling over now that Celia has run off somewhere. The Duke’s intelligence-gathering operation suggests to him that Orlando may have had something to do with it, so he sends agents to trouble Oliver and see if that forces him to cough up his supposedly wayward younger brother.

Act 2, Scene 3 (688-89, Adam the servant informs Orlando that Oliver is plotting to kill him and offers him his money to help him escape; Orlando and Adam head for the forest.)

In this brief scene, the servant Adam warns Orlando of his brother’s plot against him, and offers his life savings to help the young man escape: “fortune cannot recompense me better / Than to die well and not my master’s debtor” (689, 2.3.75-76). Adam has an endearing way of measuring the value of his own life by the loyalty he has shown to others, especially those who have been good to him. Now that he is old, nothing seems more important to him than holding true to that loyalty.

Act 2, Scene 4 (689-91, Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone arrive in the Forest of Arden; Rosalind adopts the disguise of “Ganymede” and Celia dubs herself “Aliena”; they hear the shepherd Silvius make his pastoral lament to old Corin about Phoebe; Rosalind, in disguise, offers to buy the pasture’s cottage, which is for sale.)

Silvius complains to Corin about his unrequited passion for Phoebe (690, 2.4.20-38), and his plight moves Rosalind, who overhears him. Meeting the shepherds, she offers to buy the sheepfold and cottage, which, as Corin informs her, is for sale (691, 2.4.88-92).

The fact that part of the Forest is for sale reminds us that while the place is a Green World, it isn’t a paradise: there’s “winter and rough weather” (692, 2.5.8), poverty, ignorance, and commerce. On the whole, the Forest of Arden is closer to Virgil’s reality-tinged pastoral locations in the Eclogues than to an earthly paradise. [9]

For the shepherd Corin, indeed, Arden is a rather harsh terrain where a man may eke out a living. Country people often seem to regard the woods this way: they don’t wax eloquent about it the way urbanites tend to do. So while Amiens’s songs sometimes promote an idyllic image of Arden and the Duke is pleased with the “lessons” he learns from the woods, that isn’t how all of the characters regard Arden. It’s a good place to visit, but most of the characters will need to be getting back home soon. [10]

Incidentally, there is a real Forest of Arden, and Shakespeare must have been familiar with it as a child growing up in Warwickshire, even though the forest referred to more directly is the Ardennes in France since that’s where the play is set. But the exact setting doesn’t much matter—this writer saw an excellent, fun production of the play live at UC Irvine years ago, and the director chose to have Corin and his helpers herd gigantic orange beach balls across the stage for the pastoral scenes.

Just in case anyone was disappointed in all the beach balls, the director had the wit to bring to the fore a single live sheep. One wonders what the poor lone sheep thought, surrounded by orange beach balls in front of hundreds of people. Still, it was good theater, and—one may hope—a resume line for the sheep.

But the point is, to adapt a line from Samuel Beckett, “What matter where one is speaking?” [11] It need not be a slight to Shakespeare to suggest that sometimes, while he must have greatly loved the real countryside, “nature” is more a state of mind than anything else. Perhaps that is part of what we call its magic in Shakespeare’s Green World scenarios.

Act 2, Scene 5 (692-93, Amiens sings pleasantly of “winter and rough weather”; Jaques sings to mock the pastoral mood of Duke Senior’s company.)

Jaques shows himself a melancholy-making machine, drawing his rather perverse sustenance even from Amiens’ more conventionally comforting songs: “Here shall he see / No enemy / But winter and rough weather” (692, 2.5.6-8).

Jaques turns this pleasant song into something quite different: “If it do come to pass / That any man turn ass …” (693, 2.5.42-43). According to the ancient theory of the humors, in which the balance of four substances in the human body (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm) is at least partly responsible for a given person’s disposition, Jaques may be suffering from an excess of black bile.

But Shakespeare never reduces any character in such a deterministic way, and Jaques’s perspective is in fact a sophisticated, highly intelligent one, even if it hardly endears him to the other characters. Let’s just say that he will serve as the “odd man out” in this play, the one who self-consciously avoids stepping into the comic circle of “shiny happy people holding hands” [12] because he would prefer to keep his own company and counsel. Jacques is clearly one of those people who would rather observe the pageant of life than play an active role in it, aside from that of “observer.”

Act 2, Scene 6 (693, Adam is near death, so Orlando vows to go and find food.)

In this brief scene, Adam is on the point of perishing, and Orlando promises to help him. In terms of Christian symbolism, Old Adam, or unregenerate man, or even just “the frailty of the flesh,” perhaps, is aided by his younger counterpart, the one who is poised to enjoy the benefits of regeneration in the Forest of Arden.

But there’s no need to lean heavily on such symbolic interpretations. Adam is a model of uprightness and faithful service, not a fool or a more than commonly blamable sinner. Orlando treats him tenderly, as a son should treat his elderly father: “I will bear thee to some shelter, and thou shalt not / die for lack of a dinner …” (693, 2.6.14-15).

Act 2, Scene 7 (693-98, Jaques covets Touchstone’s status as fool; Orlando rudely demands sustenance from Duke Senior and is offered it freely; Jaques details the Seven Ages of Man; Duke Senior welcomes Orlando and Adam for the sake of the young man’s father, Sir Rowland de Bois.)

Jaques tells everyone how impressed he is with Touchstone, whose particular brand of foolery he seems to find attractively broad in comparison to his own narrower spectrum of observation: “A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’th’ forest … (694, 2.7.12; see lines 12-43). Touchstone is free to draw out what’s valuable in people, but Jaques’s view is more limited; his insight is drawn through a filter. So the latter seeks some of this power, and hopes that with his peculiar brand of melancholy foolery, he will “Cleanse the foul body of th’infected world / If they will patiently receive my medicine” (695, 2.7.60-61).

Orlando bursts in on the bantering, and tries to commandeer some food for Adam, in the name of “necessity” (695, 2.7.90). It soon turns out that there’s more civility in the Forest of Arden than he had thought possible, as Duke Senior promises him all he needs: “Your gentleness shall force / More than your force move us to gentleness” (695, 2.7.102-03). We may well imagine that Orlando feels a little foolish when he receives such a kind reception in this “savage” woodland.

As for Jaques, he delivers his excellent variation on an old theme: the Seven Ages of Man: “All the world’s a stage” (696, 2.7.139), he says, and all of us play our parts, which consist in the seven ages: infant, schoolboy, young lover, soldier, mature professional (a justice), declining pantaloon, and, finally, second child, “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” (697, 2.7.166). [13] This is a hollowed-out conception of humanity, wherein even the most heartfelt passion is entirely scripted by one’s time of life. But then, what is Orlando but a stock lover when he scribbles his bad poems all over Arden’s trees?

But if we look at Jaques’ musings in a more brooding way, we can see how much against the generous spirit of comedy they are: in his view, we experience time as an opportunity to run through the paces of life and then vanish. His notions are really neither tragic nor comic since in tragedy, at least death gives meaning to life, whereas for Jacques it makes everything seem pointless.

In general, Shakespeare’s comedies deal in a more uplifting way with the fact that our very selves may be mostly the product of typification, of categorizations into which our society wants us to fit. The point is not that we must be absolutely original in all things; rather, the manner in which we inhabit or dwell resourcefully within our respective “types” renders us happy or unhappy.

Moreover, individuation plays a more important role in comedy than in Jaques’s view, which insistently stresses dis-individuation. Comedy makes fun of us and our pretensions to uniqueness and high-serious significance, but it ultimately accepts us with our follies, or at least most of them. Jaques’s melancholy outlook sees life as always being lived self-consciously in the shadow of “mere oblivion” (697, 2.7.165). One counter to those who make a profession of glumness is Victor Hugo’s statement, “Les hommes sont tous condamnés à mort avec des sursis indéfinis.” Translated, that’s “All men are under sentence of death with indefinite reprieves.” [14]

Jaques himself is a stock melancholy traveler. Melancholia was a popular subject in Elizabethan-Jacobean times and attained something like cult status later in the 1600’s. Robert Burton’s late-Jacobean Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) testifies to its significance in Shakespeare’s era. [15] Depression was thought to be caused by an excess of black bile, and indeed the word “melancholy” comes from the Greek words melas (black) and kholē (bile). [16] Jaques, as a melancholy traveler, goes around looking for things that accord with his sadness and isolation from others.

So while Jaques’s “Seven Ages of Man” speech in Act 2, Scene 7 is excellent, it consists of stock ideas with which we probably are not meant to agree. He reduces life too willingly to its bleakest and most hopeless level, and his view is promptly, silently undercut by the entrance of the aged servant Adam, who remains cheerful and kindly disposed towards the younger generations. Sometimes many words are best countered by few, or none. Jaques is a sophisticated character, but his outlook is rather simplistic.

The scene ends with Duke Senior welcoming Orlando for the sake of his father, Sir Rowland de Bois, and we find that civility, not the savagery Orlando had expected, reigns in the Forest of Arden (697-98, 2.7.191-200).

ACT 3

Act 3, Scene 1 (698, Duke Frederick angrily sends Oliver into the forest to locate Orlando, giving him a year to do so, during which time the Duke will hold his estate.)

The usurping, frowning Duke Frederick is at it again, booting Oliver out of the realm to search for Orlando, who has earned his ire by defeating Charles the Wrestler. He commands Oliver to “Seek him with candle; bring him dead or living / Within this twelvemonth …” (698, 3.1.6-7). Only at the beginning or in the middle of a comic play can a thorough rascal like Frederick hold such sway over characters who are kinder and gentler than he is even on his best day.

Act 3, Scene 2 (698-707, Orlando affixes bad love poetry addressed to Rosalind on Arden’s trees; Touchstone battles Corin over the relative value of court and country; Rosalind and Touchstone jest over love and sex with a backdrop of Orlando’s verses; Rosalind and Celia comment on the verses; Orlando dismisses Jaques’s gloomy conversation; Rosalind-Ganymede meets Orlando and offers him courtship lessons as “Rosalind” to cure him of the “madness” that is love; Orlando accepts.)

Touchstone, who here engages in an epic battle of wits with Corin the Shepherd, is the play’s “all-licensed fool.” [17] He has great scope to offer his perspective (698-700, 3.2.11-74). As such, he is a fine foil for Jaques as well as for the lovers. Touchstone employs a kind of schoolboy chop-logic against Corin. The whole argument should probably go to Corin by a decision, as they say in boxing. The old shepherd has the innate civility of a country fellow who knows his limitations but is also solidly grounded in his virtues, so he doesn’t take Touchstone seriously.

Touchstone conflates good manners with theological grace: since he’s never been at court, the Shepherd’s “manners must be wicked, and wickedness is sin, and sin is / damnation” (699, 3.2.38-39). This false syllogism [18] seems ridiculous to Corin, who doesn’t share in Touchstone’s courtly, Neoplatonist understanding of the supposed affinity between moral goodness and fine appearance. [19]

Touchstone is also more interested in words than in action, even though he is (unlike Jaques) willing to take part in the play’s marriage festivities. Jaques wants nobody, but Touchstone will soon have Audrey to think of, silly as the match may be.

In any case, Corin’s response to Touchstone’s quibbling is excellent: as the shepherd says, “those that are good manners / at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behavior / of the country is most mockable at the court” (699, 3.2.40-42). Corin is no courtier, but he understands exactly what decorum is: adroitly suiting one’s style to the relevant place and station.

Also in this scene, Rosalind parries wits with Touchstone (700, 3.2.77-111), who tries to reduce her love for Orlando to mere physical desire: “He that sweetest rose will find, / Must find love’s prick and Rosalind” (700, 3.2.100-01). She fends off his sardonic sallies without difficulty. There is a kind of earnestness about love—even when it’s busy with playacting—that rebuffs the treatment given it by a Touchstone or a Jaques.

Meanwhile, Orlando, author of those poems that Touchstone calls “the very false gallop of verses” (700, 3.2.102), meets up with the unadmiring Jaques, who begs him, “mar no more trees with writing love songs / in their barks” (704, 3.2.240-41). But Orlando sends him on his way, dismissing his attempt to typecast him as a stock lover and a bad poet (704, 3.2.242-73).

Lovers can easily reduce themselves to a laughingstock in others’ eyes, and yet for their own part conduct themselves with perfect earnestness. The fact that what one is experiencing has been experienced by millions of others does not make it any less real, or any less worthwhile.

Finally, Rosalind-Ganymede meets Orlando and offers to school him in courting his beloved Rosalind (704-07, 3.2.274-393). Claiming to have learned the art of courtship from an elderly uncle, Rosalind-Ganymede tells Orlando that he lacks all the telltale signs of a genuine suitor: “A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and / sunken, which you have not …” (706, 3.2.342-43).

But the main piece of advice Rosalind-Ganymede offers is that “Love is merely a madness and … deserves / as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do …” (706, 3.3.363-64). The plan is for Orlando to visit “Ganymede” each day and practice his suit until a cure is achieved (706, 3.3.381-83). Orlando’s willingness to go through with this plan speaks well of him—it exhibits an unusual degree of open-mindedness.

Act 3, Scene 3 (707-09, Touchstone determines on Audrey the goat-keeper and contracts with Oliver Martext to marry the pair; Jaques convinces Touchstone to delay until he can set up a legitimate “church” wedding.)

As is evident from his silly courtship of Audrey, Touchstone’s coming marriage to this country lass is more a thing of words, a cover for his lust, than a legitimate institutional act, or at least that’s how the clown at first wanted it: an attitude that shows in his desire to let the incompetent Oliver Martext perform the ceremony. It’s a good pretext for a divorce otherwise unavailable in early modern Europe. [20]

Audrey, as we can tell from their conversation in Scene 3, understands very little of what Touchstone says, so there’s no question of their being well-matched company. Touchstone, for his part, isn’t concerned about Audrey’s not being beautiful, saying “Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness—sluttishness / may come hereafter” (707, 3.3.33-34).

Neither does Touchstone care about the ordinarily anxiety-provoking, emasculating topic of cuckoldry. Of that, Touchstone says, “as a walled town is more worthier than a village, so is the / forehead of a married man more honorable than the bare / brow of a bachelor” (708, 3.3.49-51). It is better, as far as he is concerned, to participate in the institution of marriage and take one’s chances than to languish as a bachelor.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the desperate Helena insists that “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity.” [21] Touchstone and Audrey don’t need this kind of love-magic since their aim isn’t what anyone would call romantic love, it’s simply an accommodation acceptable both to them and to society. Saint Paul might as well have had this couple in mind when he wrote, “But if they cannot abstain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.” [22]

On the whole, Touchstone is what his name implies: a sharp stone of a wit who draws sparks and tests the quality of others. His verbal wit is his way of staying at the surface of things. He will later join in the marriage rites, but does not much appreciate matrimony’s holier dimension. That attitude so vital to romantic comedy is left to other characters, most particularly to Rosalind and Orlando, and perhaps to Celia and the transformed Oliver, though in truth we won’t hear much from them about their whirlwind match.

Jaques has been listening in on the comical discussion between Touchstone and Oliver Martext, and steps forward to advise the Clown, “Get you to church and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is …” (708, 3.3.71-72). Touchstone’s first impulse is to answer that he would prefer a priest like Martext since “not being married well it will be a good excuse for me / hereafter to leave my wife” (708, 3.3.78-79). Still, Jacques’s persistence wins out, and Sir Oliver Martext departs frustrated but determined to carry on with his trade elsewhere.

For Touchstone, we can see, marriage is just something a person does to keep up appearances and serve his or her own convenience. Shakespeare by no means condemns court life, but here in the attitude of Touchstone, he points out the courtly tendency to slide towards hollowness and ceremonialism, a kind of empty formal adherence to convention. Well, at least Touchstone is frank about his earthy motives, which may redeem his choice after all. He doesn’t pretend to be better than he is, and social utility is served by his acceptance of marriage.

Act 3, Scene 4 (709-10, Rosalind and Celia gossip about Orlando; Corin steers them towards observing the nettlesome courtship of lovesick Silvius and scornful Phoebe.)

Rosalind and Celia exchange gossip about Orlando and his qualities. Celia is full of teasingly contrary views, as when she says, “all’s brave that youth mounts and / folly guides” (710, 3.4.39-40). Then Corin enters and announces that Silvius and Phoebe are on the scene: “If you will see a pageant truly played / Between the pale complexion of true love / And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain …” (710, 3.4.46-48), he tells the pair, all they need do is listen to these country folk.

Rosalind readily agrees since, she says, “The sight of lovers feedeth those in love” (710, 3.4.51). She plans to intercede in the “play” they are about to watch.

Act 3, Scene 5 (710-13, Rosalind-Ganymede schools Phoebe after overhearing her proudly reject Silvius; Phoebe promptly falls in love with Rosalind-Ganymede.)

Rosalind, invited by Corin, eavesdrops on Phoebe as she overplays her hand, while Silvius is loyal to her far beyond her desserts (710-11, 3.5.1-27, 31-34). Perhaps the meanest thing Phoebe does is to reject Silvius’s romantic metaphors. He has apparently used a Petrarchan conventional figure that describes the eyes as able to wound a lover, and to this, Phoebe replies, “But now mine eyes, / Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not; / Nor, I am sure, there is no force in eyes / That can do hurt” (711, 3.5.24-27).

Rosalind-Ganymede bluntly rejects Phoebe’s advances, and tells Silvius, “’Tis not her glass but you that flatters her …” (711, 3.5.54). And Rosalind-Ganymede brusquely reminds Phoebe that she is by no means beautiful—she is “not for all markets” and that she ought, therefore, to sell while someone is still willing to buy (711, 3.5.60). This match is hardly going to be perfect; Phoebe, we may assume, will never love Silvius as much as he loves her, but that’s not unusual: seldom, we may venture, do two people love each other to precisely the same degree.

Silvius and Phoebe it will have to be—they are a match sufficient for civilization’s purposes. Silvius is a good example of the sort of stereotype (the infatuated lover) that Orlando inhabits partly and for a limited time. All the same, Silvius is decent and faithful. Moreover, Phoebe’s high ideals, while misplaced, are by no means contemptible.

Of course, “Ganymede’s” sage counsel only makes Phoebe fall hopelessly in love with him, and we see that firmer guidance will be needed in her case (711, 3.5.66-69). Phoebe is so far gone that she even quotes from Christopher Marlowe’s poem “Hero and Leander”: “Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?” (712, 3.5.81) [23] She also determines to write Ganymede a “taunting letter” (713, 3.5.133) and get Silvius to bring it to him. Silvius, of course, agrees to this humiliating service.

ACT 4

Act 4, Scene 1 (713-17, Rosalind-Ganymede demolishes Jaques’ antisocial posing; Rosalind-Ganymede plays “Rosalind” and instructs Orlando in the rigors of courtship: the lesson pertains to men and women’s inconstancy, and the truth of masks; Celia, playing the role of a priest, initiates a practice marriage between them.)

Rosalind’s deflation of Jaques at the scene’s beginning is punishing, if not quite a knockout blow. Jaques professes the goodness of his own disposition, saying, “Why, ’tis good to be sad and say nothing” (713, 4.1.8), and Rosalind answers him, “Why, then ’tis good to be a post” (713, 4.1.9). When he highlights his status as a melancholy traveler, [24] she ventures that it seems foolish to her to go about seeking experiences that make you sad: “and to travel for it too!” (714, 4.1.26). With that remark, Rosalind is on to her pretend-real courtship with Orlando, with assistance from Celia.

As for the value of the dialogue in Act 4, Scene 1, Shakespeare recognizes that for the most part people inhabit types and that a great deal depends on how they inhabit a given type, or how they inflect it. We are not dealing with Romantic-Era originality and uniqueness here, and neither are we being treated to the utilitarian-style bourgeois self of somewhat later times, even if there are perhaps touches of that sensibility in Shakespeare’s Early Modern plays.

In truth, there is always some Jaques-proximate way of describing our present stage of life, and that observation remains true notwithstanding the critique that the play offers with regard to Jaques’s somewhat rigid categories. [25]

The question is, does the type swallow us up, or do we improve upon it or at least inhabit it competently? Orlando (pinning bad verses on trees) has played the lover’s type, which Jaques humorously describes as “the lover, / Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad / Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.” [26] We need not worry about him becoming Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and going mad for love, [27] but still, that thought may remind us of love’s potential to obliterate the boundaries of personal identity—a risky venture usually kept from turning bad by reflection, distance, and playfulness.

The present scene shows how the Forest of Arden allows both Rosalind-Ganymede as Rosalind, who leads the way, and Orlando, who follows gamely, the time and distance they need to play around with love’s lore and with gender typification. Both will emerge the better for their experimentation. The disguises or “masks” they wear for a time allow them to speak and act with frankness and a degree of detachment. Often, Shakespeare treats love as something like a game with its own rules and conventions that must be learned. The rules turn out to be flexible, but they’re not altogether to be dismissed.

What do men and women say about, and to, one another? It is difficult for them to be honest in real-life situations, so the disguising and conversations that occur in the Forest of Arden are valuable to Rosalind and Orlando as they move towards a more complete accommodation of each other’s desires. Rosalind’s forest performances, especially in 4.1, allow her to gain some freedom and insight by playing both a male suitor (Ganymede) and a choosy, unpredictable female object of pursuit (Rosalind-as-Ganymede-as-Rosalind).

Sounding rather Phoebe-like for the moment, Rosalind-Ganymede, playing Rosalind, deflates Orlando’s overblown claim that he will die if she does not accept him by saying simply, “men / have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, / but not for love” (715, 4.1.92-94).

One thing Rosalind explores, of course, is her own anxiety about the constancy or inconstancy of men, women, and romantic love generally. [28] Rosalind-Ganymede’s characterizations of men and women are appropriately mocking: “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” (716, 4.1.127-30). Rosalind-Ganymede-Rosalind goes out of her way to make Orlando understand that a wife will do all sorts of things to set his teeth on edge, including exhibitions of jealousy, screaming, weeping, and laughing (716, 4.1.130-36).

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth,” writes Oscar Wilde in his 1891 essay, “The Critic as Artist.” [29] The everyday self that we present, in other words, is itself a kind of disguise that we wear—one that is all too effective in preventing others from truly knowing us. Rosalind’s mask is Ganymede, so we have Rosalind pretending to be Ganymede pretending to be Rosalind: just the right degree of anonymity necessary for her to help sort out and develop Orlando’s qualities as a suitor.

As for Orlando, those who believe most fully in the ideal vision of love most need distance from such idealism: idealizing eroticism is noble, but it has its risks, disillusionment and eventual cynicism being the most severe among them.

Orlando needs to be tested: he must show some capacity to moderate and reflect upon his high passions since that is partly what makes a marriage successful. When Celia-as-priest mock-marries him to “Rosalind” (715, 4.1.113), he plays his role as suitor to Ganymede-as-Rosalind with good cheer, putting up with his opposite’s whims and generally saying and doing the right things. As the play in its entirety shows, Orlando’s inner worth is greater than the silly stereotype he has temporarily inhabited: a successful comic hero, he plays a role, or we might say gives himself to a role, without being permanently trapped by it.

As was mentioned earlier, Shakespeare writes perceptively about love as a potentially destructive experience because it threatens to obliterate a person’s boundaries. (“Sonnet 129” and Othello [30] give us the darkest presentations of what love can do, while the comedies deal with the lighter and more uplifting dimension of love, its civilizing and uniting power.) Distance and reflection seem appropriate as preventive medicine,” given this tendency of love to strip us of our capacity to define, judge, and maintain our sense of who we are. Rosalind’s playful approach allows her to keep some sense of an independent identity.

Some sense, but only some—we hear her declare than in spite of all the play-acting and teasing, she appeals to Cupid, saying, “let him be judge how deep I / am in love. I’ll tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out of the sight / of Orlando. I’ll go find a shadow and sigh till he come” (717, 4.2.188-90).

Act 4, Scene 2 (717-18, Jaques again makes fun of Duke Senior’s party: a successful deer-hunt is followed by a cheerful song about cuckoldry.)

Apparently, Duke Senior’s men have been deer hunting. Jaques encourages the Second Lord to counter the sort of song generally sung by Duke Senior’s upbeat group: “What shall he have that killed the deer? / His leather skin and horns to wear” (717, 4.2.10-11). Jaques no doubt takes this song as voicing his own contrarian perspective, in this case involving his endorsement of an obvious pun on infidelity that probably owes something to the classical Ovidian hunting or chase scene to describe love relations. [31]

To some extent, this song by the Second Lord confirms the notion in Act 4, Scene 1 that human character is ever-inconstant. But at the same time, the song’s approach or attitude also cultivates a feeling of constancy even with that variable nature. That is, we can consistently register our inconsistency, and in that way arrive at some level of accommodation, and perhaps even contentment.

Act 4, Scene 3 (717-21, Rosalind orders Phoebe to love Silvius, but she stubbornly sends “Ganymede” a feisty marriage proposal; Rosalind and Celia wait for Orlando, but Oliver shows up first and tells them how Orlando rescued him from a snake and a lioness, and was wounded in the process: Oliver is a changed man!)

Rosalind sees her opportunity to transform Phoebe’s cruelty towards Silvius into acceptance, and, as Ganymede, orders the intransigent shepherdess to love Silvius instead: she tells Silvius to “say this to her: that if she love me, I charge her to / love thee” (719, 4.3.70-71).

Just then, Oliver enters the scene, and narrates how his brother Orlando rescued him when, sleeping, he was beset by two predators—a female “green and gilded” snake and a crouching lioness. Orlando initially turned his back on the hated brother he recognized sleeping beneath a large tree, but then, explains Oliver, “kindness, nobler ever than revenge, / And nature, stronger than his just occasion, / Made him give battle to the lioness …” (720, 4.3.127-29). [32]

What is the symbolic significance of the lioness and the female snake? Opinions vary. Many critics have noted that Shakespeare pointedly makes both predatory creatures female. But according to some, a compelling way to interpret what happens between Oliver and Orlando is to borrow from the very popular emblem tradition, in which the snake and the lion figure prominently. [33]

Thus, the snake may emblematize Oliver’s invidia, his envy, against his younger brother, [34] and the lioness may emblematize the wrath or anger he has conceived against Orlando as well as the wrath that Orlando has conceived for him. We may note that Orlando almost turns his back on his opportunity for heroism, such is his anger at Oliver for treating him ill. But in the end, compassion and Orlando’s better nature win the day: the younger man scares off the green-and-gold snake and defeats the lioness, suffering a wound in the fight.

Upon being rescued, Oliver is suddenly transformed: he confesses to the ladies, “I do not shame / To tell you what I was, since my conversion / So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am” (720, 4.3.134-36). We don’t need to see a long, painful, penance-driven process of transformation. It happens instantly, as if, in Christian terms, Oliver has been granted absolution for his sins, purged of the sinful negativity that has for so long plagued him. As we will soon see, Oliver’s heart has been opened for better things, above all love.

Oliver doesn’t for a moment believe that Rosalind-Ganymede is male since “he” swoons at the sight of the bloody napkin that Oliver shows as evidence of Orlando’s courage, but goes along with Rosalind’s claim of “counterfeiting” the fainting spell nonetheless. Oliver wants to carry out his embassy from Orlando: he has communicated what happened in the Forest, but now he must go back to Orlando and report how Rosalind-Ganymede has taken the excuse for delay (721, 4.3.151-55).

ACT 5

Act 5, Scene 1 (721-23, Touchstone uses his ample vocabulary to chase away Audrey’s bumpkin suitor William.)

Touchstone impresses Audrey by chasing away a rustic suitor with mere talk, but at least the end of it is memorable: “I will kill thee a hundred and fifty / ways. Therefore tremble and depart” (722, 5.1.51-52).

Act 5, Scene 2 (723-25, Oliver and Celia decide to marry, and Orlando is rather envious of their quick success; Rosalind-Ganymede promises Orlando he’ll make Rosalind appear by magic at Celia and Oliver’s wedding ceremony; Rosalind-Ganymede also makes Phoebe promise that if she refuses to marry Ganymede at the wedding, she must then marry Silvius.)

In the second scene, Oliver’s recent alteration is supplemented by his equally sudden love-struck decision to marry Celia as “Aliena.” As Rosalind-Ganymede tells Orlando, “your brother and my sister no sooner met but they looked, / no sooner looked but they loved …” (723, 5.2.30-31). Orlando is less than thrilled, and says, “I can live no longer by thinking” (724, 5.2.45-46).

This newest change may in part be a perspectival device whereby the brief courtship of one couple appears more credible in comparison to the even briefer one of another—one so brief that it really isn’t a courtship at all. Oliver even tells Orlando that he’s decided to give their father’s estate to him and “here live and die a shepherd” (723, 5.2.11).

The suddenness of the transformation makes sense: characters like Oliver (and Frederick) found their hopes on rational calculation over an abyss of ignorance into the real why and wherefore of their stingy, mean temperaments. To adapt a line from Sam Cooke’s 1960 song “Wonderful World,” “Don’t know much about you and me” has ever been their theme, so some measure of humaneness and empathy come over them like a sudden wave or a lightning strike, not as the fruit of a gradual realization.

Rosalind-Ganymede finally decides to move forward with Orlando, promising him, “If you do love Rosalind so / near the heart as your gesture cries it out, when your brother / marries Aliena shall you marry her” (724, 5.2.56-58). She has a certain magician in mind, supposedly, who can do the trick, and that magician is her.

We now come to the comic knot that Rosalind-Ganymede must shortly untie. When Phoebe orders Silvius to explain to Rosalind-Ganymede what it means to love, Silvius says, “It is to be all made of sighs and tears, / And so am I for Phoebe” (724, 5.2.75-76). This is the cue for a number of “And I for…” repetitions: Phoebe is in love with Ganymede, Orlando is in love with Rosalind whom nowhere sees, and Ganymede-who’s-really-Rosalind pines “for no woman” (724-25, 5.2.77-93).

Act 5, Scene 3 (725-26, Touchstone makes pleasantries with Audrey while two pages sing a song for spring time, “the only pretty ring-time.”)

Touchstone enjoys some brief conversation with Audrey, and two young pages crown the third scene with a carpe diem song about the associations between spring, love, and marriage rites as symbolized by the “ring” that the song mentions: “It was a lover and his lass … / In spring-time, the only pretty ring-time …” (682, 5.3.14, 17). For their efforts, Touchstone issues only a criticism of their singing (682, 5.3.39). [35]

Act 5, Scene 4 (726-30, As Duke Senior and his retinue look on, Rosalind-Ganymede reminds Orlando, Silvius, and Phoebe about their promises; Touchstone amuses everyone by recounting his courtly, cowardly quarrel; Hymen, god of marriage, ushers in Rosalind and Celia, and Duke Senior greets them warmly—they are of course family; Orlando greets Rosalind; Phoebe will marry Silvius; Hymen addresses the couples. (SYNOPSIS CONTINUES …)

The fourth scene offers Touchstone’s famous recounting of a courtly quarrel, which, he claims, began when he professed to “dislike the cut of / a certain courtier’s beard” (727, 5.4.65-66, see 65-94). He sets forth a preposterously detailed series of insults and counter-insults between himself and the other courtier. But the whole thing begins and ends in words, and they part company without exchanging a single blow: “I durst go no further than the Lie Circumstantial; / nor he durst not give me the Lie Direct” (728, 5.4.78-79). The reason? Cowardice—neither of them ever had any intention of getting into a real fight.

So much, then, Touchstone suggests, for a great deal of chivalric discourse and masculine “honor.” This insight allies him with Sir John Falstaff from I and II Henry IV, [36] Paroles in All’s Well That Ends Well, [37] and certain other of Shakespeare’s deflators of male puffery. Touchstone sings the praises of the circumstantial phrase: “Your / ‘if’ is the only peacemaker: much virtue in ‘if’” (728, 5.4.93-94). This comic play is more tolerant of love-driven exaggerations and rituals than it is of honor-based ones.

With that tolerance in mind, we could easily contrast the silly “dueling” talk that Touchstone mocks with the marriage ceremony arranged in Act 5, which is meant to sanctify and facilitate natural desire, recuperating it for social purposes.

To cap things off, Hymen the god of marriage does the honors after Rosalind enters in her own person and clears up the reigning confusion, presenting herself to her father Duke Senior and to Orlando as herself (728, 5.4.107-08). Hymen is an urban god, so his presence is a reminder that most of the characters will soon return to the court.

The right matches have been made, and besides, society demands not perfection but adequacy: it needs rustics like Silvius and Phoebe, strange pairings like Touchstone and Audrey, and “instant” couples like Celia and Oliver, as much as it needs the near-perfect Rosalind and Orlando, who spent a great deal of time stress-testing their affection for each other in Arden. Touchstone’s phrase “country copulatives” (727, 5.4.53) applies to all equally: they’re all kin by the act of generation. The phrase “as you like it” seems to mean “follow your desire,” so long as you don’t thereby impede the charitable disposition of things.

Jaques de Bois (the brother of Orlando and Oliver) informs everyone that Duke Frederick has been turned away from his wicked intentions in the Forest by an “old religious man,” and now intends to stay on in the wilderness that has seen his salvation, where he will live a retired life of religious devotion (729, 5.4.142-62).

Jaques the melancholy traveler will follow this newly retired Duke Frederick. He did not join with the lovers in dancing to Hymen’s tune, and now prefers to remain in the Forest of Arden because he believes there’s more to learn there than at court: “To him will I: out of these convertites / There is much matter to be heard and learned” (730, 5.4.175-76).

Jaques is the odd man out since he doesn’t marry, but he only matters a little in this play. He is, of course, not the only character who chooses not to return to the courtly life: Duke Frederick will remain in the Forest. It’s even possible, though not likely, that Oliver and Celia will prefer a pastoral life. But when Oliver promised to give the de Boys estate to Orlando, no one knew that power would be returned to Duke Senior, thereby making Orlando his heir as Rosalind’s husband. With Orlando getting such a status bump, there’s surely no need for his brother to give up his estate. In any case, whoever chooses to stay in Arden does so of their own free will and in good spirits, not as a rejection of the blessings of civil society.

That may be why, in spite of the number of stay-behinds, As You Like It doesn’t have the bittersweet quality of Shakespeare’s romance plays (as we call them today) such as The Winter’s Tale or The Tempest. There is something of the romance ambience about this play—Orlando, after all, is the name of the hero in Ariosto’s 1532 epic romance poem Orlando Furioso—but all the same, it remains satisfied with its sunny, comic approach to life.

Comedy is, after all, not only a genre but a fundamental perspective on life, just as tragedy and romance are life-perspectives. [38] Shakespeare’s comedies aren’t monolithic in tone or in degree of optimism—they range from dark (Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice) to more cheerful fare such as the present play, which is perhaps the most perfect of its type in Shakespeare’s canon.

Now that all is done, what might we say is the magic of the Forest of Arden? It’s appropriate to borrow the key terms “freedom” and “a variety of situations” from the German philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt. [39] Arden may not be a magical island like Prospero’s place of exile, but it apparently has a power to transform people, to alter their perspectives, and set things between them right. Or at least, it is an ideal space, a liberating natural place, for allowing people to achieve such goals: a place of exploration and learning for those who desire those things.

Given a little time, we can either find out who we are (as Rosalind and Orlando do by way of romantic experimentation), or we can go there and “just change,” as Oliver does. Arden’s natural environment is markedly different from the court, where competition and greed reign.

There’s something of the seasonal cycle’s magic in the Forest, too: spring is the time of regeneration and hope. But we should remember that “nature” is a complex concept in Shakespeare, and his exploration of it varies from play to play. Seldom is nature in Shakespeare exactly what we might have expected, but it’s always what it needs to be.

In King Lear, for example, the King sees the exiled Edgar in the guise of Poor Tom, a Bedlam Beggar, and mistakenly declares him “the thing itself: a poor, bare, fork’d animal….” [40] But that play as a whole surely doesn’t tell us we should reduce ourselves to such an extreme; we are not most authentically ourselves when stripped and “unaccommodated” by the arts and considerations of civic and family life. Artifice is part of our nature as human beings, it seems. The Forest of Arden encourages artifice and play, and its magic consists in the freedom to experiment with the styles and types that are undeniably part of life.

Epilogue (730-31, Rosalind calls for harmony and applause from the men and women in the audience.)

The Epilogue makes light-hearted reference to the license and experimentation necessary for success in love matters: “It is not the fashion to see the lady / the epilogue …” (730, Epilogue 1-2), but it’s Rosalind who gets the last word. With that last word, she entreats the audience to applaud the play (or at least what they like of it) in remembrance of the love men and women bear to one another, play or no play.

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen, et al, editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies + Digital Edition. 3rd edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93861-6.

ENDNOTES

*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.

[1] Lodge, Thomas. Rosalynde; or, Euphues’ Golden Legacy, 1590. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 7/31/2024.

[2] Theocritus, Idylls. Perseus Project. Accessed 7/31/2024.

[3] Longus. Daphnis and Chloe. Perseus Project. Accessed 7/31/2024.

[4] Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 743-97. The play’s heroine, Viola, sketches a brief plan to disguise herself as a young man and serve the Duke of Illyria, but beyond this, her only “plan” is the statement, “What else may hap, to time I will commit” (746, 1.2.59).

[5] Other uncharitable brothers in Shakespeare are Richard of Gloucester in Richard III; Edmund the Bastard in King Lear; Claudius in Hamlet; Don John in Much Ado About Nothing; Antonio in The Tempest; Saturninus in Titus Andronicus; andRobert Falconbridge in King John.

[6] Marlowe, Christopher. “Hero and Leander .” Poetry Foundation. Accessed 7/31/2024.

[7] As You Like It. DVD. BBC Production, 1978.

[8] Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 397-448. Prospero describes himself to his daughter Miranda as having been “transported / And rapt in secret studies” pertaining to the liberal arts. (401, 1.2.76-77)

[9] With regard to the pastoral genre, see “Pastoral.” Britannica.com. Accessed 7/31/2024. In addition, although pastoral is often describes as “sunny” in its disposition, there is actually quite a lot of complaining about harsh living conditions and frustrations in love, even in the most ancient examples of pastoral poetry, such as Theocritus’s Idylls.

[10] This view of nature holds true in Shakespearean tragedy as well, though in an edgier way: consider King Lear, in which raw nature is conceptualized as a dangerous, temporary perspective-gathering and re-grounding place for suffering humanity. For Shakespeare, the value in the country/city debate seems to lie in the achievement of a sense of balance: nature (and by proxy, natural desire) isn’t to be denied, but artifice is a vital attribute of humanity.

[11] Samuel Beckett’s character’s statement, as cited in Michel Foucault’s essay “What Is an Author?” is “What matter who’s speaking, someone said, what matter who’s speaking.” In Beckett’s own English translation of the third text in his collection Texts for Nothing, the quotation runs, “What matter who’s speaking, someone said what matter who’s speaking.” In other words, Beckett did not include a comma after “someone said.” See Beckett, Samuel. Texts for Nothing. Calder & Boyars, 1974. Text 3, pg. 85.

[12] The refrain from a very uncharacteristic R.E.M. song, “Shiny Happy People.“

[13] The business of dividing the stages of human life in the collective sense is ancient: Hesiod’s five stages, for example, were the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, the Heroic Age, and the Iron Age. Later, Ovid dispenses with the Heroic Age. As for references to the divisions of the individual person’s life, these are ancient, too. See, for example, Hippocrates and Philo, the latter of whom categorizes the seven ages of human beings as “infancy, childhood, boyhood, youth, manhood, middle age, and old age.” Referenced in The Jewish Encyclopedia’s article “The Seven Ages of Man in Jewish Literature.” Accessed 7/31/2024. [continued ….]

One can also find a gloss on the ages of an individual person in the Roman poet Horace—see lines 153-78 of his treatise Ars Poetica. See “The Ages of Man: A Study Suggested by Horace, Ars Poetica, Lines 153-178.” JSTOR open access. Harcum, Cornelia G. “The Ages of Man: A Study Suggested by Horace, Ars Poetica, Lines 153-178.” The Classical Weekly, vol. 7, no. 15, 1914, pp. 114–18. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/4386866. Accessed 31 July 2024.

[14] Hugo, Victor. Le dernier Jour d’un condamné. Ch. III. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 7/31/2024.

[15] Burton, Robert. Anatomy of Melancholy. 1621. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 7/31/2024. But see also Bright’s 1586 Treatise of Melancholie. HathiTrust. Accessed 7/31/2024.

[16] See the ajdrake.com/shakespeare site’s “Theory of the Humors” guide.

[17] Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840. See 780, 1.4.169.

[18] For a very brief definition of the syllogism, see Britannica.com’s entry. Accessed 7/31/2024.

[19] That there’s a close connection between physical beauty and moral goodness is a Neo-Platonist view that we can find in Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier and other European Renaissance texts. EEBO/U-Mich. Accessed 7/31/2024.

[20] On the topic of annulments in Tudor England, listen to Stories of Tudor Annulments. Renaissance English History Podcast, March 2024.

[21] Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 406-53. See 411, 1.1.232-33.

[22] See 1 Corinthians 7:9, Geneva Bible, 1599. Biblegateway.com. Accessed 7/31/2024. By “to burn” is apparently meant, “to burn with lust.”

[23] Marlowe, Christopher. “Hero and Leander.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed 7/31/2024. See also the UCLA Clark Library’s gloss on Marlowe’s unfinished poem.

[24] The greatest study of melancholia near Shakespeare’s time is Robert Burton’s 1621 Anatomy of Melancholy. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 7/31/2024. But see also Bright’s 1586 Treatise of Melancholie.

HathiTrust. Accessed 7/31/2024.

[25] See Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare after All. Anchor Books, 2004, 452. As Garber and other critics suggest, Adam’s arrival just as Jaques finishes his “Seven Ages” speech rebukes the bleak picture that the melancholy traveler gives of old age. Adam is indeed old, but he is not without courage and even vigor, in spite of his desperate condition. See As You Like It 696, 2.7.139-66.

[26] As You Like It, 696, 2.7.147-49.

[27] Ariosto. Orlando Furioso. Italian original. Gutenberg e-text.

[28] See Montaigne, Michel de. “The Inconstancie of Our Actions.” Book II, Chap. 1. of The Essays. (Renascence Editions.) Accessed 7/29/2024. Shakespeare was familiar with Montaigne’s skepticism-tinged essays, and the viewpoint on the frailty and inconsistency of human character on display in this essay would almost certainly suit Shakespeare’s own musings on the subject.

[29] Wilde, Oscar. “The Truth of Masks.” Wilde-online.info. Accessed 7/31/2024.

[30] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 512-86. Othello’s dangerous passion for Desdemona is hinted at when he says, “Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee; and when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again” (546, 3.3.89-91). And “Sonnet 129” begins, “Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame / Is lust in action ….” See Shakespeare, William. The Sonnets. In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 656-709. 700.

[31] The “hart” tradition is very old. Consider this verse from Psalm 42:1:^“As the Hart brayeth for the rivers of water, so panted my soul after thee, O God.” Biblegateway.com. Accessed 7/31/2024. The emblem tradition also refers to wounded harts. See also Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 3.165ff, where Actaeon beholds the goddess Diana bathing naked and is turned into a stag, and then torn to shreds by hunting dogs.

[32] As Prospero, contemplating the power he now has over his enemies, says towards the end of The Tempest, “Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick, / Yet with my nobler reason ‘gainst my fury / Do I take part. The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance” (440, 5.1.25-28). See Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 397-448.

[33] See, for example, Waddington, Raymond B. “Moralizing the Spectacle: Dramatic Emblems in As You Like It.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2, 1982, pp. 155–63. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2869788. Accessed 30 July 2024. Waddington interprets the snake as emblematic of invidia, and the lioness of wrath. Pp. 159-60.

[34] The green color of the snake would seem to support such a reading—readers of Othello will recall how jealousy, a feeling as destructive as envy, is associated with the color green. See Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 512-86. Iago says to Othello, “Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on” (548, 3.3.163-65).

[35] The Norton editors point out that Shakespeare has adapted and rearranged the song from Thomas Morley’s 1600 First Book of Airs. ChoralWiki. Accessed 10/13/2024. The song in question is “It was a lover and his lass.”

[36] See Shakespeare, William. The History of Henry the Fourth. Aka The First Part of Henry the Fourth. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 629-95. One of Falstaff’s most famous pronouncements is, “Honor is a mere scutch- / eon. And so ends my catechism” (687, 5.1.138-39).

[37] See Shakespeare, William. All’s Well That Ends Well. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 971-1033. When Paroles is caught out for his cowardly behavior, he says, “Simply the thing I am / shall make me live” (1020, 4.4.316-17).

[38] Northrop Frye’s work on Shakespeare and genre makes this point more broadly. See, for example, Northrop Frye on Shakespeare. Yale UP, 1988. ISBN-13: ‎978-0300042085. See also The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Harvard UP, 1973. ISBN-13: 978-0674796751.

[39] Humboldt, Wilhelm von. The Sphere and Duties of Government. See Ch. II, 11-13, where the author makes his main point that for full human development, what’s needed are “freedom” and “a variety of situations” (11).

[40] See Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840. The lines in question are, “Thou art the thing / itself. Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, / bare, forked animal as thou art” (805, 3.4.96-98).

Commentaries onShakespeare’s Comedies

ACT 1

ACT 2

ACT 3

ACT 4

ACT 5

ENDNOTES

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Comedies