Customer Reviews

As You Like It (Arden Shakespeare: Third Series)

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Over the years, despite the fact that The Riverside Shakespeare is my primary course text, I've found the third series Arden paperbacks as an indispensable source for my college-level Shakespeare classes (the second series versions, of course, feature an older and often quite out-of-date understanding of the criticism and characters). As You Like It is one play that I teach consistently, semester by semester, so I was naturally very pleased when this volume arrived. It does not disappoint: the introductory material is superb and, as always, the notes quite helpful. Viva Rosalind!

We might expect an academic who has made her name as a feminist critic to find something interesting to say about 'As You Like It'. Juliet Dusinberre doesn't disappoint. Although its aspects of performance history can be a little wearisome, her Introduction is richly rewarding. Not surprisingly, she makes much of the play's cross-dressing and role-playing (boy playing woman playing man). She finds questions of gender much more ambiguous and complex than they first appear and presents an account of a play in which liberating modes of behaviour can be adopted as easily as costumes can be donned. It is a play which 'redefines gender'.

Equally subversive, she thinks, are the play's allusions to Robin Hood. Duke Senior's comradely courtiers are partners rather than subjects, and his court more communal than hierarchic. Together with the animal welfare concerns expressed in the play, the Duke's vegetarian tendencies (which echo the real-life courtier John Harington's) and Orlando's 'challenge to primogeniture' (it is he, after all, who inherits a dukedom), the 'alternative', revolutionary elements of AYL are neatly drawn attention to.

There are some inspired insights. Touchstone's 'dreadful joke', as Dusinberre calls it (about pancakes in 1.2), makes sense if the court performance at Richmond Palace took place on the Shrove Tuesday of 1599, as she thinks highly likely. And Dusinberre further suggests that some of the play's exotic features (like the lion in 3.2.) were matched by the elaborate wood carvings in Richmond's outer court, while Rosalind's reference to Troilus not dying for love might have been accompanied by a gesture to the tapestry depicting Troy hanging in Richmond's Great Hall where plays were performed. In essence, therefore, she sees the palace as the 'perfect ambience' for the play, with its sense of rural retreat and with deer roaming outside its west wall.

But Dusinberre is careful to present the Forest of Arden as more than just a fairy-tale rural retreat. It is a place that represents the challenge of the unfamiliar and of harsh political exile. It is also a place which reflects the real, contemporary world of displacement brought about by land enclosure and political instability (in the year of Essex's fateful Irish campaign).

The Introduction is also radical and illuminating in its discussion of Elizabethan play reading. Dusinberre argues that AYL is particularly rewarding as a text to be read at leisure and that its wordplay is often better appreciated on the page than on the stage. She argues that puns such as Touchstone's 'faining/feigning' 'could only be appreciated by readers'. Dusinberre examines a recent school of thought (led by Lukas Erne) inclining to the view that not only did the printed word add an extra witty dimension, but that Shakespeare actively took readers into account when writing plays.

The comprehensively researched Commentary is equally impressive. It bears testimony to the rich heritage of Shakespearean scholarship which has unearthed a staggering amount of detail about the halcyon period of English drama, 1590-1610. This edition will probably allow for as full an appreciation of the play as is currently possible.

It's hard to insult the Arden editions of Shakespeare. Even if a scholar were to find specific points within the editions vast fields of footnotes and several waves of appendices, this would not outdo the beauty of these editions. There is a certain virtue to making scholarship so utterly prolific and thorough-going that one can almost expect some failures. This is essentially a presentation of the play accompanied by many, many interpretations and thematic rabbit trails. One comes to understand the history, content (and so the context) of the work to as full a measure as possible in one volume.

WWWWWWWWWWWWonderful edition of a masterpiece, clever, fresh and complexe, involving all William's art/heart, as Terrasse à Sainte Adresse is containing Monet's.

Out of all the great Shakespeare's plays, "As You Like It" is undoubtedly... the fluffiest. This is cotton candy. Fortunately, cotton candy isn't too bad as long as you don't eat too much of it. And while the ending is excessively tidy, "As You Like It" is a charming little play with the full array of Shakespearean tropes -- transvestitism, love triangles, and mass confusion.

Backstory: The cruel Duke has deposed his far nicer brother, and the ex-Duke has run off into the Forest of Arden. At the same time, a young man named Orlando has been cast out by his cruel brother Oliver.

Then the Duke decides to exile his niece Rosalind, despite the pleas of his daughter Celia. So Rosalind (disguised as a boy), Celia and the jester Touchstone run away into the Forest of Arden the following night, and soon encounter the exiled Duke and his followers. So does Orlando and his faithful servant Adam.

Because of a previous meeting, Rosalind and Orlando are already in love. But not only does he not recognize her, but because she's disguised as a boy she's attracted the amorous intentions of a local shepherdess. And to make matters even more complex, Touchstone is in a love triangle of his own, and Oliver has stumbled into Arden as well. Is everything going to end well?

The biggest problem with "As You Like It" is the fact that the ending is just a little too tidy -- while it's plausible that the romantic tangles would be smoothed out, there's an conveniently-timed twist that stretches believability to the point of snapping. Fortunately, the rest of it is a pleasantly fluffy little story filled with Shakespeare's sparkliest, sunniest storytelling.

Shakespeare's plot floats along in a heady cloud of sunlit forests, poems pinned to trees and languid outlaws who hang around singing all day. His lines are filled with clever, sometimes bawdy jokes ("praised be the gods for thy foulness! sluttishness may come hereafter") and some nicely evocative imagery ("Between the pale complexion of true love/And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain").

The funniest parts involve the love quadrangle between Rosalind, Phebe, Orlando and Silvius, as well as Orlando's wretched poetry and Touchstone's mockery of them ("Winter garments must be lined,/So must slender Rosalind").

And it has a likable cast of characters, most of whom are amiable and likable (although I'm still not sure why Orlando and the ex-Duke don't recognize Rosalind!). Celia and Rosalind are fun and sprightly heroines, Orlando is an endearing underdog (if a rotten poet), and there's also the sharp-tongued Touchstone, dour Jacques, and the rather beyotchy Phebe.

"As You Like It" is a puffy little wisp of a play, compared to Shakespeare's other works -- but it's still a nice little romantic diversion. Think of it as an Elizabethan romantic comedy.