English 205 Study Guide |
"Good in Everything": Political Revolution and Human Redemption in As You Like It
As You Like It opens in a way that seems to point inevitably toward tragedy. Few things in the first act could be worse. A benevolent Duke has been overthrown and sent into banishment by his treacherous, paranoid younger brother, a coup reflected not only in court but also in the secondary political dominance of figures like Orlando's older brother Oliver. Orlando and Rosalind flee into the Forest of Arden for no other reason than that their virtuousness makes them intolerable to the morally corrupt current regime. The comedic action of the play takes place at the same time that, outside the forest, Duke Frederick is hatching a plot to sweep into the forest and murder his brother and his brother's retinue.
At the same time, from the moment Duke Senior and his retinue appears, a redemptive process is making itself known. It's worth taking a close look at the brilliant and beautiful speech Duke Senior gives as consolation for exile, in order to understand exactly what kind of redemption is offered in the forest.
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 season's 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 counselors
That feelingly persuade me what I am. (pp. 2425, lines 111)
The first few lines of the passage cited above suggest a stance similar to that expressed by Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder in "Mine Own John Poins," contrasting happy country solitude with the treachery of high society. In the next seven lines, though, the peril to which Duke Senior refers becomes clear. He is not only talking about the external influences of the court, but also about self-flattery and self-deception, the state Plato referred to as the unexamined life. In Duke Senior's playful phrase describing cold winds as counselors / That feelingly persuade me what I am, he proposes that physical sense and moral sensibility occur at the same moment in nature.
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. (p. 25, lines 12-17)
Nature, in other words, is not a comforting refuge in the sense that it is comfortable, but in the sense that it helps makes sense of things and helps human beings analyze their lives in ways that makes their lives worth living.
The necessity of this analytical process, for the major characters at least, becomes quite clear. Duke Senior's vulnerability to usurpation apparently resulted from complacent rule, a culture in which he was blinded by the unexamined life. His open-handedness in the forest which friends and strangers alike is both a continuation of his essential goodness and an affirmation of the rich new possibilities for understanding that the Forest of Arden offers.
Paying attention to this concept of human redemption through self-discovery in nature, one can see a simple comedic pattern in the play: the good and noble persons cycle through the Forest, banished by the evil and ignoble persons. In the Forest, the good and noble persons prepare to return, chastened and wiser through their encounter with nature, to their proper place. Meanwhile, the evil and ignoble persons start preying on each other and, magnetized by hatred, pursue the good and noble into the Forest, where they confront their evil and repent with no plans to usurp the good and noble persons again.
Before this cycle can be complete, the young must come to agreement with one another so that marriage can create a new generation in a new and good world. Such an agreement is Rosalind's goal in her mischievous deception of Orlando, when she torments him in the person of Ganymede. The two young people have suffered much betrayal, familial and political. As lovers, they are innocent, but Rosalind knows the stakes of the game they are playing. Only when Orlando has passed the test can Rosalind know that they will not fall victim to betrayal at the hands of each other, that their union will in fact be part of a new, good world.
Study Questions
1. Jaques, the comical but melancholic courtier who serves the Duke, decides to remain in the forest at the end of As You Like It, and is seemingly replaced by another Jaques—Jaques de Boys—who is Orlando's and Oliver's brother. What do you make of this sequence of events? What, if anything, does this abrupt event contribute to the play's action?
2. Rosalind, in her "testing" of Orlando while disguised as Ganymede, repeats many of the sexist libels against women with which you should be familiar from the Wife of Bath's Prologue. She does this so extremely that Celia, in outrage, accuses her of being like a bird that fouls its nest. Why does Rosalind recite these libels against women to Orlando? What is she hoping to accomplish by placing them in her "testing" of him?
Move on to Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan