As You Like It is an interesting play in that there isn’t any true villain. Yes, Duke Frederick is a villainous character, but his villainy is not at the center of the play’s conflict, nor is Oliver’s. When the characters arrive in the woods at the end of Act II, we basically forget about Duke Frederic and Oliver until the end of the play. Why then doesn’t the play end at the end of Act II? When Rosalind meets Orlando in the woods, why doesn’t she simply strip off her manly attire and marry Orlando? Why the long, painful chase? It reminds me of the old screwball comedies where an entire play revolves around a simple misunderstanding and in the end the characters’ worst enemies are their own sillinesses. Rosalind suggests, as if it’s bingo or knitting, that they take up falling in love. In the first scene, Rosalind thinks that falling in love is just a game—a ridiculous stupid game. One scene later, Rosalind falls in love. Of course, every person who’s not in love thinks lovers are silly, and they are silly, but it doesn’t seem silly to the people in love. People in love are mad but thankfully, as Rosalind reminds us, the madness is pretty common.
As Ganymede, Rosalind continually mocks people in love—she makes fun of Orlando as she’s falling for him. Jaques says about the fool, “And they that are most galled by my folly, they most must laugh. And why must they? He that a fool wisely hits does very foolishly not to seem senseless of the barb.” Or to speak plainer, when the fool unknowingly insults the smart man, the smart man must pretend not to understand the insult and therefore protects himself from humiliation. In another sense, this is exactly Rosalind’s tactic. While falling in love, she pretends not to be falling in love. Rosalind can see her own silliness clearly, unlike the other character’s, who are blind to their own giddiness.
Actually, Rosalind and Jaques both see the folly of love—and yes, there is folly in love. So much stupidity goes on when people fall in love (take Silvius and Phebe for example.) Jaques thinks that lovers are stupid and he’s partly right, but Rosalind sees the stupidity and yet decides that it’s all worth it—she’s the smartest character in the play.
Jaques—the Eyore of As You Like It
Is he just an old sourpuss or does he have a point? It’s easy to see Jaques in different ways. Many productions portray Jaques as this old grump who we’re happy to see leave at the end of the show. Some productions show him as an arrogant snob who thinks he’s better than everyone else. In our production, we chose instead to show Jaques as a bit more complicated than that. He’s a little bit of everything. He’s cynical, proud, blunt, funny, and intellectual, but not necessarily wrong in any of these things. He has, as Sweeny Todd puts it, “Seen the world and all its wonders, but the cruelty of men is as wondrous as Peru.” He is sad and for good reason; he sees the barbarity and hypocrisy in the people around him (who are good people, too), and yet barbaric and hypocritical. The play is about characters who are supposed to love and trust each other—brother and brother; father and daughter; uncle and niece. But they only pretend to do these things. Isn’t a bit strange that after Duke Frederick banishes her father, Rosalind lives at the court and they talk as if everything is peachy keen and happy. That’s awful; no wonder Jaques is upset about a world like that. And yet isn’t that the kind of world we live in too? Is it wrong to be cynical about a world where potlucks and bake-sales are illegal (because of health restrictions), but where we can kill unborn children with pride. So when Jaques sees Touchstone, who’scertainly not a decent person, he’s happy to meet someone who is at least not a hypocrite, like the others. Touchstone does his sins out in the open where everyone can see. At the end of the show, though, even Jaques is taken over by Rosalind joy. Yes, the world is stupid and evil, but let’s fall in love and be married. Jaques goes searching for his own love too, by going to become a monk. He wants to find joy in a better life than what he had before. The play, after all, is called As You Like It. We all get there a different way, but we all come to the same end.
“Peace, ho! I bar confusion. ‘Tis I must make conclusion.”
Throughout the play we see four different couples. Oliver and Celia--love at first sight; everything goes extraordinarily smoothly. There’s Touchstone and Audrey—she’s cute and available; what more could one want? Then there’s Phebe and Silvius—where there’s certainly not equal affection on each side. Their love does not come easily, but very stupidly. Finally, Rosalind and Orlando—love at first sight that has not run very smoothly. They have wooed, lied, hidden, escaped, and played a very strange game to end up together. And yet, through all the different circumstances, all of the couples arrive at the same conclusion—marriage.
In the last scene, the Goddess of Marriage suddenly arrives, which seems funny for a play that’s been pretty realistic throughout. Greek gods don’t randomly show up in our chic-flicks of today. Why is Hymen suddenly in the play? Hymen says that reason will diminish our wonder and confusion about falling in love—about how in the wide world each ended up with each other. Hymen enters and blesses the couples. “Oh wonderful, most wonderful, and out of all whooping!” It’s not the Goddess of Love that fixes everything, but the Goddess of Marriage. It’s a play about the confusion and folly of love and in the end the answer to the problem is marriage. Because however hard you try, love doesn’t make sense—In the game of love there are no rules, because love isn’t really a game. If love were a game, Orlando never could have won. If love were rational, Orlando never would have deserved Roslind. But love is merely a madness. Love is a dance. The answer to the madness of love is marriage, which binds them together because, “It’s not good for man to be alone” and so we remember that love is never a mistake because, “Hymen from heaven brought her.”
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