Michael:

Act 1 of AYLI is mainly concerned with establishing the fissures and abuses that the comedy must heal, two brothers at odds, the elder oppressing the younger and denying him education and dignity, two elder brothers, the younger having banished the older, two women cousins who are daughters of the two older brothers but as close as sisters. Beyond all this the usurping duke has decided to banish his niece out of jealousy for his own daughter. So it’s a messy and unhappy family. The act is mainly devoted to establishing the broken world that will require the ministrations of comedy. And the hint of love will emerge between the daughter of the banished duke and the mistreated younger brother, a sort of classic pairing. And the green world, outside the unhappy court, promises the work of comedy. So it’s a classic sort of comedic structure.

In scene 1 we learn of the enmity of the younger two brothers, or rather the mistreatment of the younger, Orlando, by the elder, Oliver. There’s no indication why this should be so; it’s just the assumption that siblings will quarrel, that an elder brother may oppress the younger. Oliver admits, 1.1.160, that he doesn’t know why he hates his brother, just that he harbors jealousy, seemingly undeservedly. Because of this, he’s happy to have Charles, a dangerous sort of wrestler, have a crack at Orlando (so to speak), even though Charles had attempted to forestall the bout. Interestingly, this is all in prose.

And the prose continues in the second scene in the rather playful dialogue of the two cousins, where the narrative emerges of their fathers’ quarrel and their own near sisterhood. The Fool Touchstone is introduced into their conversation as a conveyor of wit, though only a mild sort of wit, but one that seems to stand outside the rivalries and enmities of the family characters. The wrestler Charles enters the narrative in a somewhat loose way, just seeming entertainment, but his physical power seems to express something of the danger that the court world represents. The two young women try to warn young Orlando of the danger of engaging Charles, but he mirrors psychologically the darkness of the unhappy world and is willing to sacrifice himself.

Still in the longish scene 2 the wresting occurs, and unexpectedly the young Orlando prevails over Charles, the first of comedy’s victories and the one that provokes the interest in Rosalind, the wittier of the two cousins. She gives Orlando a favor, which surprises him and evokes his own interest in her. In Le Beau’s account of the two young women, there’s a mistake in the description of Celia as the taller of the two, though later it’s established that Rosalind is taller and thus more able to impersonate a young man. We learn that Orlando must also leave the court since his victory over Charles now, somewhat unaccountably, makes him suspect too.

And in scene 3 Rosalind seem deep into love of the successful wrestler, and she and Celia, still in prose though verse prevailed for a short time at the end of scene 2, joke about this. Into this bursts Duke Frederick with the somewhat unaccountable demand that his niece Rosalind leave the court, accusing her of treason. So the two nieces decide to set out for the green world, Rosalind disguising as a man, and the two assuming new, green world names. Again rather unaccountably, they decide to take Touchstone with them.

There isn’t a great deal of concern for plausibility in the opening three scenes, rather a sense that the conflicts can emerge almost from nowhere and require adjustment and clever change. The characterization of the two young women is perhaps the most predominant attraction in the first act. And the establishment of the animosities is swift and threatening. The signals are all toward the need of comedic resolution.

Over to you for the green world.

Dusty:

Yes, several elements of the plot in Act 1 are “unaccountable”: why Oliver hates Orlando, why the younger Duke banished the older brother Duke, why Orlando leaves the court, why Rosalind is banished, why Rosalind and Celia take Touchstone along. I would add that it seems implausible that witty Rosalind, not at all a silly girl, and someone who seems quite aware of herself as a marriageable young woman, should fall instantly for Orlando. Ros and Celia make me feel that we are in a comedic world, or a world in which nothing seems quite real or consequential. I suppose, however, that a director could play the act quite darkly, bringing out the family animosities.

Even though Orlando is kept “rustically” at home, and raised “like a peasant,” he seems, as even Oliver recognizes, to be natively “gentle” and well spoken. How should he be portrayed? As a sort of  hayseed, or a male Cinderella? Then, of course, he turns out to be a bit of a Hercules too.

I too noticed the shift from prose to verse, and tried to account for it. When the Duke is on stage, the characters tend to speak verse, though not until the Duke speaks for the second time.

The idle chat in 1.2 in which Touchstone swears “by my honor” and then asks the girls to swear “by their beards” (if they had them) seems to lay the groundwork for later verbal play about “if.”

Dusty:

Act 2 takes us to the Forest of Arden, a “green” world but not a golden one. It’s a place one has fled to because of “adversity,” but it’s also a place of adversity. You might think that the time is summer, but there’s repeated reference to “winter’s wind” and to “winter and rough weather,” and to the need to hunt for deer in order to feed themselves. (That would ordinarily mean that we’re in the late autumn or winter — have you ever seen the play set in winter?) When Duke says the “uses of adversity” are “sweet,” he is trying to look on the bright side, and make the best of a bad business.

We follow both Rosalind/Celia/Touchstone and Orlando into the Forest, though we don’t see much of them yet. Instead, we get a lot of song and we hear a lot from Jaques. I’m not sure what to make of his moralizing on the dying deer. At first, by humanizing the stag, he raises the question of the morality of killing deer, even for food. But as the description of the deer goes on – the big round “tears” coursing down his innocent “nose” — it’s comic/maudlin. And the moralizing seems very book-based. Jaques doesn’t appear to see the wounded animal in front of him. All he sees is a moral exemplum of one human failing or other. I’m not sure what to make of Jaques in 2.7, when he reports on seeing a “motley fool” in the forest moralizing on “time.” Who is the motley fool? It doesn’t sound like Touchstone, unless Touchstone is overheard parodying the moralizing of Jaques. As Jaques goes on, and he gets a lot of lines in the scene, I’m not sure that I follow him, especially when he turns from laughing at “folly” to “cleansing the foul body of the infected world.” Now he is a biting satirist, “chiding sin.” The following exchange between Duke Sr and Jaques rehearses some of the controversies about satire: is the satirist himself guilty of the sins he denounces? Does a satirist attack persons or sins?

As for the famous “seven ages of man,” it’s worth noting that although it’s a detachable “speech” that describes the arc of human life, it occurs in dramatic context: Orlando’s unhappiness, and Duke Senior’s observation that “we are not all alone unhappy.” (That comment confirms what we sense elsewhere — that Arden is not a happy place.) And it’s Duke who introduces the theatrical metaphor, which Jaques then runs with. He is said to be melancholy, so I assume he delivers the speech in a serious and even melodramatic manner. Again, is there something bookish about his “seven ages”? The speech traces an arc that first rises and then with the 6th age falls pretty sharply to “second childishness and mere oblivion.” That’s a sobering thought for a comedy. And on cue Orlando comes in with 80-year-old Adam, a worn out old man.

Is there a connection between Jaques’ bookish view of the world and the literary-based loving of Silvius for Phebe? It’s interesting that we hear about Silvius’s love for Phebe before we hear about Orlando’s for Rosalind.

The wonderful songs in this act also have a plaintive sound or “dying fall” to them, especially in the close: “. . . no enemy/ But winter and rough weather. . .”  “man’s ingratitude. . . Most friendship is faining [feigning?], most loving mere folly.”

Over to you, and I’d especially like to know what you make of Jaques.

Michael:

Right! The Forest of Arden seems a rather chilly, wintry place, a green world, but not golden, and the people we find there are ones we are expected to recognize. Duke Senior presides, and he seems to be making the best of difficult situation, deciding that adversity may be a good thing and determined to find “tongues in trees,” books in brooks, sermons in stones, and such. The oddest duck he has with him is Jaques, who seems to exaggerate and moralize things. I expect he’s meant as a kind of satirist, though not one who makes a great deal of sense. But he’s predominantly a comic figure of melancholy, a figure of satire himself. Of course melancholy, though it started out as a serious disposition among the Florentines a century earlier, had become a fashion, and this seems what the play wants to skewer. Duke Senior taxes him for hypocrisy, but he counters with the usual claim of the satirist: I’m just describing the way things are, and if anyone objects, that just proves my point and shows them the object of satire.

His seven ages of man speech seems a set piece; the most effective instance of it I’ve seen was at the London Globe, when the actor playing Jaques looked right at examples in the audience for each, or almost each, of his saws. I don’t think there were any infants mewling and puking in a nurse’s arms, but the were some school kids and lovers he could target (just by looking at them) as well as a young man who might be a soldier. And there were enough middle-aged men to fill out the sixth age. As for the seventh age, I think everyone was ducking this, but then Orlando comes in with Adam. It was an effective way of drawing the audience in, and a good joke, but I don’t think it meant we took Jaques seriously. I think his melancholy seems rather the object of satire. Touchstone seems more comic, doesn’t he, but not more consequential, and his review of pastoral in Act 3 seems to skewer the genre.

By Act 3 the “pastoral world” seems to be any number of things. It’s Orlando’s outlandish (orlandish?) hanging verses on trees, which seems to make fun of Duke Senior’s idea of “tongues in trees” and books in brooks, etc. It’s Corin, who seems to be a real shepherd in spite of his classical name. It’s Touchstone, who can take it or leave it, but is happy to get things on with Audrey (whose name is rhymed with “bawdry.” And it’s Silvius and Phebe, who seem like conventional figures out of classical pastoral.

We have three different sorts of lovers, four perhaps if we count Phebe wanting to woo Rosalind as Ganymede. And Rosalind, of courses, is the one who connects it all, clearly the best part in the play. She and Celia seem happy to settle down for a pastoral interlude in the cottage they buy, but they don’t take pastoral seriously either. In fact most of the center of the play seems to be jokes about pastoral, and short scenes of comic banter. There’s virtually no forward movement, no plot to be engaged. We know that Rosalind’s idea of being wooed as a boy by Orlando is going to advance their relationship, and all will turn out well there.

Act 4 seems to advance more of the comic back and forth of Act 3, but this I’ll leave to you. Does Orlando begin to see who Rosalind really is?

Dusty:

This time around, As you Like It, which used to be one of my favorite plays, seems pretty lightweight and miscellaneous. As you say, Jaques and Touchstone aren’t essential to the plot or as commentators — though I recall that Touchstone is more important in Act 5. There’s not much of a plot, nothing really driving Rosalind and Celia, or Orlando, or for that matter Duke Senior and his men, to do anything in particular. Once the characters escape from court to green world, nothing seems particularly urgent or consequential. The most serious failing is to miss an appointment, but as Orlando says “there’s no clock in the forest,” a phrase suggesting that in Arden you have somehow escaped from time.

Arden has a variety of “locals,” including Corin and Audrey, who sound and behave like rustics, as well as Silvius and Phebe, who live in a world of literary pastoral. Touchstone and Jaques have various witty things to say, but so do Rosalind and Orlando. In fact, Rosalind sometimes sounds like a court fool/wit, who puns and jests. I still don’t have a fix on Jaques, or on Touchstone for that matter. Why does he want to marry Audrey? She herself says that she only has “simple” features and is “not fair,” so presumably she should be played as a coarse-looking peasant. Maybe Touchstone just wants to get somebody into bed, and he figures that if he goes through a fake marriage with Audrey he can have her. For that matter, Phebe is not “fair” either, despite Silvius’s praise of her. All of the pairs of lovers in the play — Silvius and Phebe, Audrey and Touchstone, Rosalind and Orlando — are foolish in one way or another, and are smitten at first sight. Just as I don’t understand why Touchstone “loves” Audrey, it’s not at all clear to me what Silvius seems in Phebe, or even what Rosalind and Orlando see in each other. I guess Orlando is meant to be a hunk, and Rosalind quite pretty. We like her because she is witty, but I’m not sure that Orlando appreciates her wit. Shakespeare doesn’t seem to think it’s necessary to explain why A loves B. (That may be true in his other comedies, though not in  his tragedies.)

Just as the “ages of man” speech seemed a detachable “performance piece,” a bit of meta-theatricality, as I guess it was in the production you liked, so a number of the “speeches” that various characters make seem less like dialogue — what one character might plausibly say to another — than like comic bits that allow a character to display his or her wit: Rosalind on the way time ambles, trots, gallops, or stands still; the marks of a man in love; how to cure a lover; the various kinds of melancholy; the men who died, but not for love.

There is also a lot of song in the forest. (Is this basically just a play full of song and wit and comic situations about foolish lovers?) Then in 4.3 the play turns toward fairy tale, when Oliver enters, Orlando saves him from a lion and Oliver promptly “converts.”

If I ask why a character behaves the way he/she does, I don’t think there are good answers. Why should the bad Duke demand that Oliver produce Orlando, or suffer banishment? Why does Rosalind banter with Orlando and tell him she doesn’t believe he is really in love? (I have seen it suggested that Rosalind is “testing” him, but it’s not clear to me that what she does constitutes a “test.”) Why, when he is wounded by the lion, does Orlando send for Ganymede rather than for Rosalind?

I have seen it suggested that the play invites us to think seriously about same-sex attraction, particularly because Orlando is attracted to “Ganymede.” A lot depends, so my Pelican editor suggests, on whether the production plays Rosalind as feminine (despite her disguise). Is Phebe attracted to Ganymede because “he” is a boy or because “he” seems feminine? Is Orlando attracted to Ganymede because he is a feminine boy or a “convincing boy”? In the latter case, we have same-sex attraction. And it’s of course all complicated by the fact that boys are playing Rosalind (and Phebe). But I am not sure whether the interest in same-sex attraction is something that editors and critics today are just determined to find in the play.

Once we get to Act 5 all the irregularities get straightened out. But does the play simply and finally celebrate Hymen and heterosexual marriage?

Michael:

Yes, it’s striking that the play does seem so lightweight and filled with odd, almost leftover, stuff, and it’s hard to find any ideas, or anything consequential in it. And yet it’s a play I’ve always enjoyed when I’ve seen it on stage. Why, I wonder. It may start one thinking about the phenomenality of theater. Here we’re just dealing with words and trying to imagine, or remember, what it all looked like on a real stage. And on a “real stage,” not just the one in our heads, there would be actual human bodies. Jaques would have to be not just some gloomy quips that seem to mock a rather tedious pose of the time, but, presumably, a dark-suited haggard older guy, who’s something of a pain in the ass and doesn’t want to fit into the program and is quite relieved when he doesn’t have to (“I am for other than for dancing measures”). I expect Touchstone in particular would be genuinely amusing, but not necessarily in what he’s saying, but in the way he keeps acting with the other characters and needling them; I’m not sure I can quite describe that, but everyone seems to find him agreeable, and he’s seems intent on taking sex and marriage to the most basic level, pressing in “amongst the rest of the country copulatives.” And since the ending must set a Shakespearean record for coupling, Audrey must be part of Touchstone’s shtick; just what is going on when T. suggests to her, “bear you body more seeming, Audrey.”

And above all, Rosalind must be the most appealing female lead; she’s the one who carries the play. And it’s not really in her lines, or not only in her lines. Shakespeare must have had an extremely talented and physically attractive boy who could carry this off, such that he even gave him the epilogue that draws the audience, in a rather sexy way, into the ending of the play. And though the boy playing a girl playing a boy is certainly part of the fun, Rosalind’s appeal can be carried just a brilliantly by a real woman. I myself suspect that our colleagues who want to make much of the same-sex attraction in the play are responding mostly to current preoccupations, but there’s enough to go on for that perspective too. I doubt we are ever allowed to fail to see Rosalind in Ganymede, and there are probably lots of ways to do this. But part of the joke must be the egregious failure of Orlando to see what’s going on. But he too must be a real physical presence on the stage, maybe as appealing as Rosalind, even though his verbal part, what we’re reacting to on the page, is rather thin.

Michael:

The resolution in Acts 4 and 5 of Oliver with the “bloody napkin” and the crazy story of the snake and the lioness looks like parody of romance endings, then he quickly falling in love with Celia so he can take his place among the country copulatives. It’s all highly improbable, but onstage it seems to be acceptable, if for no other reason than to make it all symmetrical. But all those people, real stage presences, falling in love in spite of what seems reasonable.

More than any other play I can think of, AYLI seems to have detachable scenes and sections. 5.1, for example, introduces William, “a fair name,” for no reason I can discern, who seems to be a possible lover of Audrey, though she says he has no interest (or claim, I suppose) in her. Touchstone’s exposition of the seven causes by which one could avoid a duel is another detachable passage. “Second brother” of Orlando and Oliver is a surprise, but just about anybody could take his lines that tell of the fate of Duke Frederick. The various songs all seem ornamental, none essential, but all fun. What an odd play! But one that just takes off when it’s played on stage by appealing bodies young and old.

And then, when we go back and look at the text, it all seems a bit thin, a bit cobbled together, rather perplexing. Is this the guy who was just now working on Hamlet?

Dusty:

I think you are right that on the stage the play is a delight. And what seems preposterous or unaccountable on the page can pass unnoticed on the stage. But I’m not sure it seems “reasonable.” It’s rather that in the make-believe world of Arden anything can happen . . . and does.

Why did Shakespeare include 5.1? (Do you suppose he played William?)  It doesn’t advance the plot, or complicate it, in any way. Both Touchstone and Audrey quickly dispose of poor William, and Touchstone makes fun of him with court talk that needs to be translated for bumpkins. Maybe it signals that, when all is said and done, court trumps country, or that the court people in Arden are still courtiers.

At the beginning of 5.2, when Orlando stands slack-jawed at the news of Oliver’s love for Aliena — “Is it possible . . .? — he perhaps speaks for the audience. Answer: yes, anything is possible. (I think we are supposed to assume that Orlando never laid eyes on Celia when they were at court together.) Rosalind also speaks for the audience when she laughs at the hasty coupling with her riff on “no sooner . . . but.” Then she turns magician  — and they all believe her — in another degree of improbability. The entrance of Silvius and Phebe leads to an ingenious moment for the various lovers — “and I for Ganymede . . . And I for Rosalind . . . And I for no woman. . .,” etc. Are we in a Rossini opera buffa? When at line 100 Orlando seems to speak of loving Ganymede, does Rosalind’s surprised question, “Why do you speak [of love to me]?,” make our heads spin? (Those who think the play toys with same-sex attraction must think this exchange signals that Orlando is really attracted to Ganymede.) Why, by the way, has Orlando never bothered to look for Rosalind in the forest? I  guess we don’t let that bother us. Rosalind closes the scene with another speech full of equivocation: I will do X “if I can . . .. if. . . .if.” It’s another comic variation on the theme of “if” that we first saw in   that she began in 1.2 and Touchstone will cap in the next scene.

5.3 seems to have been included so that we could hear the song, “It was a lover and his lass,”  which establishes the tone and theme of the last act. As  Touchstone himself seems to concede — “there was no great matter in the ditty” — it doesn’t really have much to do with the plot.

5.4 again introduces the question of credibility: “Dost thou believe that [Ganymede]/ Can do all this that he hath promised?” And Orlando maybe answers for the audience: sometimes yes and sometimes no. Rosalind as Ganymede re-introduces her “if,” beginning at line 11. Her exit and absence from the stage is covered by Touchstone and Jaques, and by another bit of what you call “detachable” comedy, the quarrel “on the seventh cause.” This gives Touchstone his opportunity to respond to, or one-up, Jaques and his “seven stages of man” speech. Shakespeare draws attention to it as a “comic bit” by having Touchstone mention it at line 48, and then making us wait for it until  line 68 — and Jaques has to ask twice to hear it. His speech is pure comedy, unrelated to anything in the play, except for its central equivocation: “. . . if I said his beard was not well cut.” It’s the last of the “if” bits in the play, and Touchstone’s conclusion with “Much virtue in if” is probably an applause line.

Suddenly the scene turns from wit comedy to masque, as Hymen enters and sings a beautiful song. But it is Rosalind rather than Hymen who presides. Interesting that she begins by giving herself to her father. Normally it is the father who “gives” his daughter to the groom, but not here. (Maybe we don’t ask ourselves why Rosalind has not bothered to seek out her father in the forest before this, though I note that some critics would say she is displaying her independence from a father, and her refusal to submit to conventional male-female hierarchies. Then it is Rosalind, not her father, who gives herself to Orlando. All is now made “even,” neither male nor female superior to the other.

Hymen now gets a few lines, and joins the various lovers, perhaps leading them in some sort of dance, and the wedding hymn that follows seems to reinstate the conventional value of marriage.

Shakespeare is not done. The master of plot then answers the “Can you top this?” challenge by bringing in the newly-discovered (or newly-invented)  “second son of old Sir Rowland.” And in this NeverNeverLand we get another (!) sudden conversion: the last of the evil in the play simply disappears. Everybody except Jaques presumably goes back to court — so the retreat to Arden was just an interlude. Jaques, however, literally retreats to Duke’s cave, which has just conveniently become vacant. (His departure from the scene is much more cordial than Malvolio”s.)

The epilogue is unusual, I think, not only because it is spoken by a female character, but also because it doesn’t make any reference to the play, except perhaps in Rosalind saying she will “conjure” the audience (recalling, perhaps, her role as “magician”). When she says “I charge you . . . to like as much of this play as please you,” does she not only allude to its title but also to acknowledge that it is sort of a comic revue, with lots of music and comic “bits,” strung together rather loosely by a love-and-reconciliation plot?