Musician’s Notes: As You Like It

The reason we decided to incorporate music with Shakespeare’s As You Like It is because music is the right hand of love; everything humans do is done to music. We marry to music, we watch movies to music, we party to music, we graduate to music, and we fight to music. In Shakespeare’s time a play was not simply a two-hour period where audience sat in rows and clapped politely like today. In Shakespeare’s time, a play was six hours long stuffed with musicians, entertainers (not cast), and great amounts of food. It was an event carried not only by a story, but also by food and music.

So a couple of us started looking for music a few months before As You like it started rehearsals. We needed music that had words that helped tell the story, as well as music that gave the right mood. We watched romance movies like 500 Days of Summer to get inspiration from their soundtracks, and we searched through a variety of artists from Mumford and Sons to Ella Fitzgerald, and even Elvis. We also experimented writing our own songs. Each song in the play, no matter how famous, has our own unique spin. We love not just replicating songs, but, instead, making them our own. Playing the jazz song “Paper Moon” with folk instruments is quite different than how it’s usually played with a full jazz band. This is our third year of Shakespeare in the park, and it is also our third year including the song “Horace Staccato” at the beginning of our play and “Le Festin” at the end of our play. The last words in “Le Festin” are what the entire play builds up to: “Une vie à me cacher et puis libre enfin Le festin est sur mon chemin,” which translates to: “A lifetime of hiding; I’m suddenly free! My dinner is waiting for me!” No more hiding is a metaphor for no more disguises; Rosalind reveals herself and there is only one thing left—freedom—or as we like to call it—marriage. The dinner is the marriage—a banquet!

We use music in many different ways in As You Like It; one such use is as a device for transitions. For example, “Look for Me Baby” is a song during which all the characters move from the court to the forest. It’s a fast-moving tune about escaping, which parallels what is happening in the scene. The second way we use music is to integrate it into a scene. When “Loving You” is played, the music stops and starts with the scene; the musicians aren’t just the soundtrack, but are actually in the scene with the lovers. And the last way we use music is, of course, to create mood in the background. For instance, when Touchstone and Audrey enter a scene we play a particular tune, which is merely to set a mood about certain scenes or a set of characters. The music is the soundtrack to our play; its intent is to make the viewers want to dance when the characters dance, feel adrenaline when the characters fight, and to make their hearts skip when the characters fall in love. Love and music carry us from the opening scene through the most important scene in the play—the wedding. After all, love and music cause us to dance.

Lyrics Translation of Le Festin(The Feast)

Dreams are to lovers as wine is to friends
Carried through lifetimes, (and) spilled now and then
I am driven by hunger, so saddened to be
Thieving in darkness; I know you’re not pleased
But nothing worth eating is free

My hope is a banquet impatiently downed
Impossibly full, now I’ll probably drown
Many thieves’ lives are lonely with one mouth to feed
If giving means taking, I’ll never succeed
For nothing worth stealing is…

Free at last; won’t be undersold
Surviving isn’t living; won’t eat what I’m told
Let me free, I’ll astonish you; I’m planning to fly
I won’t let this party just pass me by

The banquet is now underway, so…
Bring out the bottles; a new tale has spun
in clearing this table, my new life’s begun
I am nervous, excited; (oh) just read the marquee!
A lifetime of hiding; I’m suddenly free!
My dinner is waiting for me

A lifetime of hiding; I’m suddenly free!
My dinner is waiting for me

Director’s Notes: As You Like It

Love is merely a madness…

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.”

The Twisted Hero

Macbeth is the classic story that illustrates the fragility of human nature. Written 1606-1607, Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies. To understand the character of Macbeth, it’s important to consider the role of fate and choice. As in many famous plays and stories, the question arises of whether or not Macbeth is a helpless victim of fate or a man overrun by selfish desires. Equally important are the concepts of how actions shape a person’s character and how they can rob someone of personal insight.

Although, in the end Macbeth is a ruthless, murderous tyrant, he didn’t start out that way. Ironically, the first description of Macbeth is the hero in battle who charged in without fear and defeated the enemy, namely their leader, Macdonwald, whose head he put on a stake. It’s interesting how our first perception of him is the conqueror of a traitorous villain, one whom he will resemble by the end of the play.

But then Macbeth meets the Weird Sisters. Up until this point we have no reason to believe that Macbeth has traitorous tendencies. But he always had the potential to become a murderous traitor, and this is the reason we cannot blame his repulsive moral condition on the Weird Sisters or Lady Macbeth or Fate. The Weird Sisters relay three prophesies to Macbeth: “All hall, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!” (1.3 lines 48-50). Even the choice of words at the beginning of the play hint that Macbeth isn’t’ a victim of Fate. “But all’s too weak: For brave Macbeth—Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel.” This suggests that Macbeth is above fortune or Fate; it doesn’t control him. Macbeth is ruined by his choice to take matters into his own hands. Fate had given him the perfect hand and Macbeth knew that if he played his hand right, the game would be in the bag. But does Macbeth “disdain Fortune” for the sake of loyalty to his country or just sheer decency? Macbeth knew what he was doing. He was painfully aware of it. “I am afraid to think what I have done: Look on ‘t again I dare not.” (2.2 lines 55-56). It’s tempting to blame Macbeth’s sins on Fate, especially when we consider ourselves in his place, but this is not the case.

Throughout the play we see devolution of Macbeth’s character. When Macbeth hears the prophesies of the Weird Sisters he’s not sure what he’s going to do yet, although he immediately entertains thoughts of murder: “Why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs, against the use of nature? Present fears are less than horrible imaginings shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered in surmise and nothing is but what is not.” And with this beginning or conflict, we see that as Macbeth ascends in power, his moral character rapidly declines. Before Macbeth murders Duncan he is swayed back and forth—should he do it? Should he not? Although some of his doubts come from selfish fears of being caught, it does seem that Macbeth is wholly corrupt. He’s still able to distinguish between right and wrong. After the deed is done Macbeth feels extreme regret, but it’s not long before the regret wears off. As the action continues, Macbeth feels less emotion regarding his depravity, and it becomes easier with each murder. By the end, he tells us that he fears no longer: “I have almost forgotten the taste of fears. Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, cannot once start me.” (5.5 lines 8 and 13-14). In this sense, never fearing is an unnatural and sickly state of being. When we consider each of Macbeth’s murders, it’s important to see how truly perverted they are, firstly the murder of his king, to whom he’d sworn eternal allegiance. Next, with much less reluctance, the murder of his close friend, Banquo, is a comment on how desperate Macbeth is becoming to tie up all the end of his treachery. And third, Macbeth has come to a state of such unnaturalness that he feels threated by women and children. His senseless butchery is repulsive. Each of these murders twists Macbeth, forming different characteristics in him. With the murder of Duncan, Macbeth becomes the tyrant. With the murder of his good friend Banquo, he cuts himself off from human companionship. And the complete unnatural murder of women and children is nothing but the work of a coward. Utterly low, Macbeth has become a wretched creature, willing to do anything to keep his power.

Macbeth does not die a heroic death, but a pitiful death. Near the end of the play, before he battles Malcolm and Macduff, Macbeth clings to the prophesies of the three witches. Cleverly, Malcolm’s army has carried three branches from the forest Birnham to conceal the number of troops coming, therefore fulfilling the prophesy of the witches. Macbeth meets Macduff, and they begin to duel. Macbeth claims that Macduff cannot defeat him, boasting, “I bear a charmed life, which must not yield to one of woman born.” But Macduff was ripped from his mother’s womb early, thus; he is not born of woman. Now Macbeth is without loyal solider to follow him, without his wife, who was his driving force, and now it seems that all Fortune is really against him and not for him. The prophesies have fallen flat and Macbeth has nothing left to cling to. Still, he refuses to surrender, and he vows never to give in. “Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane and thou opposed, being of no woman born, yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff. And damned be him that first cries ‘Hold, enough.’” Macbeth has become so wretched that he will not surrender and admit that he’s defeated. He’s so far into his evil ways that he can no longer realize that his cause is lost. Early in the play, Lady Macbeth reassures her husband that “A little water clears us of this deed” (2.2 line 6.9), but it is not so. Macbeth dies fighting to keep the power that never belonged to him. Maybe if Macbeth had realized this, had begged for death on his knees before Macduff, this wouldn’t be a tragedy, but Macbeth is unable to do so in his corruptness.

In one regard, Macbeth hardly feels like a tragedy. No one sitting in the audience is on Macbeth’s side, cheering for him to kill Macduff. As the curtain closes, the villain is dead, and good has triumphed, even if it is at great cost. At one point, the crowd might have felt a liking for Macbeth and hoped that he wouldn’t commit his atrocities. “Don’t do it, Macbeth! Don’t do it!” But towards the end, the mutual feeling is, “Just kill him, Macduff.” The most important thing about the character of Macbeth is the concept of a good man turning into a vile tyrant. Since the beginning of history, our stories demonstrate that each and every one of us is susceptible to corruption.