I’ve read As you Like It before, but this time I was had to force myself to pick up the play, and it took me weeks to get through. The characters seem so insipid, and the plot’s not my favorite. (Why does Touchstone get Audrey, tearing her away from some poor sap who loves her, when Silvius gets stuck with Phebe, whom he loves but who completely ignores him to run after Rosalind? And what is up with Orlando agreeing to pretend-woo this random shepherd boy, who is Rosalind pretending to be Ganymede pretending to be Rosalind?) If it weren’t for the melancholy Jacque, and occasionally Celia making fun of Rosalind, the love-struck stupidity would be too much.
But I do love Adam. He’s Alfred to Orlando’s Bruce Wayne. He’s grandfatherly, he’s dear, and he’s so loyal. He’s too old to be of much help around the estate anymore, but he insists on giving Orlando his life’s savings (which he needs to live on, mind you) when Orlando is banished. And he pleads to go along. He knows he won’t be any help, but he swears not to be a hindrance, and together they march off into the sunset.
Awhile later, after a troublesome journey, Adam is practically perishing from hunger and fatigue. Orlando manages to secure some food for them when he meets the Duke’s forest court, and Adam is saved. But that’s the last we hear of him! I want more Adam! At the very least, I want him to have a line at the wedding to verify that he’s still alive.
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
I saw The Merchant of Venice performed in the courtyard of one of the Cambridge colleges a few years ago, and this speech was gripping. Why does everyone hate Shylock–because he’s a Jew or because he’s a mean old curmudgeon? Or did he evolve into a cold, impossible miser because of the hatred? Did the persecution (see III.i.51-55, just before this speech) drive him to become miserly, to take comfort in money because it wouldn’t mistreat him?
I found an interesting blog post about the anti-Jew attitude in MOV, in response to some high school girls recently boycotting the play. Be sure you check out the comments below the post; they capture more breadth of the discussion, and some hit it right on.
The anti-Jewish sentiment makes me want to rebel and cheer for Shylock–but he’s so impossible, it’s a love-hate relationship at best, and most of the time it veers into the hate territory. I can’t believe his response when Jessica runs away.
Last night, I missed a Trivial Pursuit question about Falstaff: who is the jester in Shakespeare’s Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor? I could picture the fat, bald Falstaff from a production of Merry Wives that I saw a few years ago, but could not come up with his name–so annoying. So when I finally finish As You Like It, which I’ve been ignoring for two weeks, I guess it’s time for Henry IV and/or Merry Wives.
Act 5, Scene 3 still totally baffles me. Is Hermione a statue that comes to life, or has she been hiding, pretending to be dead, for 16 years?
Support for the statue theory:
- Shakespeare’s romance plays have lots of weird magic…just look at The Tempest
- Leontes’ response: he doesn’t threaten to kill Paulina, who’s whipped him into 16 years of constant mourning (had she been part of hiding Hermione, it can’t have been above reprimand, no matter how overjoyed Leontes was at the restoration)
Faking death theory:
- The faked death is a common plot line for women in Shakespeare: Hero in Much Ado, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet
- The statue’s words: “I, knowing by Paulina that the oracle gave hope [Perdita] wast in being, have preserved myself to see the issue” (5.3.125-138) (But why did she know by Paulina? Hermione heard the oracle herself.)
- My version of the play includes a stage direction that says “Hermione like a statue”
I’m also wondering if this play is possibly to blame for the horrible made-for-TV movies where a mannequin comes to life and becomes a “Mom for Christmas.”
Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction–exit, pursued by a bear–seals the fates of just about every character in The Winter’s Tale:
- Antigonus, who is gobbled up
- Perdita, left in a strange place with no human connection to her birth
- Leontes, who already regrets abandoning Perdita but now has no way to find her
- the shepherd and clown, who are enriched by finding and raising her
- Florizel, who later falls in love with her
- Polixenes, who disinherits him for it but later reconciles with Leontes on account of it
Exit, pursued by a bear–it sets up for tragedy, but it also sets up for comedy. In what other genre can a man being chased by a bear eventually bring about resolution to a 16-year breach of trust?
