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SINCE 1949!
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As You Like It
As You Like It
By William Shakespeare
The Forest of Arden resounds with mischief, confusion, wit and romance in one of Shakespeare’s best loved comedies. Come join Rosalind, Orlando, Pheobe, Corin and all the others in this delightful, love-filled romp through the woods!
1. SYNOPSIS 3. CAST & STAFF SynopsisIn this play, Duchess Fredericka (the younger sibling) usurps her older brother, Duke Senior, and banishes him to the Forest of Arden. Fredericka goes on to banish Duke Senior's daughter Rosalind. Fredericka's daughter, Celia (Rosalind's cousin) flees her evil mother with Rosalind and they head (along with Touchstone, the clown) to the Forest of Arden. Before leaving, Rosalind falls in love with Orlando, the younger son of Sir Rowland, and he with her. Orlando had rebelled at being kept a virtual prisoner by his older brother, Oliver. Duchess Fredericka and Oliver had hoped that Charles the wrestler would kill or cripple Orlando in a wrestling match, but Orlando managed to triumph. Soon after, Orlando flees his older brother, after learning of Oliver's plans to kill him, and heads to the Forest of Arden. Duchess Frederica, upon finding Celia, Rosalind, and Orlando missing, orders Oliver to find them, or face banishment himself.
In the Forest, the cousins disguise themselves: Rosalind as Ganymede (a male) and Celia as Aliena. The clown, Touchstone, purchases a shepherd's hut, a flock, and a pasture from two shepherds, Corin and Silvius. Meanwhile, Orlando has been desperately searching the forest for food when he stumbles upon Duke Senior’s banqueting place. He enters with his sword drawn and demands food. Duke Senior greets Orlando with unexpected kindness and welcomes him to his camp.
Orlando, knowing that Rosalind is somewhere in the forest, wanders through the forest hanging love verses to Rosalind upon the branches of trees. Rosalind finds the verses and as Ganymede talks at length with Orlando about his true love, Rosalind. She offersto pose as Rosalind and to allow Orlando to practice his wooing with her. Meanwhile, Touchstone is planning his own romance with Audrey (a sheepherder), though a commoner named William also seeks Audrey until Touchstone scares him off. "Ganymede" witnesses the love affair of Pheobe and Silvius, two shepherds. Pheobe treats Silvius coldly and "Ganymede" chides her for it making Pheobe instantly falls in love with "Ganymede.” Once Rosalind becomes aware that Pheobe has fallen in love with “Ganymede” she delivers the unfortunate news that she is in fact a woman.
The exiled Oliver finds "Ganymede" and tells "him" that, while sleeping in the forest, he was saved from the attack of a lioness by his brother Orlando. Orlando was wounded and asked Oliver to bring a bloody napkin as proof of the fight and as explanation for missing his appointment with "Ganymede". "Ganymede" faints, and Oliver comes to realize that "Ganymede" is really Rosalind.
Orlando and Oliver are now reconciled, and Oliver tells his brother that he has fallen in love with "Aliena", the disguised Celia. They will be married the next day. Orlando returns to "Ganymede” and laments that he cannot marry his Rosalind tomorrow, but "Ganymede" promises to make it possible. At the wedding, "Ganymede" reveals that "he" is actually Rosalind and she and Orlando pledge to wed. Additionally the reconciled Pheobe and Silvius and the newly promised Touchstone and Audrey are married. After the wedding, Jackie de Boys, a long lost brother of Oliver and Orlando arrives with the news that Duchess Fredericka was converted to good by an old religious man, and has requested that all of the banished people return home and have their estates back. Instruction Versus Deception: from Rosalynde to As You Like It
Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde is an unwieldy pastoral, overladen with classical allusions and Latin aphorisms for courtier and shepherd alike. The romance is thick, heavy, and conventional. Yet when Shakespeare took it in hand, to rework the tangled web of disguise and romance into As You Like It, he changed much of the emphasis, by both altering and adding characters. Rosalynde is a celebration of love; As You Like It, a philosophical discourse on love, for Rosalind does not so much woo Orlando as educate him in the proper way to love.
Shakespeare cuts to the chase, eliminating much of the prologue to Rosalynde. We hear of old Sir Roland de Boys (Lodge's John of Bordeaux) only through Orlando's opening speech, not the extended deathbed collection of aphorisms Lodge provides (though this shade of Polonius perhaps influences old Adam's long-winded style). Likewise, the extended ruminations are cut entirely or, for the forest scenes, condensed into tighter dialogue. Lodge's grand tournament, with the jousting prowess of the anonymous Norman (proto-Charles) happens offstage, and we see only a wrestling match. Lodge's usurper favors Rosader after the tournament, but Shakespeare's Frederick spurns Orlando for his parentage and Oliver plots more quickly against his brother, further excising the plot-perambulations of the source and removing the months of tension and reconciliation that plague Saladin and Rosader.
But Shakespeare also takes care to lighten his villains, more in the spirit of a playful comedy than Lodge's sometimes grim pastoral. His Charles is relatively innocent, deceived by Oliver rather than entering willingly into his pay (as the Norman does with Saladin). Oliver, in turn, is not such a relentless foe as Saladin: he has no cronies to assist in binding up Orlando, he does not so mistreat his brother before us as happens in Lodge's pastoral. Even the usurper Duke, Torismond/Frederick, does not exile his own daughter in Shakespeare's play (only remonstrating her with "You are a fool"). And he is not killed in battle at the end of the play, but rather converted to a holy life, in much the same fate that Lodge's Saladin plans for himself in remorse ("[I shall] wend my way to the Holy Land, to end my years in as many virtues, as I have spent my youth in wicked vanities." (p.273)).
In contrast, Shakespeare darkens his heroes: they are not all the blithe, pastoral folk Lodge paints. Celia's single "Is it not a foul bird that defiles its own nest?" (p. 245) early in Rosalynde becomes Celia's more extended harangue at the end of IV.i. -- unlike in Lodge, Celia does not volunteer to marry Orlando and Rosalind, but is rather shanghaied into the task, to her chagrin. Orlando is not nearly as polite in his first appearance to the exiled Duke: "Forbear, and eat no more!" (II.vii.88) is rather more abrupt and impolitic than Rosader's polished and chivalric challenge. Shakespeare's people are more human, with virtues and flaws for all.
Amidst this simplification of Lodge's mass of material, Shakespeare also changes many emphases. Lodge's lovers do little but harangue each other about the legendary inconstancy of the other sex: Rosalind performs her share of carping, but also attacks the overwhelming over-romanticism of Orlando's love. Lodge's plentiful sonnets become objects of ridicule in As You Like It, material for the doggerel imitations of Touchstone's "Sweetest nut hath sourest rind, / Such a nut is Rosalind" (III.ii.109-110). And Rosalind's lessons to Orlando are meant to make him respect that "sour rind," not to put his love on a pedestal for worship. Touchstone and Audrey present raw sexual love, lust instead of romance; Silvius' longings for Phoebe show the foolish extreme of Petrarchan love, a losing of the self rather than a finding of the lover, and more worthy of mockery than respect. Rosalind's disguised love-play is not merely a game with hapless Orlando, but an education: he must care enough to keep his promises and appointments, and respect her enough to speak as well as kiss (IV.i.). Orlando's wound is not merely the delay in the plot that Lodge makes it, but the occasion for his proof that the lesson is learned: Oliver's arrival with the bloody napkin shows Orlando's new-found sensibility.
Lodge's Rosalynde's characters concern themselves greatly with whether to love: Shakespeare's are more worried with the question of how to love. Rosalind strives for the triumph of rational relationships over heady emotionalism, a romance that will allow the woman to keep her intelligence and dignity intact, but still achieve romantic bliss. No wonder she seems so modern, and pleases so many modern audiences. |
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