As You Like It—William Shakespeare

All the world’s a stage

Rosalind: O Jupiter, how weary are my spirits!

The experts say Shakespeare probably wrote As You Like It sometime around 1598 or 1599. Audiences at the time, and for two millennia before, accepted gender fluidity as the currency of entertainment. This play, more so than any other I know of, pushes that concept the furthest. I didn’t know what to expect when I chose to read this play, but I honestly don’t think I could have picked one more timely, given the recent edict by the King of America that gender and sex must agree and never the twain shall switch.

As You Like It contains a lot of moving parts, so I’ll sum it up this way: By the end of the last act, no one has died and eight characters have wedded. What with all the intertwined stories, the play’s unity comes from the strong, central figure of Rosalind. Everything revolves around her, and I think, yes, I just might have fallen in love.

Sibling rivalry plays a big role in As You Like It. The legal custom of primogeniture, whereby the eldest son inherits everything upon the father’s death while the other children get nothing, tended to amplify fraternal conflicts. Primogeniture did serve a useful function, for sure. During the early medieval period, when a lord died, his sons inherited equal portions of the estate, and they in turn would divide their portions among their sons at their own deaths, and so on. This led to two problems. First, huge estates would fragment into smaller and smaller ones after a few generations. Second, brothers wishing to reassemble the original property would have to wage a war of conquest against their own brothers. Of course, that meant a lot of other people would get killed. The rule of primogeniture solved both problems at once. Upon a lord’s death, his estate would pass undiminished to the eldest son, and thereby put an end to fraternal wars. An ambitious young brother could simply assassinate his smirking, condescending big brother, thereby avoiding a costly war. Much better, from a utilitarian perspective.

In this play, the eldest brother, Oliver, though inheriting everything, has nevertheless promised to take care of his youngest brother, Orlando, by supporting him and seeing to his proper upbringing as a gentleman. While Oliver did take care of Jacques, the middle brother, he did not do the same for Orlando. Thus, Orlando knows little of gentlemanly behavior and can’t play the game of courtly love very well, that is, he writes atrocious poetry. In compensation, though, he has good looks and muscle, both of which Rosalind appreciates. When she gets a good look at him after he has bested a professional wrestler, she feels the prick of Cupid’s arrow. Likewise with Orlando. The two fall madly in love with each other but can’t muster the courage to say so—while in civilized company. In fact, it turns out that everyone’s troubles come from having a bad case of civilization.

Two other brothers have strained relations as well. Frederick has usurped the estate of his brother, the Duke, but Frederick’s daughter, Celia, and the Duke’s daughter, Rosalind, have grown up together and have such a friendship that they cannot bear to separate. So when Frederick banishes Rosalind as a traitor, Celia hatches a plot for the two of them to flee into the forest of Arden and rough it for a while. The court fool, Touchstone, decides to come with them. Meanwhile, Orlando, having learned that Oliver plans to kill him, also flees to Arden with an elderly servant, Adam. Eventually, Shakespeare has the whole troupe trooping through the forest and tripping all over each other. Ah, Nature!¹

As happens in many comedies, a certain amount of cross-dressing takes place, but, as I indicated earlier, this play takes gender-switching to a new level. Rosalind disguises herself as a man, adopts the name Ganymede, and flees into the Arden forest with Celia. While thus disguised she meets and befriends Orlando, who tells “Ganymede” of his love for Rosalind and his lack of courting experience. Rosalind decides to help him woo Rosalind, so Ganymede offers to let Orlando practice his courtship moves on him and he will endeavor to instruct and improve the poor, lovelorn hunk. Of course in Shakespeare’s time male actors performed all the female roles, so that adds a further level. To drive the point home, Shakespeare has the actor playing Rosalind step out of character during the epilogue and address the audience as a man.

Rosalind: … I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you; and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women—as I perceive by your simp’ring none of you hates them—that between you and the women the play may please. If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleas’d me, complexions that lik’d me, and breaths that I defied not …

I predict that a performance of As You Like It will not get any funding this year from the Kennedy Center.

The forest has a calming and leveling effect on everyone in the play. Shakespeare uses it as a retreat from the vexations of court intrigues and the pressure of city life—the antidote for all cases of too much civilization. Oliver abandons his fratricidal plans, Frederick converts from materialism to monasticism, the cynical Touchstone falls in love with a simple shepherdess. It almost seems as if all human problems would vanish could we just spend a little time gamboling amongst the flora and fauna. In Arden, everyone steps back from their petty obsessions and sees them from a broader perspective. Their sylvan group retreat helps each person make wiser choices, and in the end they return to the “civilized” world of greed, snobbery, and vanity, but presumably a bit wiser.

I said earlier that I just might have fallen in love with Rosalind. She displays many virtues, setting her morally above the other characters. But mostly her patience endeared her to me. Rosalind reads Orlando’s clumsy attempts at Petrarch-style adoration and smiles at the sentiment that emboldens him to even try. Her acceptance of Orlando’s awkward courtship reminds me of Shakespeare’s own sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” No litany of imperfections could touch his love. And that same spirit of overlooking faults seems to work magic on those who have fled into the forest. The reader can’t mistake Rosalind’s attitude as foolishness. Shakespeare lets her come out on top in every encounter. He gives her the wisdom and the will to resolve the problems of others. Her kindhearted yet mischievous spirit makes her an all-time favorite of audiences.

While Rosalind gets the last word in most exchanges, others get the most memorable lines. Jacques, the emo, middle brother of Oliver and Orlando, wallows around in cynical self-pity to such an extent that no one takes him seriously. Yet he gets to deliver the famous monologue that begins thus.

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; …

I think that passage may belong with other trite nonsense spouted by Shakespearean characters like Polonius (in Hamlet) and passed along by modern readers as profound wisdom.

This above all—to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

I loved this exchange in which Celia delivers the zinger, which I can hardly wait to use.

Celia: Here comes Monsieur Le Beau.

Rosalind: With his mouth full of news.

Celia: Which he will put on us as pigeons feed their young.

Not every critic likes the play, but critics don’t earn their reputations by liking things. Audiences love it. I greatly enjoyed it, although I could see how easily a director with an axe to grind could spoil all the fun. Unlike when reading a Chekhov play, I never felt the need to see it enacted, and I even believe a director’s input would have spoiled the play as I imagined it.

§ § §

I have not done a great job of keeping a regular schedule of these reflections, and I blame King Trump and Prime Minister Musk for that. Who in the United States can focus long enough to sustain a complex thought when at any moment some necessary resource may vanish or become illegal? So, until I regain some security, I will stick with plays that resonate with me and my circumstances. This week, I will read Julius Caesar, while outside the Muskrats cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.

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Works mentioned in this post

As You Like It, by William Shakespeare

Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 130, by William Shakespeare

The Mahābhārata, translated by Bibek Debroy

1. If you’ve been following my reflections on literature, you will recall that in the third volume of the Mahābhārata, the Pandavas spent twelve years of banishment in a great forest before they could recover their throne. That forest also became pretty crowded.