As You Like It: Language and Writing

Abigail Rokison-Woodall, Dympna Callaghan

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350120440
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism of Shakespeare
• Index: Literature

As You Like It: Language and Writing explores one of Shakespeare's best-known comedies. It considers the literary and theatrical contexts in which Shakespeare was writing; examines, in detail, the different forms of language used in the play and considers ways in which language and meaning have changed over time, and are affected by performance. Each chapter contains a 'Writing matters' section which provides suggestions for activities that can further enhance a student's understanding of the play. This informative guide to Shakespeare's popular comedy equips students with the critical skills to analyze its language, structure and themes and to expand and enrich their own responses to the play.

CHAPTER ONE

Language in Context

This chapter examines the writing and language of As You Like It in the context of notions of classical comedy, festive comedy and pastoralism. It explores Shakespeare’s sources for the play and the question of the play’s setting. It then considers the characters of the play and some of the actors for whom Shakespeare wrote As You Like It – the impact of the boy actor on the interpretation of Rosalind and Celia; the figure of the clown or fool and the actors who might have played the role of Touchstone and the literary figure of the malcontent and its influence on the character of Jaques. Finally, it considers the theatrical devices of metatheatre and masque, and the language used to express these devices within the play.

Genre

The title of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s work – Mr William Shakespeares Tragedies, Comedies and Histories – created a tri-partite genre division that has shaped the way in which people think about Shakespeare plays. As You Like It is listed as a comedy. The genre of comedy, like that of tragedy, is one that Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists inherited from classical literature. As discussed in the introduction, Shakespeare’s humanist education would have introduced him predominantly to Roman models for these forms, notably Plautus and Terence for the genre of comedy, alongside Seneca for tragedy.

What is a comedy?

The genre of comedy emerged in Ancient Greece in around 486 BCE. The most famous proponent of early Greek comedy was Aristophanes, whose plays include The Wasps, The Birds, The Frogs, The Clouds – the titles of which provide an indication of the characterization of the Chorus (usually a group of twenty-four men, embodying these abstractions). Early Greek comedy was extremely bawdy and characters wore costumes that made them appear fat, and naked from the waist down. These comedies were mainly political satires, mocking the powerful institutions of the time. The language was full of sexual innuendo and scatological puns. However, as Greek comedy developed it became less satirical and more romantic, focusing more on domestic themes – family relationships, lost children found, sexual encounters, love, and marriage – all of which may sound familiar to those accustomed to reading Shakespearean comedies.

The Romans were heavily influenced by Greek New Comedy and the Elizabethans, in turn, took inspiration from the leading Roman comic dramatists.

Shakespeare would have studied the plays of Plautus and Terence at school, and would have been expected to analyse their work in detail, as this passage on teaching the work of Terence, from Desiderius Erasmus’s De Ratione Studii, suggests:

Before translating this he should first of all discuss briefly the author’s circumstances, his talent, and the elegance of his language. Then he should mention how much enjoyment and instruction may be had from reading comedy and its laws … He should be careful to point out the type of metre … he should carefully draw their attention to any purple passage, archaism, neologism, Graecism, any obscure or verbose expression, and abrupt or confused order, any etymology, figure of speech, or rhetorical passages, or embellishment or corruption

(trans. Thompson, 1978: 682–3)

One can see from this passage that as well as providing a model for the use of metre (poetic rhythm), language and rhetoric, reading comedy was intended to provide both ‘enjoyment’ and ‘instruction’. This is echoed by Philip Sidney in his Defense of Poesie, a key piece of Renaissance literary criticism, written in around 1580, though not published until 1595. Sidney, defending poetry and drama against Puritan accusations about their negative influence, argues that comedy has the potential to provide moral education, by serving as a negative exemplum:

the Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be: so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one.

(1595: E4v–E4r)

It is interesting to consider As You Like It, and indeed Shakespeare’s other comedies, in the light of this statement. Characters do make mistakes, some of which are laughable, but in many cases the protagonists of Shakespeare’s comedies are highly attractive figures, articulate and witty. Indeed, we might see Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists as embodying negative qualities far more than his comic ones.

The Elizabethans’ conception of comedy as a genre also came partly from Greek and Roman literary theory, most notably the Poetics of Aristotle, written in the third century BCE, and often considered the earliest piece of literary criticism, and the essays attributed to Aeilius Donatus – ‘On Comedy’ and ‘On Drama’ – the latter of which is now understood to be by another Latin writer, Euanthius. Euanthius’ description of comedy sits in opposition to Sidney’s, and is, perhaps, more fitting in suggesting the potential instructive function of Shakespeare’s two genres – ‘And in tragedy the kind of life is shown that is to be shunned; while in comedy the kind is shown that is to be sought after’ (trans. O. B. Hardison Jr., 1974: 45). Certainly, the behaviour of characters like Rosalind, Celia and Orlando, and even Touchstone and Jaques seems far more palatable than that of figures like Iago and even Othello.

If we look at some further classical definitions of comedy, we can begin to see how Shakespeare’s drama adheres to or breaks away from classical expectations. According to Aristotle, comedy is

where those who, in the piece, are the deadliest enemies … quit the stage as friends at the close, and no one slays or is slain.

(Harmon, 2005: 45)

Euanthius similarly tells us that comedy ends with:

the resolution of the course of events so that there is a happy ending which is made evident to all by the recognition of past events

He expands:

in comedy … the dangers are slight, and the ends of the action are happy … the beginning is troubled, the end tranquil

(trans. O. B. Hardison Jr., 1974: 305).

If we think about these definitions in relation to As You Like It, the first seems broadly true. The play begins with two pairs of brothers as ‘deadliest enemies’: Oliver and Orlando and Duke Senior and Duke Frederick. Certainly by the end of the play Oliver and Orlando are fully reconciled, and although we do not see a reconciliation between the dukes, Jaques de Boys delivers news that Duke Frederick has been ‘converted’, ‘bequeathing’ the crown to his brother and restoring the lands of those exiled with him (5.4.159–61). In terms of people being ‘slain’, we do not see any deaths, although we do hear, albeit in a rather casual comment, that Charles the Wrestler has broken the ribs of three young men so that ‘there is little hope of life’ in them (1.2.121–2). In consideration of the second definition, we can reasonably say that there is a resolution, leading to a happy ending for most characters. Regarding the third definition, there is, perhaps, more of a question mark. The ‘ends of the action’ are broadly happy, but we might question whether the ‘dangers are slight’. Indeed, as in many of Shakespeare’s comedies, some of the dangers encountered by the characters bring them into close proximity with death. Orlando’s brother tries to kill him on two occasions, firstly by paying Charles the Wrestler to fight with him, and secondly by planning to burn his lodgings (2.3.23). Rosalind is threatened with death by her uncle, if she comes within twenty miles of the court (1.3.40–2). The trip to Arden is clearly dangerous for the two young women and proves nearly fatal for Adam. Indeed, some productions of the play have had Adam die shortly after Orlando brings him to the duke (making sense of the fact that he does not appear again after this point in the play). In many senses the first half of the play might almost seem like a tragedy. It’s not really until Act 3, with the arrival of spring, that we begin to see the traits of a comedy emerging – in disguise, confusion, mistaken identity and love.

This is one way in which Shakespeare departs from classical tradition. One is never going to mistake a Greek or Roman comedy for a Greek or Roman tragedy at any point. However, often Shakespeare’s comedies include characters under threat and sometimes close to death. Indeed, even in his early comedies – The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1589) and The Comedy of Errors (1590) – Shakespeare was already combining serious matter with comedy, as were many of his contemporaries. Only a year or so after the composition of As You Like It, one of Shakespeare’s characters – Polonius in Hamlet – comments satirically on the multiplicity of genres on the stage when he speaks of the players, newly arrived in Elsinore, as ‘The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited’ (Ham 2.2.333–6). As early as the 1580s, Philip Sidney was complaining about plays that:

be neither right tragedies, nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in clowns by head and shoulders, to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion, so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragicomedy obtained.

(Sidney, 1585: I1v–I1r)

The other major influence on Shakespeare’s conception of the genre of comedy would have been the vernacular drama of the later 1500s. Plays such as Ralph Roister Doister (c.1552) and Gammer Gurton’s Needle (c.1567), which were written for the Universities and Inns of Courts, might well have been read, seen or even performed by the Shakespeare as a boy. These comedies, as Lawrence Danson points out, were themselves ‘derived from the Roman plays of Plautus and Terence’, blending the classical tradition with ‘English humour and plots’ (2000: 49). They were farcical and vulgar, with coarse physical humour, much like their Latin counterparts. More sophisticated were the comedies of John Lyly. As we have already seen, Lyly’s prose style was influ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Language in Context
• 2 Language: Forms and Uses
• 3 Language Over Time
• 4 Performing the Language
• Bibliography
• Copyright