ENGL 4203/5583: Shakespeare: Histories and Comedies

John M. Mercer, Professor of English

Northeastern State University, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

Study Guide 3: As You Like It (AYL)

Revised 8-31-11

 

Source

  1. What is the relationship between Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde?  In what genre is each of these two works written?
  2. In As You Like It, Shakespeare makes several significant changes in his main source.
    1. Which of the two plots is less violent?
    2. Which of the two plots places more emphasis on the theme of love?
    3. In which of the two plots are the dukes brothers?
    4. In which of the two plots are the two villains less malicious? 
    5. Which plot adds the characters Jaques (lord serving Duke Senior), Audrey, Touchstone, William, Martext, and Le  Beau?
  3. The source of Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde (1590) is The Tale of Gamelyn (14th century), which is related to the Robin Hood story.  What similarities do you see between As You Like It and the legend of Robin Hood?

 

Setting of Act 1

  1. What is the setting of act 1?  What is the definition of “court” in this context?
  2. In the setting of act 1, problems abound. These problems include the following:
    1. The “law” or custom of primogeniture is violated.

                                                              i.      What is primogeniture?

                                                            ii.      What responsibility does primogeniture place on older brothers?  How does Oliver violate this responsibility in his relationship with his younger brother Orlando?  What potential for tragedy is evident in the relationship between these two brothers?

                                                          iii.      What responsibility does primogeniture place on younger brothers?  How does Duke Frederick violate this responsibility in his relationship with his older brother Duke Senior?

    1. Young lovers are kept apart. 

                                                              i.      How does Duke Frederick’s hatred of the de Boys family create an apparent obstacle to the relationship of young lovers?

                                                            ii.      How does Orlando act when he meets Rosalind for the first time?  How does his behavior create an obstacle to their relationship?

                                                          iii.      Why does Duke Frederick banish Rosalind?  How does his banishment of Rosalind create an apparent obstacle to the relationship of young lovers?

    1. Best friends are separated.

                                                              i.      What best friends are ordered to separate?  Why?

 

Setting of Acts 2-5

  1. What is the setting of the play beginning with act 2?
  2. What contrasts does Duke Senior draw between life in the court and in the forest (2.1.1-17)?
  3. Based on this speech by Duke Senior and on the play as a whole, what drawbacks keep the setting of acts 2-5 from being perfect?    
  4. The setting of the Forest of Arden in As You Like It can be interpreted on several different levels.
    1. What actual forest in France, where the play is set, has a similar name to the Forest of Arden?
    2. What former forest of England, no longer standing in Shakespeare’s time, bore the name of Shakespeare’s mother’s family? 
    3. What forest, according to legend, is the abode of Robin Hood and his merry men?  What specific line(s) in As You Like It refer to Robin Hood?  How is Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden in As You Like It similar to Robin Hood in the forest of this legend?  (Overlaps question 3 under “Source” at the beginning of this study guide.)
    4. In 1.1.118-19, the play compares activities in Duke Senior’s Forest of Arden to life in “the golden world.”  Extra-credit research:  What can you learn about the classical myth of the Golden Age?  How is life in Arden similar to and different from life in the Golden Age?
    5. In pastoral poetry, Arcadia is an idealized rural environment.  What definition of “pastoral” as an adjective applies here?  Extra-credit research:  What can you learn about Arcadia in classical literature?  How does the Forest of Arden compare with Arcadia?
  5. How do the freedom, fantasy, play-acting, and confusion of the Forest of Arden create an environment where the problems created in the city and court can be solved?  
  6. Similarly, in what settings are the problems solved in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado about Nothing?  

 

Frame Setting

  1. At the end of the play, do the characters return to the play’s initial setting?  Which characters are planning to return to the city?  Which characters are not planning to return?  Why?
  2. Do the settings of As You Like It create an open frame or closed frame?  How is the frame of As You Like It different from that of A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

 

Characters in As You Like It

As in his other plays, in As You Like It Shakespeare uses pairs and other groups of parallel characters. 

 

Pairs of Brothers

As You Like It contains two pairs of brothers.

  1. Duke Senior and Duke Frederick
    1. Which brother is older?  What is the significance of Duke Senior’s name?
    2. Which brother is essentially good?  How does he show his good nature?  Which brother is essentially evil?  How does he show his evil nature?
  2. Oliver and Orlando
    1. Which brother is older?
    2. Which brother is essentially good?  How does he show his good nature?  Which brother is essentially evil?  How does he show his evil nature?

 

Pair of Villains

Duke Frederick and Oliver are the two villains of the play. 

  1. What actions make Duke Frederick a villain?  What actions make Oliver a villain?
  2. Are these characters stereotypical villains or psychologically realistic characters?  Support your answer.
  3. In Shakespeare’s source, both of the villains are motivated primarily by greed for property.  In Shakespeare’s play, however, what motivation do they share?
    1. Why does Duke Frederick banish Rosalind from the court?  (See especially 1.2.277-83 and 1.3.77-84.)  How does his motivation for banishing Rosalind help to explain why he might have usurped the dukedom from his brother?
    2. Why does Oliver treat Orlando so badly?  (See especially his soliloquy in 1.1.164-73.)

 

Pair of Young Women

In Shakespeare’s source, Rosalind and Celia are friends.  Shakespeare heightens the parallelism between the characters by making their fathers brothers, thus making them cousins.

  1. What words and/or actions of Rosalind and Celia demonstrate the emotional closeness of these two characters? 
  2. What female characters in previously studied Shakespearean comedies are similar to Rosalind and Celia in their youth and closeness?   
  3. How are Rosalind and Celia physically different?  What lines in the play reveal the physical difference between the two?
  4. What roles would the boy actor playing Rosalind have portrayed in MND and Ado?  Why? What roles would the boy actor playing Celia have portrayed in MND and Ado?  Why?

 

Rosalind’s Disguise

  1. When Rosalind and Celia decide to flee to the Forest of Arden, what disguise and name does each woman assume?  What is the significance of their pseudonyms?
  2. Rosalind is one of five women in Shakespeare who disguise themselves as men.  Extra-credit research:  Who are the other four, and in what plays do they appear?
  3. What about play production in Shakespeare’s time helps to explain his creating so many cross-dressing female characters?
  4. What reason(s) does Rosalind give for disguising herself as a man?  What other reasons might help to explain why a woman in her situation might adopt the persona of a man?
  5. Rosalind’s character involves more levels of disguise than any other character in Shakespeare, as demonstrated by the answers to the following questions:
    1. What would have been the gender of the actor playing the part of Rosalind in Shakespeare’s theatre?
    2. What is Rosalind’s gender?
    3. What is the supposed gender of Ganymed?
    4. When Rosalind as Ganymed tries to educate Orlando about love, what gender and name does the character assume?
  6. In Rosalind’s epilogue at the very end of the play, how does the actor break the illusion of the play and acknowledge that he is not actually a woman?
  7. What previously studied play ends with a similar epilogue?  How does this other epilogue similarly break the illusion of the play?

 

Pairs of Outsiders Commenting on Action

Touchstone and Jaques stand outside society and comment on the other characters’ actions. The name Jaques is usually pronounced “JAY-queeze.”  Practice pronouncing his name this way.

  1. What is Touchstone’s occupation?  What is the traditional dress of this occupation?  (Extra-credit viewing:  How is Touchstone dressed in screen productions of this play?)  How do Touchstone’s occupation and attire make him an outsider?
  2. What is the definition of the word “touchstone”?  How is Touchstone an appropriate name for this character?
  3. What does Touchstone’s comparison of country life and court or city life (3.2.12-21) reveal about Touchstone? 
  4. How does Touchstone respond to Orlando’s love poem(s) about Rosalind (3.2.88-122)?
  5. Although Touchstone enjoys being detached from and making fun of what happens, in what way is he more accepting of reality and engaged with life than is Jaques?
  6. Oddly, this play has two different characters named Jaques.  The one discussed here is an aristocratic lord who has chosen to exile himself along with Duke Senior (1.1.98-104).  Who is the other Jaques in the play?
  7. Largely by his own choice, Jaques is an outsider among Duke Senior’s circle in the Forest of Arden. 
    1. The play frequently says Jaques is “melancholy” (for example, 2.1.26, 41).  What does this mean?  In the Renaissance, what color was associated with melancholy?  In stage productions, Jaques frequently wears this color.  Do the lines of the play indicate the color of Jaques’s clothing?
    2. What actions of Duke Senior and his lords does Jaques criticize? (for example, 2.1.25-66)?  Do you sympathize more with Duke Senior and his men or with Jaques?  Why?
    3. What does Duke Senior mean by saying that Jaques used to be a “libertine” (2.7.65)?  How does Jaques’s past help explain his present behavior?
    4. What attitude does Jaques take toward Orlando in his encounter with him (3.2.253-93)?
    5. In Jaques’s monologue beginning “All the world’s a stage” (2.7.139-66), often called the “Seven Ages of Man” speech, what general attitude does Jaques take toward human life?  Support your answer by identifying this attitude in Jaques’s description of each of the seven stages of human life.

 

Pairs of Lovers

The director of the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival’s production of AYL in 1999 calls this play “the greatest examination and celebration of love that Shakespeare ever wrote (and therefore, the greatest in the English language).”

 

Orlando and Rosalind

  1. What positive traits, if any, make Orlando seem worthy of Rosalind?
  2. Because he tends to go from one extreme to the other, Orlando has much to learn about relationships. 
    1. When he first meets Rosalind after the wrestling match, what is extreme and undesirable about Orlando’s behavior toward her?
    2. In the Forest of Arden, before he recognizes that Ganymed is Rosalind, what is extreme and undesirable about Orlando’s behavior with regard to Rosalind?  May require extra-credit research:  How does Orlando fit the stereotype of a Petrarchan  lover?
  3. Many critics consider Rosalind to be the most admirable female character in Shakespeare’s comedies because of the active role she takes in solving the characters’ problems, including her own. 
    1. In what context does she say, “I’ll prove a busy actor in their play” (3.4.59)?
    2. What pairs of lovers does Rosalind successfully bring together, and how does she accomplish this?
  4. Critics also admire Rosalind for her poise and balance, her ability to hold different attitudes toward love at the same time. 
    1. In her conversations with Celia, Rosalind reveals that she can be a hopeless romantic. 

                                                              i.      What attitude toward love does Rosalind reveal when she says to Celia,

“. . . I will . . . devise sports.  Let me see—what think you of falling in love?”  (1.2.24-25)?

                                                            ii.      What words and actions reveal that Rosalind is capable of sounding and behaving like a lovesick teenager?  (See, for example, 4.1.205-17.)

    1. In her conversations with Orlando in the forest, Rosalind educates Orlando to be more realistic about love.

                                                              i.      What techniques does Rosalind use as Orlando’s teacher?

                                                            ii.      What specific truths about love does she try to teach him?  (See, for example, 4.1.38-200.) 

 

Silvius and Phebe

  1. This couple’s names are symbolic. 
    1. Silvius means “woods.”  How is Silvius’s name appropriate in the context of the play?
    2. Phebe is a common name for a literary (as opposed to a real-life) lover.  How is it appropriate that Phebe in AYL have a literary name?
  2. Silvius behaves like a stereotypical Petrarchan lover. 
    1. May require extra-credit research: What are the characteristics of a Petrarchan lover? 
    2. How does Silvius reveal the traits of a Petrarchan lover?  (See, for example, Silvius’s conversation with Touchstone in 2.4.22-43.)
  3. Phebe behaves like a stereotypical Petrarchan woman (that is, a woman in Petrarchan love poetry). 
    1. May require extra-credit research: What are the characteristics of a Petrarchan woman? 
    2. How does Phebe reveal these traits?  (See, for example, Phebe’s conversation with Silvius in 3.5.1-34.)
  4. How is it appropriate “punishment” for Phebe to fall in love with Rosalind as Ganymed?
  5. What finally causes Phebe to stop her Petrarchan resistance of Silivus’s advances?

 

Touchstone and Audrey

  1. Touchstone refers to all the couples about to be married as “country copulatives” (5.4.55-56), but this label seems to apply especially well to Touchstone and Audrey.  In what aspect of love is Touchstone primarily interested?  What words and actions of Touchstone support your answer?
  2. How are Touchstone and Audrey opposites when it comes to language?  In particular, what does their conversation in 3.3 reveal about their use and understanding of language?
  3. What does Touchstone reveal about his attitude toward his relationship with Audrey when he tells Duke Senior that she is a “poor virgin, sir, an ill-favor’d thing, sir, but mine own” (5.4.57-58)?

 

Surprise Couple

  1. What additional couple surprises us by meeting and getting married at the last minute?
  2. Why does Shakespeare include this seemingly gratuitous couple?
    1. How does this couple contribute to the play’s symmetry?
    2. How does this couple contribute to the play’s happy ending?

 

Comic Resolution

  1. At the end of the play, whom do Oliver and Orlando marry?  Identify their wives’ fathers by the birth order (older or younger) and moral nature (good or evil) of her father.  How do these marriages create symmetry or balance among the characters of the play?
  2. Who is Oliver’s and Orlando’s middle brother?  What minor role does this brother have  in the plot of the play?  Why do you think Shakespeare bothers to include him?
  3. Both evil brothers, the villains of the play, experience miraculous conversions at the end of the play. 
    1. How does Oliver’s conversion occur (4.3)?  How does Duke Frederick’s conversion occur (5.4.154-65)?
    2. Are these conversions psychologically believable?  Why or why not?
    3. What do these conversions demonstrate about the power of the pastoral environment?
  4. At least two individual characters in the play do not get the marriage partners they desire. 
    1. Who are these individuals?
    2. Why does each not get the desired partner?
    3. Which character in Ado does not get the partner he or she desires?
  5. What characters deliberately choose to remove themselves from the comic resolution of AYL?
  6. In classical mythology, who is Hymen?  What role does Hymen play in the resolution of AYL?  

 

Title and Theme

The end of the preface to Lodge’s Rosalynde says, “If you like it, so,” which provides Shakespeare with the title of As You Like It.

  1. As You Like It can be interpreted as an all-purpose title that could apply to many other Shakespearean comedies as well.  What other Shakespearean comedies have seemingly interchangeable titles?
  2. The title As You Like It can also be seen as an advertisement that the play was a crowd pleaser, suiting the tastes of its original audience.  What specific elements of AYL might especially appeal to its audience (in the Elizabethan period and/or today)?
  3. The title As You Like It is also appropriate because the play presents opposing sides of debated issues, leaving the audience to make its own decisions.  What does the play have to say (and in what lines) on both sides of each of the following topics?
    1. The city vs. the country (see, for example, 3.2.11-22)
    2. Nature (the natural gifts we receive at birth, such as our minds and bodies) vs. Fortune (the external gifts we receive throughout life, such as material possessions and power) (see, for example, 1.2.26-56 and 2.1.1-17)
    3. Youth vs. age
    4. Realism vs. romanticism
    5. The active life vs. the contemplative life
    6. Laughter vs. melancholy
  4. Most importantly, the title As You Like It alludes to the play’s depiction of many different types of and attitudes toward love.  Which characters in the play belong in each of the following categories based on their views of love?  Why?
    1. Idealists (or Romantics) have an extreme and unrealistic attitude toward love.
    2. Realists have a balanced perspective that takes into account the circumstances of real life.
    3. Cynics have such a negative attitude toward love that they can’t participate in it—or in life.

 

Famous Lines

  1. “O how full of briers is this working-day world!”  (1.3.11-12)
  2. “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.”  (2.7.139-43)

  1. “Sell when you can, you are not for all markets.”  (3.5.60) 
  2. “Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, / ‘Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?”  (3.5.81-82)
  3. “[M]en have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” (4.1.106-08)
  4. “[M]en are April when they woo, December when they wed; maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.”  (4.1.147-49)
  5. “I am for other than dancing measures.”  (5.4.193)