Shakespeare & The Play
Who's Who in the Play
Phebe
A shepherdess in love with Ganimed.
Silvius
A shepherd in love with Phebe.
Audrey
A goat herder. Loves Touchstone.
Corin
An old shepherd.
Court
Duke Frederick
Younger brother of the rightful duke. Takes control of the kingdom from his brother, Duke Senior.
Duke Senior
Rightful duke, living in exile in the Forest of Arden. Older brother of Duke Frederick.
Jaques
Lord attending Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden.
Celia
Daughter of Duke Frederick, cousin of Rosalind. Her alias in the Forest is Aliena.
Rosalind
Daughter of Duke Senior. Alias in the forest in Ganimed. In love with Orlando.
Orlando
Youngest son of Sir Rowland de Bois. Brother to Oliver and Jaques de Bois. In love with Rosalind.
Adam
Servant to the family and estate of Sir Rowland de Bois. Friend to Orlando.
Touchstone
Court jester who accompanies Rosalind and Celia. Loves Audrey.
Oliver
Eldest son of Sir Rowland de Bois. Brother to Orlando and Jaques de Bois
Jaques de Bois
Middle son of Sir Rowland de Bois. Brother to Orlando and Oliver.
Charles
A professional wrestler in the court.
Forest
Amiens
A musician attending Duke Senior in the forest.
Prose
The ordinary form of written or spoken language, without metrical structure. Prose can be very descriptive, but it follows the rules of grammar. Essays, news articles and novels are examples of written prose.
How can I tell if it's prose?
You can tell when lines are written in prose because they look like a regular paragraph. Here's an example from Act III, Scene 2:
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Touchstone: Why, if thou never was’t at Court, thou never
saw’st good manners: if thou never saw’st good manners,
then thy manners must be wicked, and wickednes is sin,
and sinne is damnation: Thou art in a parlous state shep-
heard.
Corin: Not a whit Touchstone, those that are good ma-
ners at the Court, are as ridiculous in the Countrey, as
the behaviour of the Countrie is most mockeable at the
Court. You told me, you salute not at the Court, but
you kisse your hands; that courtesie would be uncleanlie
if Courtiers were shepheards.
Verse
Another word for poetry. It's writing that has a rhythmic structure. We refer to the rhythm as meter.
Meter: a recognizable rhythm in a line of verse consisting of a pattern of regularly recurring unstressed and stressed syllables.
Iambic Pentameter: The name of the rhythm Shakespeare uses.
How can I tell if it's verse?
Every line begins with a capital letter and the lines are all different lengths on the page. This is because each line is written with a metrical structure. Example from Act III, Scene 2:
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Orlando:
Hang there my verse, in witnesse of my love,
And thou thrice crowned Queene of night survey
With thy chaste eye, from thy pale spheare above
Thy Huntress' name, that my full life doth sway.
O Rosalind, these Trees shall be my Bookes,
And in their barkes my thoughts Ile character,
That everie eye, which in this Forrest looks,
Shall see thy vertue witnest every where.
Run, run Orlando, carve on every Tree,
The faire, the chaste, and unexpressive shee.
When do characters use verse/prose?
Madness = Prose | If a character descends into madness, then they have literally 'lost their wits' and no longer have the capacity to speak in verse. We don't see an example of this in As You Like It, but it occurs in other plays such as Hamlet. |
Disguise = Prose | Upper-class characters use prose as part of their disguises, when pretending to be someone else. They are usually disguised as a lower-class character, as Rosalind and Celia are when they are in the forest of Arden. |
Respect = Verse | Upper-class characters use verse as a form of respect. To use prose with a King or Duke would be disrespectful. We see this in As You Like It when Rosalind uses verse to address Duke Frederick in Act I Scene 2, even when he uses insulting language and is exiling her, she maintains respect in spite of her mistreatment. |
Love = Verse | Shakespeare always uses verse when characters call in love, regardless of their status. For example, Silvius and Phebe are both shepherds who live in the forest of Arden. However, even though they are lower class, both of these characters are in love and they express it through verse. |
Private = Prose | Upper-class characters use verse in public settings, but may use prose in private settings when they are talking to family or close friends. For example, Rosalind speaks to Celia in prose when they are alone in their room in Act I Scene 2, but they speak to each other in verse when they are at the wrestling match later on in the same scene. |
Public = Verse | Notable character in public situations must present their most formal self and speak in verse as a means to do so. |
Iambic Pentameter
Iambic Pentameter is the main rhythmic structure of Shakespeare's verse, meaning the majority of Shakespeare's verse is written in this rhythm. One line of iambic pentameter has 10 syllables, which we divide up into five units of meter called feet. Each foot of the verse contains two syllables.
Iambic refers to the rhythm of the line. When the first syllable is unstressed and the second syllable is stressed, as in the word "Hello", it is called an iamb. Iambic means push, persistency, or determination. The prefix penta means five. Therefore, iambic pentameter is one line of poetry consisting of five forward-moving feet.
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Identifying the rhythm of the line is called scansion. One may choose to scan their lines by marking unstressed syllables with a dash --- and stressed syllables with a slash /. There are other symbols that people use, but this is the most common.
When scanning a script, make sure you are stressing every other syllable, not every other word. The rhythm of the meter should generally sound like "da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM", like the rhythm of a heartbeat.
Pastoral Conventions in As You Like It
As You Like It is known as a pastoral comedy. Pastoral literature highlights the idyllic life of the countryside, often featuring shepherds, contrasted by the corruption and formalities of court life. The countryside is portrayed as leisurely, introspective, and freeing. In the story, the protagonist flees from the restrictions of court life and goes to the countryside to find refuge, and in doing so, often learn about themselves and the world around them and undergo a transformation, before eventually returning to the city life. Sound familiar?
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In As You Like It, the court life represents restriction, rigidness, and corruption while the Forest of Arden is a place of freedom, liberation, uncertainty, a wild unknown place where transformation and magic can occur. Rosalind leaves the court after suffering injustice at the hands of her uncle, and in the Forest of Arden, Rosalind is able to explore an entirely new part of her identity, freed from the restrictions of the Court's definition of gender and femininity. Orlando, also forced to flee to the forest as a result of his brother's hatred, is confronted by his own understanding of love and masculinity and is able to express a gentleness of spirit he doesn't exhibit so freely in the violent and competitive environment of court society. Together and as individuals, they undergo a transformation. At the end of the play, everyone is gathered in the Forest and all is mended between brothers, and Hymen officiates the wedding of all four couples and everyone celebrates all that has taken place in the Forest of Arden knowing they will soon return to court.
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The story of As You Like It was originally based on Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde. Lodge's work was a prose romance popular in the Elizabethan theater beginning in 1590. The story was a more dramatic adventure, full of bloody wrestling matches and swashbuckling rescues, nasty outlaws, and wicked villains. In contrast, Shakespeare's As You Like It turned Lodge's strong, masculine story in a comic fairy tale. The result is Rosalind becomes the central character of the play; she is not waiting to be rescued by her swashbuckling suitor, but takes charge of her pursuit of love and is the fulcrum of action in the story. The violent action featured in the original tale is replaced by meaningful introspection. For example, Orlando doesn't battle his brother with a sword, but wins him over by saving his life after reckoning with his own feelings of distrust toward his brother.
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"Pastoral literature originated with Theocritus's Bucolics. In Eclogues Virgil introduces Arcadia, the symbolic location of any pastoral, idyllic, bucolic paradise inhabited by peaceful shepherds living a simple, happy life. Pastoral, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means "of shepherds"; appropriately, the genre features shepherds--- cowherds if the work is bucolic (from Greek for "cowherd")."
- Diana Major Spencer, "A Heightening of Pastoral Conventions
The characters in As You Like It mirror Lodge's original for the most part, with some key additions in the characters of Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey. Amidst the idyllic countryside, Jaques melancholy and the comic pairing of Touchstone and Audrey makes sure that the court life is not too harsh while the countryside is not too perfect. Touchstone embodies the sophistication of court even while in the country and serves as a "touchstone" or quality test: compared to Touchstone, both the characters and environment of both the court and the country seem more genuine against his foolish wit. Audrey, the rough-worn shepherdess, is a foil to Phebe, the forlorn country beauty. Jaques may have been influenced by the increasing
popularity of comedies of humor over pastorals, resulting Jaques: a "man in his humor", his personality defined by an imbalance of bodily fluids or humors. As "Monsieur Melancholy", Jaques suffers from too much black bile (black = melan, bile = choler), the heaviest element and humor, cold and dry like earth. This results in his ill-temper, sullenness, moroseness, and philosophical depression. Though he is not necessary to the plot, Jaques interacts with the most key players, spreading his philosophy and his melancholy serving as a contrast to the joy and love the other characters are experiencing.
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Where as Jaques and Touchstone are characters added by Shakespeare to add philosophical humor and irony to the play, Phebe and Silvius are not only in Lodge's original piece, they are stock pastoral figures, including their names. "In classical, pastoral conventions shepherds and shepherdesses occur in pairs with names like Phebe and Silvius...The shepherd is lovelorn, and the shepherdess disdainful," says Spencer.
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What Shakespeare also adds to the pastoral romance, is the complexity of character as they each undergo transformation, and the more serious question of human nature and the factors that influence it: nurture, nature, and fortune. In spite of Rosalind and Orlando's fairytale ending, their journey is not the pastoral convention, but their time together as Orlando and Ganymede gives them time longer than most lovers are granted to discuss the better and worse elements of love and life together. In each relationship Shakespeare offers us, we learn something different about the nature of human connection, all in the pretty package of a romantic comedy.
Hymen and the Erotes
Shakespeare often uses the appearance of a god in his plays to solve his complicated plots, a trope known as deus ex-machina which originated in Greek theatre. Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have been well educated in Greek poems and mythology. Hymen's Triumph is a 1614 pastoral tragicomedy written by Samuel Daniel, a contemporary of Shakespeare's known for inspiring and being inspired by the Bard. This play would have set up an understanding of Hymen and his powers for Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences. However, for 21st century audiences the role of Hymen can be perplexing.
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Hymen is referenced frequently in Ancient Greek poetry. Hymen's name means "joining membrane" and appears in special songs called Hymenaios. These songs were sung during wedding processions to get Hymen's attention, as it was believed a marriage without his approval would be cursed.
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Hymen is also connected to other gods and goddesses of love. Older Greek mythology represented love with a mysterious, all-powerful deity called Eros. Later on, Eros was seen as a young man who worked for Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty. Love and marriage work together, so the newer Eros, who is now better known by his Roman name, Cupid, was often shown helping Hymen in a group of winged love gods known as the Erotes. Each members represented a different aspect of Eros. They included:
- Hedylogos (love talk and flattery)
- Hermaphroditus (androgynous beauty)
- Himeros (overwhelming passion)
- Pothos (pained longing)
- Hymen (marriage and union)
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Greek artists represented Hymen as a winged young man. He is shown flying around couples and assisting brides. Roman works have him wearing a wreath of flowers. Renaissance artists used a long torch as one of Hymen's most identifiable symbols.
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Hymen's mythology also has parallels to Rosalind's story. One account of Hymen's backstory has him dress as a woman to sneak off with the woman he loves. After rescuing a group of women from pirates, he is married and rewarded with godlike status. The story plays into Hymen's androgyny, his ability to blur the feminine and the masculine into a broader idea of beauty, and the way this adds nuance to Hymen's relationship to their lover is alike to Rosalind's own story.
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Music was believed to summon Hymen, so it also makes sense that As You Like It is the most musical of his plays, in addition to the songs we've added to our production. His connection to music comes from the writings of Pintar the Poet in the 5th century BCE which wrote of Hymen as related to the muses and Apollo himself.
Nicolas Poussin, Hymenaios Disguised as a Woman During an Offering to Priapus, 1634, São Paulo Museum of Art