Pastoral Theme

Central to the pastoral vision of As You Like It is the setting in the Forest of Ardenne,
especially the contrast between it and the ducal court. In the former, there is a powerful
political presence which creates dangers. Deception lurks behind many actions, brothers
have secret agendas against their brothers, and people have to answer to the arbitrary
demands of power.

In the Forest of Ardenne, however, life is very different. For one thing, there is no urgency
to the agenda. There are no clocks in the forest, and for the exiled courtiers there is no
regular work. They are free to roam around the forest, prompted by their own desires. There
is plenty of food to eat, so the communal hunt takes care of their physical needs. That and
the absence of a complex political hierarchy creates a much stronger sense of communal
equality hearkening back the the mythical good old days. The exiled Duke himself attests to
the advantages of living far from the court, free of the deceits of flattery and double dealing
and welcomes Orlando to the feast without suspicion.

And, most important here, especially in comparison with the history plays, is the importance
of singing. As You Like It is full of songs—not performances by professional court
musicians, but impromptu group singing which expresses better than anything else the
spontaneous joy these people derive from life in the Forest and the joy they give back to
others. The songs indicate clearly the way in which in the Forest people can shape their
actions to their moods—a situation totally unlike the court where one has to consider one’s
actions much more carefully.

Hence, the Forest of Ardenne provides for the exiled courtiers an important freedom to
experiment with their lives, to discover things about themselves. In the Forest people can
talk openly with whoever they might happen to meet on a stroll through the trees, and that
might be anyone, given that in the Forest no one owns any particular territory (there are no
rooms, palaces, roads—unlike the court where there is a preoccupation with property) and
thus one might well meet and have to deal with a person whom one would never get close to
in the court (that can have comic results, of course, as Touchstone’s conversations with
Audrey and William demonstrate). In the Forest life is, as I have observed, lived more
immediately in the moment with whatever life presents at the moment. Such an approach to
life is impossible in the politically charged world of the court.

That freedom makes possible Rosalind’s transformation and her taking charge of the
courtship and makes an interesting contrast between Rosalind and Viola (in Twelfth Night)
—the latter is not nearly so free to take charge, because she is still operating in a social
environment with a clear structure of authority, which she has to respect. Hence, the
fortunate outcome of that play relies upon her patience and luck far more in the case of
Rosalind, who is the driving force in her courtship (Viola’s desires very nearly are
unfulfilled).

We should note, however, that the Forest of Ardenne is not an entirely idyllic setting. The
Duke pays tribute to the often brutal weather, and there are some dangerous animals lurking
in the underbrush. Corin, the shepherd, informs us that he works for another man—a slight
but significant reminder that even in this pastoral setting the realities of power are not
entirely absent.
 And, of course, there is never any sense here (as there might be if this were a Romantic
vision of life) that the Forest is a suitable place to live on a continuing basis. Given the
opportunity to return to the court, all the exiles (except, significantly, Jaques) seize the
chance. The Forest has done its work—it has educated some, repaired fraternal relationships,
brought the lovers to a fuller awareness of their own feelings. Now, they can return to what
will be, we sense, a much better and fuller life in the court.

Love

All the young in As You Like It are in love. In the forest, they court and part, mistake one another, and, most of them,
find each other. Love is the business of comedy. In Arden, it takes up far more of the play’s lines than politics or
philosophy. The characters sing of love, talk of love, and in the end, all dance together.

This lighthearted treatment of life’s most important matter is typical of a pastoral. Orlando is absurd, hanging tedious
love poems on the trees, and Rosalind, who loves him, is more absurd when she tells him in Act III, scene ii, “Love is
merely a madness.”

Authenticity

The exiled Duke describes his life in the forest (Act II, scene i): “Hath not old custom made this life more sweet than
that of painted pomp?”

In the Forest of Arden characters are themselves. They interact according to their true nature, not as society ordains.
They are unconstrained by expectations, as well, and free to explore their essential selves.

Ironically, Rosalind, the main character, becomes more genuine by disguising herself When she pretends to be a male
shepherd, she frees herself from the limits Elizabethan society places on women and is more able to express her true
nature.

Equality

The society in the forest is one of equals. Shepherds court duke’s daughters, and fools speak truth to powerful men.
Yet this equality is temporary and artificial, born when noblewomen decide to play shepherd and shepherdess, and
serving to highlight the natural (Shakespeare thought) hierarchical nature of society. Even in the forest, it is easy to
tell the shepherds from the noblemen.

The egalitarian society of the Forest of Arden serves to educate the visitors, and to keep them safe until imbalances in
the world outside the forest are corrected. Then they can return to their proper places, and serve well in them. For
these are not real shepherds and shepherdesses, but urban citizens in training. In the end, society is returned to its
proper condition, and the lovers return to society. As the Duke Senior, restored to his dukedom, says:

…every of this happy number

That have endured shrew’d days and nights with us,
Shall share the good of our returned fortune,
According to the measure of their states.

The pastoral theme reflects urban society, flattering it by contrast. At the same time, it creates a fantasy world where
playgoers can laugh along with the characters, and learn with them, and love.
The Language of Love

The most obvious concern of As You Like It is love, and particularly the attitudes and the
language appropriate to young romantic love. This, I take it, is obvious enough from the
relationships between Orlando and Rosalind, Silvius and Phoebe, Touchstone and Audrey,
and (very briefly) Celia and Oliver. The action of the play moves back and forth among
these couples, inviting us to compare the different styles and to recognize from those
comparisons some important facts about young love.

Here the role of Rosalind is decisive, and much of one's response to this play (especially in
performance) will depend upon our reaction to her. Rosalind is Shakespeare's greatest and
most vibrant comic female role, and there's a old saying to the effect that in any successful
production of As You Like It, the audience members will all leave the theatre in love with
her.

She is clearly the only character in the play who has throughout an intelligent, erotic, and
fully anchored sense of love, and it becomes her task in the play to try to educate others out
of their false notions of love, especially those notions which suggest that the real business of
love is adopting an inflated Petrarchan language and the appropriate attitude that goes with
it.

Rosalind falls in love with Orlando at first sight (as is standard in Shakespeare), becomes
erotically energized, and remains so throughout the play. She's delighted and excited by the
experience and is determined to live it to the full moment by moment. One of the great
pleasures of watching Rosalind is that she is always celebrating her passionate feelings for
Orlando. She does not deny them or try to play games with her emotions. She's aware that
falling in love has made her subject to Celia's gentle mockery, but she's not going to pretend
that she isn't totally thrilled by the experience just to spare herself being laughed at (she even
laughs at herself, while taking enormous delight in the behaviour which prompts the
mockery).

At the same time, Rosalind has not an ounce of sentimentality. Her passionate love for
Orlando does not turn her into a mooning, swooning recluse. It activates her. She takes
charge of her life. She knows what she wants, and she organizes herself to seek it out. If she
has to wait to pursue her marriage, then she is going actively to enjoy the interim in an
improvised courtship and not wrap herself in a mantle of romantic attitudinizing. She
initiates the game of courtship with Orlando and keeps it going. She has two purposes here.
This gives her a chance to see and court Orlando (in her own name) and thus to celebrate her
feelings of love, but it also enables her to educate Orlando out of the sentimental pose he has
adopted.

Orlando, too, is in love with Rosalind. But his view of love requires him to write drippy
poems and walk through the forest hanging them on trees. He sentimentalizes the experience
(that is, falsifies it), so that he can luxuriate in his feelings of love rather than focusing
sharply on the reality of the experience. In their conversations, Rosalind/Ganymede
pointedly and repeatedly deflates his conventional rhetoric. This comes out most clearly in
her famous reply to his claim that, if Rosalind rejects him, then he will die.
No, faith; die by attorney. The poor world is almost six thousand years old, and in all this
time there was not any man died in his own person, videlicet, in a love-cause. Troilus had
his brains dashed out with a Grecian club, yet he did what he could to die before, and he is
one of the patterns of love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair year though Hero had
turned nun if it had not been for a hot midsummer night, for, good youth, he went but forth
to wash him in the Hellespont and, being taken with the cramp, was drowned; and the
foolish chroniclers of that age found it was Hero of Sestos. But these are all lies. Men have
died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love. (4.1.81-92)

It needs to be stressed that Rosalind's view of love is highly intelligent (that is, emotionally
intelligent) and sensitive. This is not the statement of a cynic, because we know that
Rosalind is very much in love, passionately eager to be with Orlando or to talk about him as
much as she can. But the experience is not corrupting her response to life. She will not
permit herself or Orlando to be deceived into thinking love is something other than the
excitingly real experience she is going through—love is the most wonderfully transforming
experience for her but it is not the sum total of everything life has to offer (as Orlando’s
poems make out). This fusion of passion and intelligence, shot through with a humour which
enables her to laugh at herself as much as at other people, makes Rosalind a wonderfully
attractive character.

This complex attitude first emerges when she discovers Orlando's poetry. Of course, she
knows the poetry is really poor, and she can laugh heartily at Touchstone's damning parody
of all the words which rhyme with "Rosalind." But at the same time she is erotically thrilled
that Orlando is around and that he is in love with her. Rather than being embarrassed by the
wretched sentimentality of her lover, she simultaneously loves the fact that her feelings are
returned and can laugh at his attempt to express them. This is not laughter at Orlando, but at
the incongruity of the situation and joy at the mutuality of their feelings.

Consider also her sense that the youthful love she is now enjoying will not last. She knows
that and is not going to shield herself from that awareness in conventionally romantic
platitudes: "No, no, Orlando; 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" (4.1.124-
127). Of course, time will change the passionate excitement she now feels. But she's not
going to act like Marlowe's Nymph who denies the passionate shepherd his love because
she's afraid of the destructive powers of time. No, she will not let any future fear interrupt or
qualify the enormous joy she derives out of being in love right at this moment. What the
future will bring will happen. That is no reason not to appreciate the immediate joys of the
love she feels for Orlando.

No, that same wicked bastard of Venus, that was begot of thought, conceived of spleen, and
born of madness, that blind rascally boy that abuses everyone's eyes because his own are
out, 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.

Here she is, in part, laughing at herself as a victim, one more person hit by naughty Cupid.
But she's obviously thrilled by the experience and is not going to deny herself one bit of the
joy she is feeling.

Rosalind becomes the pivot around whom the other lovers move, because she is the only one
with a maturely intelligent sense of the difference between love and sentiment. Thus, she can
deliver stern lectures to Silvius and Phoebe about how they are denying themselves the joys
that are possible because they have a false sense of love. Silvius's excessively conventional
Petrarchan attitudes simply encourage Phoebe to close him out of her feelings and to
develop a false sense of her own importance, as Rosalind points out very bluntly: "Sell when
you can. You are not for all markets" (3.5.61). She is telling Phoebe, in effect, to wake up to
the realities of the world in which she lives and to abandon the sentimental dream in which
she has locked herself, thanks to the language in which she and Silvius understand their
feelings.

It's significant that throughout much of the play, when Rosalind talks to others about love,
she talks in prose, rejecting the formal potential of a more imaginative language, in order to
keep the discussions anchored in the reality of everyday life. Rosalind wants love, but she
will have it only in the language of everyday speech, without the seductive embellishments
of poetical conventions, which corrupt because they take one away from the immediately
reality of the experience.

Orlando profits from Rosalind's instructions because he is basically an emotionally

intelligent person as well. His commitment to playing the role of the conventional lover is
only luke warm; as Rosalind observes, he doesn't have the appearance of such a literary
poseur. Significantly, his poetry is very bad, and he's not going to mind acknowledging the
fact. He does not love his own words more than his own true feelings and hence does not
strive to develop his abilities as a poet and quickly moves into the prose conversations with
Rosalind/Ganymede. It's an interesting question whether or not he might recognize or have
his suspicions about Rosalind/Ganymede well before the ending. There's an intriguing
possibility that he knows her all along, but recognizing that she is in charge of the game, he
is only going to drop the pretense when she gives him the cue. I've never seen this
interpretation attempted, but if I were producing the play, I would like to try it.

The Role Of Jaques

The essentially healthy emotional intelligence of Rosalind and Orlando and their suitability
for each other emerge from their separate encounters with Jaques (in some editions Jacques),
the melancholy ex-courtier who is part of Duke Senior's troupe in the forest. Both Rosalind
and Orlando take an instant dislike to Jaques (which is mutual). And in that dislike we are
invited to see something vitally right about the two of them.

For Jaques is, in effect, the opposite of everything Rosalind stands for. He is a moody cynic,
who likes to look at life and draw from it poetical contemplations at the generally
unsatisfactory nature of the world. He is, in a sense, an initial Hamlet-like figure (the
comparison is frequently made), someone without any motivating erotic joy, who
compensates for his inadequacy by trying to drag everything down to the level of his empty
emotions and by verbalizing at length in poetical images. He takes some pride in what he
calls his very own brand of melancholy which can suck the joy out of life as a weasel sucks
the protein out of an egg (an interesting image of the destruction of new living potential),
and he spends his time wallowing in it. His own social desire seems to be to find someone
else to wallow in the same emotional mud as he does. But the spirits of the other characters,
especially of Rosalind and Orlando, are too vital and creative to respond favourably to
Jaques's attempts to cut life down to fit his limited moods.
That judgment no doubt sounds quite harsh. And perhaps it is, for Jaques is a relatively
harmless person, who deceives no one (nor does he try to), and his poetical reflections, like
Hamlet's, are often seductive. But we should not let the fame of some of his utterances
(particularly the famous "Seven Ages of Man" speech in 2.7, a frequently anthologized piece
of so-called Shakespearean "wisdom") conceal the fact that his approach to life is
thoroughly negative. He sees no value in anything other than calling attention to the world's
deficiencies. He does not recognize in the fellowship, music, and love all around him any
countervailing virtues.

This point is made really explicit at the very end of the "Seven Ages of Man" speech
(2.7.138-165). As Jaques concludes his cynical evaluation of the emptiness of human life by
talking about how in old age men become useless lumps of flesh ("Sans teeth, sans eyes,
sans taste, sans everything"), Orlando enters carrying Adam. The latter is the living denial of
everything Jaques has just said, for Adam is very old, but has actively striven to help
Orlando with generosity, love, and a sense of duty, qualities which confer upon him an
emphatic and obvious value. The dramatic irony in that entrance points us to the severely
limited and limiting understanding of the world which Jaques has just uttered.

[As an aside, it might be worth remarking that this habit of excerpting speeches of
Shakespeare and setting them up as "gems" outside of their immediate dramatic context has
the unfortunate tendency to immortalize a passage as some special insight into the nature of
life when it is, in fact, quite the reverse. The speech of Jaques is, along with the advice of the
Polonius to his son, the most famous example of this problem. Far from being a particularly
mature earned insight into anything important, Jaques's speech is an indication of his limited
and unwelcome sense of the unsatisfactory nature of life. The entrance of Orlando and
Adam underscores this point.]

Oscar Wilde, in one of his most famous apophthegems, once defined a cynic as one who
knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. That definition applies very well to
Jaques, and it helps us at once understand why Rosalind and Orlando will have nothing to do
with him. Rosalind understands that love comes at a price. Time will change things, and a
commitment in love brings with it the risk of infidelity (and there is much talk of that in the
play). But she will not therefore deny its value or refuse to take the risk. On the contrary, she
determines to extract the full value from her excited feelings for Orlando, not by freezing
those feelings in some sour poetical reflections but by experiencing them moment by
moment, no matter what the future may bring. Orlando also is too full of the spirit of life to
find anything in Jaques's gentle but persistent pessimism at all worth bothering about.

I don't mean to over-emphasize the kill-joy quality of Jaques. He is generally harmless

enough, particularly in this play where everyone recognizes him for what he is and where he
has no particular interest in pulling others down to his level against their will. If they don't
want to sit down with him and rail against the first born of Egypt, he's content to move away
on his own. But it's significant that he's not a fully participating member of the final
celebrations and that he is going to remain in the forest. He has learned nothing and, indeed,
is incapable of learning anything, simply because he is not open to experience (in terms of
the earlier analysis I offered of Richard II and Hamlet, Jaques is a "chatterer"). He's made up
his mind what life is all about, and he is seeking confirmation of a pre-set attitude.

Traversi's summary comment on Jaques hits the mark precisely:

. . . Jacques' motive is, in the last analysis "observation," the gratifying of a self regarding
curiosity based on a kind of personal impotence, an inability to participate fully and
naturally in the processes of life; and, since his attitude is one which implies throughout an
incapacity for genuine giving, for the positive acceptance of an order, at once natural and
distinctively human, beyond the isolated self--the acceptance by which, in love or otherwise,
the self is at last justified--he remains a mere marginal presence in the process by which that
order is finally . . . consummated. (An Approach to Shakespeare, Vol. 1, p. 328)

Perhaps another way of summing up Jacques' is to observe that he's more interested in
language than he is in life.  His interaction with the world is governed largely by his desire
to find occasions to verbalize, to construct poetical reflections on the melancholy state of
things.  He seems happy enough with this condition not to feel any desire to break out of it,
to open himself up to new experience, to listen carefully to others, and thus risk having to
adjust his understanding (that is, to learn).  In a play that is so centrally concerned with the
relationship between language and feelings he may thus stand as an eloquent and charming
but ultimately frozen being who has imprisoned himself inside a love of language, perhaps
as a protection against the world, perhaps out of a sense of the misplaced importance he
gives to a particular form of verbalizing.  So his decision to remain in the forest is apt: there
he will find plenty of opportunity for gloomy reflections and conversations, without learning
from them enough to acquire the civilized intelligence of the newly energized ducal court.

Touchstone

As You Like It features, like so many of Shakespeare's plays, a professional clown,

Touchstone, and it's worth paying some attention to his role for what it contributes towards
establishing and maintaining the upbeat comic spirit of the play. For the jester is the constant
commentator on what is going on. His humour, pointed or otherwise, thus inevitably
contributes to the audience's awareness of what is happening, and the way in which other
characters treat him is often a key indicator of their sensibilities.

Touchstone is one of the gentlest and happiest clowns in all of Shakespeare. He comments
on the action, makes jokes at other people's expense, and offers ironic insights about their
situation. But throughout As You Like It, such traditional roles of the fool are offered and
taken with a generosity of spirit so that his remarks never shake the firm comic energies of
the play. When he ridicules Orlando's verses, Rosalind laughs along with him. When he
points out to Corin (in 3.2) that the shepherd must be damned for never having lived at
court, Corin takes it as good natured jesting (which it is). When Touchstone takes Audrey
away from her rural swain, William, there are apparently no hard feelings (although much
here depends on the staging). In this play, the professional jester participates in and
contributes to a style of social interaction which is unqualified by any more sober and
serious reflections. This makes Touchstone very different from the bitter fool of King Lear
or from the most complex fool of all, the sad Feste of Twelfth Night , both of whom offer
comments that cast either a shrewd, melancholy, or bitter irony on the proceedings.

Touchstone himself becomes the target of much humour by his immediate attraction to
Audrey, the "foul" country lass. There is something richly comic here, seeing the staunch
apologist for the sophisticated life of the court fall so quickly to his animal lust. But the
satire here is very good humoured. Touchstone himself acknowledges the frailty of his vows
and does not attempt to deceive anyone about his intentions. He knows he is serving his lusts
and that that is no good basis for a lasting and significant marriage. But the play builds up no
 severe indictment against what he is doing, and Audrey herself makes no protest. So this
most unlikely of unions becomes part of the celebration of love at the end of the play, an
expression of the comic variety of the experience, rather than offering any ironic
commentary.

Why is it a comedy?

http://www.docshare.com/doc/192629/Why-is-As-You-Like-It-described-as-a-comedy2

General summary and analysis:

http://nfs.sparknotes.com/asyoulikeit/