This is Part 1 of a two-part reading of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Read Part 2 here.
“…Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?”
We enter these woods — the Forest of Arden — in Act II, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, where Duke Senior and his ‘loving lords’ are living after being banished by his brother, Duke Frederick. Duke Senior goes on to describe the many aspects of Arden — the site of the pastoral in the play.
The pastoral may refer to the lives of English rural or country folk — their ways, manners, customs, and traditions. It is a literary technique that was used in Renaissance poetry and adapted — with all its myriad conventions, situations, stock characters, and stereotypes — by Elizabethan writers.
Shakespeare — as one would expect — turns this technique upon its head, providing a critique of the constructed narrative of ‘simple pastoral pleasures’ as well as of courtly ‘property, power, and love.’
‘Alternative’ World of Arden
The pastoral was used as a literary technique to present an ‘alternative’ mode of life. In As You Like It — as Duke Senior suggests in the dialogue quoted above — it is a wise world, as against the ‘envious’ and ‘pompous’ Court.
In Act II, Scene 5, Amiens (one of Duke Senior’s lords) sings of Arden —
“Here shall he see no enemy
But winter and rough weather.”
In Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama, Walter W Greg writes that the one constant element of the pastoral technique was the “recognition of a contrast, implicit or expressed, between pastoral life and some more complex type of civilization.”
In Shakespeare’s play, this complex type of civilisation is the Court and this recognition of a contrast appears to be sustained throughout. Corin (a shepherd) says to Touchstone (the clown) in Act III, Scene 2 —
“…Those that are good
manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as
the behaviour of the country is most mockable at the
court…”
The Forest of Arden is also a site of transformation. We see that as Celia and Rosalind find an alternative home in it and ‘transgress’ certain gender norms. Orlando initiates a ‘pastoral romance’ after entering Arden. Even Duke Frederick and Oliver, who enter Arden towards the end of the play, are affected by its charms as both are transformed, leading to the play’s ‘resolution’.
But this is Shakespeare, and things are never truly what they seem — is Arden really as free of peril as Duke Senior would have us believe?
Also read:
News at the New Court
Before we enter Arden, there is a hint about what the banished Duke and his lords are up to in the forest. In Act I, Scene II, Oliver asks Charles —
“…what’s the new news at
the new court?”
There is a possible ambiguity here — does he mean Duke Frederick’s new Court or the one Duke Senior is establishing in Arden?
Yes indeed, at Arden, there is a new — albeit small — Court with courtly manners well-established and appreciated. In Act II, Scene 7, Orlando says in conversation with Duke Senior,
“Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you.
I thought that all things had been savage here…”
There is flattery and pomp, too. Immediately after Duke Senior praises Arden in Act II, Scene 1, including that nature doesn’t flatter but is a wise counsellor, Amiens remarks in flattery —
“…happy is your grace
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.
In Act IV, Scene 2, Jacques sarcastically comments on the killing of a deer —
“Let’s present him to the duke like a Roman conqueror…”
And what of pastoral love? Orlando might be hanging his verses on Arden’s trees and the play might seem to exalt love at first sight — “Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?” — but he is schooled in the tradition of courtship by Rosalind (dressed as Ganymede). Additionally, each lover in the play meets their social match and ends up in a heterosexual union — a courtly Ganymede/Rosalind cannot be matched with a country Phebe.
The Restoration of Order
It is also important to note that Arden — and the pastoral — is never an end in itself but only a temporary refuge for the exiled, allowing them a vantage point to attack those who have outcasted them and create a moral ground for their return. This is the case for both Duke Senior and Orlando — both wronged by their brothers, both awaiting their return to Court, where they may have what is ‘rightfully’ theirs.
There is a ‘restoration of order’ in the backward movement from the pastoral to the Court. In Act V, Scene 4, Duke Senior promises that once the party returns to Court, each will be rewarded according to their status —
“…every of this happen number
That have endured shrewd days and nights with us
Shall share the good of our returned fortune,
According to the measure of their states [status].”
This implies that courtly hierarchies were never absent from Arden. They are reflected in other scenes, too — Duke Senior is always ‘your grace’ and ‘my lord’.
What is the pastoral then if not an ideological construct of the Court — a canvas to paint their courtly anxieties, desires, and ideas of personal justice on — just as Orlando marks the trees with his verse?
Jacques — who provides a critique of the Court at Arden, even without the fool’s motley coat — says to Orlando (Act III, Scene 2) —
“I pray you mar no more trees with writing love
songs in their barks.”
Jacques is the only character who chooses to remain in Arden at the end of the play.
Frances E Dolan writes in the Introduction to the Pelican Shakespeare edition of the play —
“This pastoral place is not an alternative to civilization, “nature” as opposed to “culture”. Instead, it is a place where the denizens of the court go to renew themselves, and where they literally leave their mark.”
Against the idea of ‘simple pastoral pleasures’ and other characteristics of the pastoral genre, then, Shakespeare subverts the literary technique, revealing it as a construct. He also uses this departure to provide a comic critique of courtly ‘property, power, and love’.
In the end, I am tempted to ask — you can take the Dukes and daughters out of the Court but can you take the Court out of them?
Also read: