“Then is there mirth in heaven,
When earthly things made eaven
attone together.” – 5.4
As a subject for an essay I would prefer one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays,” such as All’s Well That Ends Well, or Measure for Measure, which in performance simply do not satisfy our sense of propriety; but for an afternoon’s entertainment it is hard to surpass the conjugal comedies, such as Much Ado About Nothing or As You Like It, whose matter is Love and whose end is Marriage. The loving gardener loves to see fruit after a season of blossom, and so in the garden of the Lord there is no finer spectacle than to see wooing win through to union. The love of Orlando and Rosalind – one of Shakespeare’s most unblemished couples, the sort we imagine we are when we fully love – is unmarred by doubt or flaw, and Rosalind’s taking the part of a man for the entire courtship is never an impediment to it. One might say this gives their love the space to be friendship first, protected from physical attraction, and her feigning creates the possibility of conscious love, the love that by self-criticism knows its own price and willingly accepts it.
Rosalind is one of a crowd of astonishing Shakespearean heroines, brilliant, witty, competent in every device but seeking nothing other than mercy, laughter, understanding, and love; she arranges two marriages in the play, including her own, so properly managing her lover that it is an almost perfect courtship (though throughout it she feigns herself the boy Ganimed). She is not so saucy as Beatrice and not so noble as Portia, but perhaps all the more pleasant for it.
But As You Like It also contains an element of dissatisfaction with all things human and conventional, a dissatisfaction which becomes a perennial element in Shakespeare’s mature writings. The play takes place almost entirely in exile, in the Forest of Arden, where a Duke has been driven by his usurping younger brother; a younger brother who will not reward the deserving Orlando at his court, and banishes the blameless Rosalind from it; and in this place alone, the savage Forest, and not in the customary channels of society, can love take proper root and blossom. When Orlando is exiled, Monsieur Le Beu addresses him thus:
Sir, fare you well,
Hereafter in a better world than this,
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you. (1.2)
This world where love and knowledge are thus stunted has been particularly unjust to Orlando, who is held in contempt by his older brother, who refuses to have him educated. The young man, in a burst of rage against his own purposelessness, challenges “Charles, the Dukes wrastler.” When Rosalind attempts to persuade him not to hazard his health against so fearful a foe, he speaks words which we imagine Shakespeare must have felt to have written:
Let your faire eies, and gentle wishes go with mee to my triall; wherein if I bee foil’d, there is but one sham’d that was never gracious: if kil’d, but one dead that is willing to be so: I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me: the world no injurie, for in it I have nothing; onely in the world I fil up a place, which may bee better supplied, when I have made it emptie. (1.2)
This is true of none, but what thinking person has not felt it? Life in this unfeeling world is exile mostly, to him who feels.
Orlando’s suffering in the hands of fortune comes to a head when his brother plots to murder him. The plot is discovered to him by his faithful old servant Adam, who thus moralizes on him:
Why are you vertuous? Why do people love you?
And wherefore are you gentle, strong, and valiant?
Why would you be so fond to overcome
The bonnie priser of the humorous Duke?
Your praise is come too swiftly home before you.
Know you not Master, to seeme kinde of men,
Their graces serve them but as enemies,
No more doe yours: your vertues gentle Master
Are sanctified and holy traitors to you:
Oh what a world is this, when what is comely
Envenoms him that beares it? (2.3)
And Orlando responds in kind, describing the unfitness of a servant loyal “to the last gaspe” to this world:
Oh good old man, how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweate for dutie, not for meede;
Thou are not for the fashion of the times,
Where none will sweate, but for promotion,
And having that do choake their service up,
Even with the having; it is not so with thee;
But poore old man, thou prun’st a rotten tree,
That cannot so much as a blossome yeelde,
In lieu of all thy paines and husbandrie. (2.3)
And so to flee his brother, Orlando heads for the Forest of Arden, where shortly he is joined by Rosalind and her cousin Celia, who flee the usurping Duke’s banishment with the court “Foole,” who like most Shakespearian fools fluctuates between unintelligible punstering and straight unadorned honesty. In contrast to Celia’s brilliant reaction to arriving in the Forest – “I like this place, and willingly could waste my time in it” – the fool says, “I, now am I in Arden, the more foole I, when I was at home I was in a better place.”
But this Arden seems a kind of paradise, where the old Duke sets up a new court in exile.
They say hee is already in the Forrest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England; they say many yong Gentlemen flocke to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world. (1.1)
The Duke himself seems to prefer this life – he is somehow freed from a falsehood which dogged him in the world of men:
Now my coe-mates, and my brothers in exile,
Hath not custom made this life more sweete
Then that of painted pompe? Are not these woods
More free from perill then the envious Court?
Heere feele we not the penaltie of Adam;
The seasons difference, as Icie Phange,
And churlish chiding of the winters winde,
Which when it bites and blowes upon my body
Even till I shrinke with cold, I smile, and say
This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly perswade me what I am:
Sweet are the uses of adversitie
Which like the toad, ougly and venemous,
Weares yet a precious Iewell in his head:
And this our life exempt from publike haunt,
Findes tongues in trees, bookes in the running brookes,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. (2.1)
I do not know the story of the “ougly” toad having a jewel in his head, but it shows every sign of being a variant on the frog-prince motif, itself a manifestation of the “sign of Jonah” – that the way up is a parabola whose first steps are descent. Exile here is exodus, which is the forecourt of the promised Land. Here pain is allowed in, to “feelingly perswade me what I am” – one of the many lovely diamonds in this most wise and beautiful speech.
This place becomes the setting for Orlando to woo Rosalind (Ganimed), for Oliver to meet Celia, for Silvius to win Phebe, and the Foole to persuade Audrey; and it is a most pleasant misery for them all:
Phe. Good shepheard, tell this youth what ’tis to love.
Sil. It is to be all made of sighes and cares,
And so am I for Phebe.
Phe. And I for Ganimed.
Orl. And I for Rosalind.
Ros. And I for no woman.
Sil. It is to be all made of faith and service,
And so am I for Phebe.
Phe. And I for Ganimed.
Orl. And I for Rosalind.
Ros. And I for no woman.
Sil. It is to be all made of fantasie,
All made of passion, and all made of wishes.
All adoration, dutie, and observance,
All humblenesse, all patience, and impatience,
All puritie, all triall, all observance:
And so am I for Phebe.
Phe. And so am I for Ganimed.
Orl. And so am I for Rosalind.
Ros. And so am I for no woman.
Phe. If this be so, why blame you me to love you?
Sil. If this be so, why blame you me to love you?
Orl. If this be so, why blame you me to love you?
Ros. Why do you speake too, why blame you me to love you?
Orl. To her that is not heere, nor doth not heare.
Ros. Pray you no more of this, ’tis like the howling of Irish wolves against the Moone. (5.2)
And the usurping Duke, when he invades the forest to scatter this court of exiles, is met at its verge by a monk, and is converted: he bestows his dukedom on his brother, and retires to a monastery. The alchemy of nature seems then to right all wrongs; in the forest is the restoration of the world. But even this shadow-court of Arden does not please one of Shakespeare’s stranger creations, “the melancholly Iaques,” who finds this forest-life no more satisfying than any other. He is first described moralizing on a deer stuck with a hunter’s arrow, which came to die with him by a stream. He blames it – for
weeping into the needlesse streame;
Poore Deere, quoth he, thou mak’st a testament
As worldlings doe, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much. (2.1)
Then upon his companions in the herd neglecting him:
‘Tis right, quoth he, thus miserie doth part
The fluxe of companie: anon a carelesse Heard
Full of the pasture, iumps along by him
And never staies to greet him: I quoth Iaques,
Sweep on you fat and greazie Citizens,
‘Tis iust the fashion. (2.1)
He is thus described to the Duke:
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of Countrie, Citie, Court,
Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we
Are meere usurpers, tyrants, and whats worse
To fright the Annimals, and to kill them up
In their assign’d and native dwelling place.
Duke. And did you leave him in this contemplation?
2 Lord. We did my Lord, weeping and commenting
Upon the sobbing deere. (2.1)
The metaphor of usurpation he pursues, saying to the Duke for his exploitation of nature “you doe more usurpe then doth your brother that hath banish’d you.”
This is a most ecological melancholy; and as it seems to have no satisfactory solution – our life is made of others’ death – there is not much redemption for Jaques. He is not turned into love’s fool, like Benedick or Beatrice. It is sometimes pleasant to have a skeptic onstage to play foil to lovers’ antics, but still Jaques is an unusual and sometimes disconcerting presence on the stage. His pleasant side is pleasant enough: when Orlando begins hanging doggerel for Rosalind on the trees of the forest, Jaques exhorts him, “I pray you marre no more trees with writing love-songs in their barkes” (3.2). And when Orlando and Rosalind come together, Jaques stalks off, sickened of love’s awful rhymes, and ordering Orlando “Nay then God buy you, and you – talke in blanke verse!” (4.1) But he is often rough with his fellows, who comment on how they would not like to be him. He makes a rather loud exit just before the concluding wedding festivities, standing dark and solitary in a crowd of happy “country copulatives”:
Iaq. Sir, by your patience: if I heard you rightly,
The Duke hath put on a Religious life,
And throwne into neglect the pompous Court?
Oli. He hath.
Iaq. To him will I: out of these convertites,
There is much matter to be heard, and learn’d:
… so to your pleasures,
I am for other than for dancing meazures. (5.4)
The play’s combination of droll and dour, lovers and Jaques, is found in its songs, all of which are excellent. They manage to affirm life and express its horror quite satisfactorily:
Blow, blow, thou winter winde,
Thou are not so unkinde, as mans ingratitude.
Thy tooth is not so keene, because thou are not seene,
although thy breath be rude.
Heigh ho, sing heigh ho, unto the greene holly,
Most friendship is fayning, most Loving, meere folly.
The heigh ho, the holly,
This life is most jolly.
Freize, freize, thou bitter skie that dost not bight so nigh
as benefitts forgot;
Though thou the waters warp, thy sting is not so sharpe,
as friend remembred not.
Heigh ho, sing heigh ho, unto the greene holly,
Most friendship is fayning, most Loving, meere folly.
The heigh ho, the holly,
This life is most jolly. (2.7)
Song. Under the greene wood tree,
Who loves to lye with mee,
And turne his merrie Note,
unto the sweet Birds throte:
Come hither, come hither, come hither,
Heere shall he see no enemie,
But Winter and rough Weather.
Iaq. More, more, I pre’thee more.
Ami. It will make you melancholy Monsieur Iaques.
Iaq. I thanke it: More, I prethee more,
I can sucke melancholly out of a song,
As a weazel suckes egges.
Song. Who doth ambition shunne,
And loves to live i’th Sunne:
Seeking the food he eates,
and pleas’d with what he gets:
Come hither, come hither, come hither,
Here he shall see no enemie,
But Winter and rough Weather. (2.5)
The play contains a number of famous speeches, and I cannot pass by without quoting and admiring some of the stupendous language.
“The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive Shee.” – 3.2
“I found him under a tree like a drop’d Acorne.” – 3.2
“Would you not have me honest?”
“No truly, unless thou wert hard favour’d; for honestie coupled to beautie, is to have Honie a sawce to Sugar.” – 3.3
“And wil you (being a man of your breeding) be married under a bush like a begger? Get you to church, and have a good Priest that can tel you what marriage is, this fellow wil but ioyne you together, as they ioyne Wainscot, then one of you wil prove a shrunke pannell, and like greene timber, warpe, warpe.” – 3.3
“But mistris, know your selfe, downe on your knees
And thanke heaven, fasting, for a good mans love;
For I must tell you friendly in your eare –
Sell when you can: you are not for all markets.” – 3.5
“Come, wooe me, wooe mee: for now I am in a holiday humor, and like enough to consent.” – 4.1
“The poore world is almost six thousand yeeres old, and in all this time there was not anie man died in his owne person (videlicet) in a love cause; Troilous had his braines dash’d out with a Grecian club, yet he did what hee could to die before and he is one of the patternes of love. Leander, he would have liv’d manie a faire yeere though Hero had turn’d Nun; if it had not bin for a hot Midsomer-night, for (good youth) he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and being taken with the crampe, was droun’d, and the foolish Chronoclers of that age, found it was Hero of Cestos. But these are all lies, men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” – 4.1
“Doe you pitty him? No, he deserves no pitty: wilt thou love such a woman? What to make thee an instrument, and play false straines upon thee? Not to be endur’d. Well, goe your way to her – for I see Love hath made thee a tame snake.” – 4.3
“They shall be married to morrow: and I will bid the Duke to the Nuptiall. But O, how bitter a thing it is, to look into happines through another mans eies. By so much the more shall I to morrow be at the height of heart heavinesse, by how much I shal thinke my brother happie, in having what he wishes for.”
“Why then to morrow, I cannot serve your turne for Rosalind?”
“I can live no longer by thinking.” – 5.2
“Good morrow foole (quoth I): no Sir, quoth he,
Call me not foole, till heaven hath sent me fortune,
And then he drew a diall from his poake,
And looking on it, with a lacke-lustre eye,
Sayes, very wisely, it is ten a clocke;
Thus we may see (quoth he) how the world wagges:
‘Tis but an houre agoe, since it was nine,
And after one houre more, ’twill be eleven,
And so from houre to houre, we ripe, and ripe,
And then from houre to houre, we rot, and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale. When I did heare
The motley Foole, thus morall on the time,
My lungs began to crow like Chanticleere,
That Fooles should be so deepe contemplative:
And I did laugh, sans intermission,
An houre by his diall. Oh noble foole,
A worthy foole: Motley’s the only weare.” – 2.7
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women, meerely Players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time playes many parts,
His Acts being seven ages. At first the Infant,
Mewling and puking in the Nurses armes:
Then the whining Schoole-boy with his Satchell
And shining morning face, creeping like snaile
Unwillingly to schoole. And then the Lover,
Sighing like Furnace, with a wofull ballad
Made to his Mistresse eye-brow. Then, a Soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the Pard,
Ielous in honor, sodaine, and quicke in quarrell,
Seeking the bubble Reputation
Even in the Canons mouth: and then, the Iustice,
In faire round belly, with good Capon lin’d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formall cut,
Full of wise sawes, and moderne instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixt age shifts
Into the leane and slipper’d Pantaloone,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide,
For his shrunke shanke, and his bigge manly voice,
Turning againe toward childish treble pipes,
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventfull historie,
Is second childishnesse, and meere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.” – 2.7
Excitable/Orwellian Andrew.
05-Sep-11I am as big a fan of Andrew Sullivan as can be, but I was impressively disappointed by his memorial of the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I don’t disagree with the general point, that ten years on what is most salient is that our “homeland security” response – invasion of foreign countries, unregulated torture of any who are not U.S. citizens, and surveillance of all – is not an unalloyed good. But Sullivan’s adjectives betray a lilt of hysteria. And for Orwell’s sake, let us retire once and for all the phrase “shredding the constitution.” A decade is long enough for sober maturity. No constitutions were literally shredded. It is quite helpful to enumerate how its prescriptions were violated. But mindlessly repeated metaphors – Hannity and Palin will tell you Obama is shredding the constitution, and Dan Savage will tell you Nancy Pelosi is shredding the constitution, and Sullivan says Cheney shredded the constitution, and on and on and on – reveal real dangerous vacuity of mind.