Review of As You Like It
Jul. 8th, 2005 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWhile I should be working on my novel and I fully intend to this weekend, my goal to finish Chapter 6, I find myself puzzeling instead over a play I saw on Sunday called As You Like It . Odd to be writing something about As You Like It now, when I vaguely remember trying to write an essay about it my senior year of high school under the somewhat critical eye of my curmudgeon of an English teacher. A man, dead now these many years, who taught me how to turn a phrase and made me bleed for the perfect sentence.
As You Like It is typical of Shakespeare's many romantic comedies - focusing on mistaken identity and farcial situations arising from women pretending to be men. Which if you consider the period, where all roles, male or female, were played by men, is quite amusing. Particularly lines such as: "I love no woman born." It doesn't quite have the same ring to it in today's world, when Rosalind is played by an actress, as it did back in Shakespear's time when Rosalind was definitely played by a man. For those of you who have never seen the play, let me back up a step. Rosalind, a Duke's daughter, has been banished by her evil Uncle, who threatens to kill her on sight. She retreats to a forest with her cousin and a fool. She wears a man's garb, and takes the name of Ganymead. Prior to being banished, she fell for a local champion, who in due course ends up in the same forest, banished by the same evil uncle. In this forest they meet assorted people, including a lovesick shepard, a shepardess who fancies Ganymead, the champion's successful brother, and Jaques, a cynical bard living in a cave. Jacques is most like Shakespear's counter-part in the play, commenting on all that surrounds him.
As You Like It is the lesser known of Shakespeare's comedies, by lesser known, I mean rarely performed. To the best of my knowledge no films have been done of it, unlike Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelth Night or Much A Do About Nothing. Also not much really happens in As You Like It. The action seems to be focused on the romantic farce, the inability to see the loved one staring you in the face. Orlando, the local champion, that Rosalind falls in love with, is blind to the fact that Ganymead is in truth Rosalind. He is in effect blind to everything but his emotion. Something Ganymead points out to him.
Stating - all these lovely poems hanging from defensless trees...why don't you just go to the girl and tell her how you feel? Why not show her? All this is is but words. Yet, for lack of lively plot or memorable character, we do have a speech in the center of the play that has been quoted as much as any in Hamlet.
The speech is given by the melancholy cynic Jacques, who in effect, I see as the playwrite's counterpart. The external narrator commenting on the action taking place on stage, and in a sense, linking that action metaphorically to life. Are we the play, asks Jacques, or are you? Or is this merely a play within a play taking place on a much larger stage with an unseen audience? Who are the players here? A question that has popped up in more than one play I've seen - ranging from Pirandello's classic Six Characters in Search of An Author to Star Trek The Next Generation's episode about a hologram escaping into another holographic world, thinking it is real, while the Captain of the ship wonders aloud if he and his crew are also nothing more than characters in someone else's play.
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,
Quotes Jacques...before lasping into the seven stages of man speech, describing in effect each male character in the play, from himself all the way down to the lovesick Orlando and the boy minstrel singer.
It's tempting to see As You Like It as nothing more than a piece of fluff, a cross-gender farce about a women who plays a man to obtain her lover. And while I freely admit my mind wandered at times during Sunday's performance, I caught certain bits and pieces in the play that made me ponder gender roles,
and my own perspective on things.
In another post I rambled about first impressions, here I think we see the folly in them. Upon first impression, Ganymead is a man. Orlando is so distracted that he never notices that Ganymead is in effect his Rosalind.
The Fool, Touchstone, sees his bride to be as nothing more than a foul country whore, yet underneath, there's more and he falls for her, wedding her.
Jacques sees the melancholy nature of life, the surface of it - like the skin on the top of cream. He does not see the joy. Even the title itself is a play on the theme - "As You Like It" - You see life as you like it to be. Or not as the case may be. The impression is a matter of mood and perspective. But come back again and you'll see something else. As Ganymead proves when he tells the shepherd, Phoebe (the maid fancing him), and Orlando to return the next day to the wood - promising that they will see something completely different.
It's a standard theme in Shakespear's comedies, from Midsummer Night's Dream to Twelth Night - don't trust your perception, it may be false. Don't trust what you see or what you've been taught. The man might in fact be a woman in disguise. The wrestling champion, a landowner with a wealthy brother. But Shakespeare also plays with his audience's perceptions - in his day and age, only a whore or common woman would be an actress, so all the woman's roles were played by men. Shakespeare obviously had issues with this, because he makes fun of it. Jabbing at the fact that he has to cast the female role with a sturdy youth. So scenes such as Rosalind and Celia literally rolling on top of each other, suggesting, wink wink, they are having sex - are wink wink about the fact that you have a guy, playing a girl, kissing and embracing another guy. He blends the genders, suggesting that the differences between them may in fact be only skin-deep. Rosalind makes a more interesting and attractive guy than Orlando or any of the other suitors, tougher, stronger. If anything, Orlando at times appears to be the girl in the relationship. Yet isn't. Challenging our preconcieved notions. He does something similar in Twelth Night with Viola, who equally plays a guy.
The play, if you think about it a while, plays with one's mind, making one wonder what is the playwrite is doing here. Is he talking about love? Or talking about perception? According to my playbill: Emerson wrote - "A mind might ponder its thought for ages and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion love shall teach it in a day..." Does love change our perception?
Broaden or narrow it?
If you've never had the experience of seeing a play performed at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park - I recommend you try it. There are no bad seats in this theater. You can see and hear everything. The stage is slanted and there's no ceiling, the seats raised in bleacher style, with backs, so that you down at the stage. Behind it - sky and trees and the ponds of Central Park, with skyscrapers looming like shadows in the distance. The plays I've seen here and there have been only two so far, have been amongst the most enjoyable of my experience. Certainly the best Shakespeare I've seen. And I saw quite a bit of Shakespear performed by the Royal Shakespear Theater of London in 1987. The acting? Good all around. No weak performances. The actor who sang, has a lovely voice, not that I'm necessarily the best judge. And it was a treat, as cjlasky said much later, to hear the seven stages of man speech given with such nuance. The play runs until the end of the month, I believe, if anyone wants to try and catch it. In August, it will be Two Gentleman of Verona, done as a musical...
As You Like It is typical of Shakespeare's many romantic comedies - focusing on mistaken identity and farcial situations arising from women pretending to be men. Which if you consider the period, where all roles, male or female, were played by men, is quite amusing. Particularly lines such as: "I love no woman born." It doesn't quite have the same ring to it in today's world, when Rosalind is played by an actress, as it did back in Shakespear's time when Rosalind was definitely played by a man. For those of you who have never seen the play, let me back up a step. Rosalind, a Duke's daughter, has been banished by her evil Uncle, who threatens to kill her on sight. She retreats to a forest with her cousin and a fool. She wears a man's garb, and takes the name of Ganymead. Prior to being banished, she fell for a local champion, who in due course ends up in the same forest, banished by the same evil uncle. In this forest they meet assorted people, including a lovesick shepard, a shepardess who fancies Ganymead, the champion's successful brother, and Jaques, a cynical bard living in a cave. Jacques is most like Shakespear's counter-part in the play, commenting on all that surrounds him.
As You Like It is the lesser known of Shakespeare's comedies, by lesser known, I mean rarely performed. To the best of my knowledge no films have been done of it, unlike Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelth Night or Much A Do About Nothing. Also not much really happens in As You Like It. The action seems to be focused on the romantic farce, the inability to see the loved one staring you in the face. Orlando, the local champion, that Rosalind falls in love with, is blind to the fact that Ganymead is in truth Rosalind. He is in effect blind to everything but his emotion. Something Ganymead points out to him.
Stating - all these lovely poems hanging from defensless trees...why don't you just go to the girl and tell her how you feel? Why not show her? All this is is but words. Yet, for lack of lively plot or memorable character, we do have a speech in the center of the play that has been quoted as much as any in Hamlet.
The speech is given by the melancholy cynic Jacques, who in effect, I see as the playwrite's counterpart. The external narrator commenting on the action taking place on stage, and in a sense, linking that action metaphorically to life. Are we the play, asks Jacques, or are you? Or is this merely a play within a play taking place on a much larger stage with an unseen audience? Who are the players here? A question that has popped up in more than one play I've seen - ranging from Pirandello's classic Six Characters in Search of An Author to Star Trek The Next Generation's episode about a hologram escaping into another holographic world, thinking it is real, while the Captain of the ship wonders aloud if he and his crew are also nothing more than characters in someone else's play.
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,
Quotes Jacques...before lasping into the seven stages of man speech, describing in effect each male character in the play, from himself all the way down to the lovesick Orlando and the boy minstrel singer.
It's tempting to see As You Like It as nothing more than a piece of fluff, a cross-gender farce about a women who plays a man to obtain her lover. And while I freely admit my mind wandered at times during Sunday's performance, I caught certain bits and pieces in the play that made me ponder gender roles,
and my own perspective on things.
In another post I rambled about first impressions, here I think we see the folly in them. Upon first impression, Ganymead is a man. Orlando is so distracted that he never notices that Ganymead is in effect his Rosalind.
The Fool, Touchstone, sees his bride to be as nothing more than a foul country whore, yet underneath, there's more and he falls for her, wedding her.
Jacques sees the melancholy nature of life, the surface of it - like the skin on the top of cream. He does not see the joy. Even the title itself is a play on the theme - "As You Like It" - You see life as you like it to be. Or not as the case may be. The impression is a matter of mood and perspective. But come back again and you'll see something else. As Ganymead proves when he tells the shepherd, Phoebe (the maid fancing him), and Orlando to return the next day to the wood - promising that they will see something completely different.
It's a standard theme in Shakespear's comedies, from Midsummer Night's Dream to Twelth Night - don't trust your perception, it may be false. Don't trust what you see or what you've been taught. The man might in fact be a woman in disguise. The wrestling champion, a landowner with a wealthy brother. But Shakespeare also plays with his audience's perceptions - in his day and age, only a whore or common woman would be an actress, so all the woman's roles were played by men. Shakespeare obviously had issues with this, because he makes fun of it. Jabbing at the fact that he has to cast the female role with a sturdy youth. So scenes such as Rosalind and Celia literally rolling on top of each other, suggesting, wink wink, they are having sex - are wink wink about the fact that you have a guy, playing a girl, kissing and embracing another guy. He blends the genders, suggesting that the differences between them may in fact be only skin-deep. Rosalind makes a more interesting and attractive guy than Orlando or any of the other suitors, tougher, stronger. If anything, Orlando at times appears to be the girl in the relationship. Yet isn't. Challenging our preconcieved notions. He does something similar in Twelth Night with Viola, who equally plays a guy.
The play, if you think about it a while, plays with one's mind, making one wonder what is the playwrite is doing here. Is he talking about love? Or talking about perception? According to my playbill: Emerson wrote - "A mind might ponder its thought for ages and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion love shall teach it in a day..." Does love change our perception?
Broaden or narrow it?
If you've never had the experience of seeing a play performed at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park - I recommend you try it. There are no bad seats in this theater. You can see and hear everything. The stage is slanted and there's no ceiling, the seats raised in bleacher style, with backs, so that you down at the stage. Behind it - sky and trees and the ponds of Central Park, with skyscrapers looming like shadows in the distance. The plays I've seen here and there have been only two so far, have been amongst the most enjoyable of my experience. Certainly the best Shakespeare I've seen. And I saw quite a bit of Shakespear performed by the Royal Shakespear Theater of London in 1987. The acting? Good all around. No weak performances. The actor who sang, has a lovely voice, not that I'm necessarily the best judge. And it was a treat, as cjlasky said much later, to hear the seven stages of man speech given with such nuance. The play runs until the end of the month, I believe, if anyone wants to try and catch it. In August, it will be Two Gentleman of Verona, done as a musical...
no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 04:51 am (UTC)Rosalind makes a more interesting and attractive guy than Orlando or any of the other suitors, tougher, stronger.
Oh yes. I was assuming a lot of that came from the actress. She was perfect. In a dress, was a stunning woman, but in the men's outfit, was a sexy and daring man. Another excellent choice. A very well cast play. It was great hearing your take on this as well!!
no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 02:49 pm (UTC)This could be said of the heroines in most of the comedies - the men are no way in the same class. The nearest to being up to the heroine's weight might be Benedick in 'Much Ado'.