As%20You%20Like%20It%202nd%20Lecture

1
As You Like It2nd Lecture

• Experimental Theater?
• Play among the first to be performed on the stage
  of the Globe (1599)

2
Seeing play vs. reading it

• AYLI very much depends on our seeing it.
• In theater the play can seem quite satisfying,
  even moving if Rosalind is well played.
• In reading we encounter lots of curious stuff,
  not all of which still works.
• E.g., Touchstones riff on the seven types of
  quarreling in V.4. 68ff. (retort courteous
  through lie direct).
• And other topical jokes, mainly in Touchstones
  part, some in Jaques.
• The play demands a lively, witty Rosalind and an
  appealing Orlando.

3
Play as experimental theater

• We notice how little plot there really is.
• Classic beginning sense of a world awry, the Cain
  and Abel pattern of brothers murderously at each
  others throats.
• Moving to a magic green world where everything
  seems suspended.
• And pastoral virtues can prevail (in Duke
  Seniors formulation) tongues in trees, sermons
  in stones,/ Books in the running brooks, and good
  in everything.
• Toward the end of the play, Oliver is converted
  in what looks like a parody of pastoral action
  the snake, the lion, Orlandos rescue of him.
• And Duke Frederick, as Jaques de Boys tells us,
  simply comes in contact with the pastoral forest
  and an old religious man and is converted.
• Pastoral is magically effective.

4
Experimental theater (continued)

• Once we enter pastoral world, in Act II, the plot
  seems to stop.
• Instead, lots of talk.
• Songs (more than in any other of Shakespeares
  plays).
• Bad poetry recited III.2.85-92, 121ff.
• And parodied 98ff. And mocked, 161ff.
• Wooing Orlando of Ganymede, Silvius of Phebe
  (and Phebe of Ganymede), Touchstone of Audrey
  (rhymes with bawdry).
• And mockery of wooing IV.1.63ff, 135ff.
• And of literary traditions IV.1.88ff.
• And more talk.
• And finally, the marriage Masque of Hymen.

5
Jaques seven ages of man in the Globe

• A set piece, a sort of theatrical aria.
• All the worlds a stage perhaps a cliché.
• But it translates, Totus mundus agit
  histrionem, the motto of The Globe.
• In theater the audience sees itself, understands
  its theatrical role.
• So were aware that the speech reflects the
  audience were included in the theatricality.
• New Globe production of the play a few years ago
  the schoolboys, then everybody else.
• The pat entrance of Orlando and Adam at end.
• But the inadequacy of the speech to define them.

6
Jaques as character

• Completely extraneous to the plot.
• His name.
• Related to contemporary fashion for satire
  II.7.58ff.
• But his satire is general (ll. 70ff) and
  therefore toothless?
• Satire of the fashion for satire?
• Jaques also represents parody of the fashion for
  melancholy he can suck melancholy from a song,
  as a weasel sucks eggs (II.5).
• Orlando and he are like oil and water III.2.248.
  
• The mocker mocked.
• Comes he comes in for mockery from Rosalind in
  IV.1.
• And when Orlando enters, Jaques leaves God be
  with you an you speak in blank verse
• And at end, I am for other than for dancing
  measures.

7
Touchstone

• Will Kemp (played Falstaff, Dogberry, other
  clown roles) had left the Lord Chamberlains
  company. (Danced a jig all the way to Norwich.)
• And was replaced by Robert Armin, who was
  physically Kemps opposite.
• Armin known for his singing voice, sharp wit.
• Would go on to play Feste in Twelfth Night, the
  gravedigger in Hamlet, the Fool in King Lear.