As You Like It 2

Act I, Scene I

• Orlando does not like that his brother has everything (primogeniture)

Act II, Scene I - The Forest Arden

• Are they bringing their corruption from court into this natural environment, or will they be able to transform themselves because of the natural environment?

  • Thematic question in Shakespeare’s writing

• Speech about Jacques/Jacques crying over deer

  • Thematic message about nature

  • Criticizing their way of life as a melancholy man

Act II, Scene II - The Duke’s Palace

•  He wants to get Oliver to find his brother to find Rosalind

Act II, Scene III - Before Oliver’s House

• Orlando does not have much of a choice (homelessness)

• Adam offers his life savings and gives him all of his money

• Adam promises to go with/serve him

• Yea, providently caters for the sparrow, Be comfort to my age! Here is the gold; All this I give you.

  • Allusion to Bible

    • God cares for sparrows, God will provide for Adam

• Where none will sweat but for promotion, And having that do choke their service up. Even with the having; it is not so with thee.

  • He values Adam’s character (serving for the sake of service, not promotion)

  • Orlando accepts the offer

    • Not much social mobility

    • Uncommon in such a fluid play

Act II, Scene IV - The Forest of Arden

• Silvius is saying that Corin does not understand love because of his age

• If thou rememb'rest not the slightest folly

  • If you cannot remember the most ridiculous thing you have done, then you have never loved

• That ever love did make thee run into

  • If you do not run off, you have never loved

• Silvius is the mockery of Petrarchan conventions of love

• We that are true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.

  • Anyone who loves is a fool

  • The end does not end with death

  • By virtue of humanity, we will do foolish things out of love

• The trio bought a house, no longer homeless

• Rosalind as Ganymede

  • “Gentle sir” and “fair sir”

    • Either the disguise is good or bad to the characters (dependent on director), but the audience knows her true identity

• “Jove! Jove!” - referring to King of Gods

Act II, Scene V - Another Part of the Forest

• Amiens’s song:

  Under the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me,

And turn his merry note

Unto the sweet bird's throat,

Come hither, come hither, come hither.

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

• Refers to Passover and the Angel of Death

• 'Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle. I'll go sleep, if I can; if I cannot, I'll rail against all the first-born of Egypt.

  • Allusion to Torah

Act II, Scene VI

• Adam dies

• Orlando carries Adam and looks for food

Act II, Scene VII - The Forest

• Chanticleer - a rooster

  • He is laughing like a rooster (fool, egotistical, arrogant, cocky) 

• Motley’s the only wear

  • Touchstone is wearing Motley

• The wise man's folly is anatomiz'd

  • You take his foolishness and take it apart

  • Jaques wants to be a fool to ‘cleanse the world’

    • If he has the freedom to speak his mind then he can fix the world

      • What comedians do today

• He laughs and plays off the comments

• Orlando enters with his weapon

  • Duke Sr. welcomes him to their table

    • Orlando is demonstrating the behavior of society (deceitfulness)

    • Duke Sr. is demonstrating the behavior of nature (kindness)

      • Duke Sr.’s speech in Act II, Scene I :

Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,

The seasons' difference; as the icy fang

And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,

Which when it bites and blows upon my body,

Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say

'This is no flattery; these are counsellors

That feelingly persuade me what I am.'

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

I would not change it.

• Jaques:

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. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;

Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

• 7 Ages of Man

  • Infant

  • School-boy

  • Lover

  • Soldier

  • Justice

  • Pantaloon

  • Second Childishness 

    • The world is a play and these are the roles we play

    • Both infant and second childness are dependent are reliant

    • Schoolboy is unwilling

      • “Shining morning face” however is unwilling and “creeping like a snail”

      • Backpack is dragging on his back

        • He is young, but lazy

    • Lover is yearning

      • “Furnace” - there is a fire in him

      • Sings to his mistress’ eyebrow

        • Shows emotion and that he cannot look her into the eye (windows to the soul)

        • He is singing to her looks, not the way she is

    • Soldier

      • Makes promises he cannot keep

      • He is ambitious and jealous - wants to be acknowledged

      • short- tempered

    • Justice

      • Well-fed

      • Has high ranking

      • Severe judgement (condescending)

      • “wise saws” - ironic because the justice is melancholy and he is acting like he wants his opinions to be heard (modern instances/trends), but trends go away (it will be forgotten)

    • Pantaloon

      • Old foolish man

      • He is going blind - metaphorical

      • “Shrunk shank” - physically declining with the world moving on without him

      • “Childish treble” - his voice is getting higher

    • Second Childishness

      • Jaques is describing life as a circle

      • “Seeking the bubble reputation” - throughout life there isn’t any meaning/substance

      • Orlando comes in carrying Adam with his arms directly after speech (image of infant)

• Duke and Amiens’s Song:

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly.

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then, heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot;

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend rememb'red not.

Heigh-ho

• Nature is forgiving and honest with us

• The jollyness in winter on death’s door as (Adam) is, they are singing to life

• The holly is a symbol of eternal life - predates Christianity

  • People have always celebrated in winter for the arrival of spring (looking to hope when things are at its most bleak)

• Shakespeare has depressing anecdote of life followed by a hopeful song directly after

Act III, Scene I

•  Threatened to take his land

Act III, Scene II

• Chaste - virginity - one of the major themes in Shakespeare’s work

• “Thrice crowned goddess of the moon” - is also the goddess of chastity

  • Reminding us of petrarch

• Touchstone is saying that bringing together rams is ewes are his biggest sin

• A cuckle is a man’s wife who has committed adultery

  • In greece, they believed that the man would grow horns if cheated on

• “Rosalinde” - so that it can rhyme

  • Touchstone picks up on this and makes fun of Rosalind, however Rosalind shows she can handle it

  • If you do not laugh at someone making fun of you, then it seems like the truth

• Orlando’s Poem

Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love;

And thou, thrice-crowned Queen of Night, survey

With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above,

Thy huntress' name that my full life doth sway.

O Rosalind! these trees shall be my books,

And in their barks my thoughts I'll character,

That every eye which in this forest looks

Shall see thy virtue witness'd every where.

Run, run, Orlando; carve on every tree,

The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.

• Celia’s Response

Why should this a desert be?

For it is unpeopled? No;

Tongues I'll hang on every tree

That shall civil sayings show.

Some, how brief the life of man

Runs his erring pilgrimage,

That the streching of a span

Buckles in his sum of age;

Some, of violated vows

'Twixt the souls of friend and friend;

But upon the fairest boughs,

Or at every sentence end,

Will I Rosalinda write,

Teaching all that read to know

The quintessence of every sprite

Heaven would in little show.

Therefore heaven Nature charg'd

That one body should be fill'd

With all graces wide-enlarg'd.

Nature presently distill'd

Helen's cheek, but not her heart,   she has her beauty of helen, but not having the heart to betray

Cleopatra's majesty,       her royalty

Atalanta's better part,     who doesn’t want to give up her chastity, but her greed is her downfall

Sad Lucretia's modesty.    

Thus Rosalinde of many parts

By heavenly synod was devis'd,

Of many faces, eyes, and hearts,

To have the touches dearest priz'd.

Heaven would that she these gifts should have,

And I to live and die her slave.'