Touchstone discovers that he has a rival for Audrey's hand: a young man named William. But he is easily dispatched by a barrage of bluster before Corin arrives to summon Touchstone to meet with Rosalind and Celia. Orlando and Oliver take their place on the stage, discussing Oliver's sudden resolution to marry Aliena/Celia and his decision to stay in the forest: "for my father's house and all the revenue that was old Sir Rowland's will I estate upon you, and here live and die a shepherd." Orlando accepts, and then observes, "here comes my Rosalind." The departing Oliver greets her as "fair sister." (The reading of these lines will depend, naturally, on how much Oliver and Orlando have seen through the Ganymede deception. Here, as at the end of Act IV, where he calls her Rosalind, Oliver has either seen through the disguise or is simply going along with his brother's pretense that Ganymede is Rosalind. Those who think that both Oliver and Orlando are still deceived can point to the fact that Oliver refers to Celia as Aliena, and that he would not have so eagerly given up his estate to become a shepherd unless he really believed that Aliena was a shepherdess with a brother named Ganymede. But either interpretation can be made plausible on the stage.)
Rosalind notes that Orlando has his arm in a sling, and asks if Oliver told him "how I counterfeited to swoon, when he showed me your handkerchief?" Orlando replies, "Ay, and greater wonders than that" -- i.e., that he intends to marry Aliena, but perhaps also that he has seen through Rosalind's disguise. He expresses his pain that he can't be married alongside his brother, and Rosalind assures him, "Believe then, if you please, that I can do strange things. I have since I was three year old conversed with a magician, most profound in his art and yet not damnable." (Marlowe's presence seems to haunt this play, and some see this as an allusion to Doctor Faustus.) "If you do love Rosalind so near the heart as your gesture cries it out, when you brother marries Aliena, shall you marry her."
They are interrupted by Silvius and Phebe, the latter in a fury because Rosalind has shown Silvius her letter. The four of them now go into a ritual declaration of their loves: Silvius for Phebe, Phebe for Ganymede, Orlando for Rosalind, and Rosalind/Ganymede "for no woman," a litany uttered three times. Rosalind promises them all that she will make everything right tomorrow.
As for tomorrow, it's also to be Touchstone and Audrey's wedding day, and they find themselves in an impromptu serenade by two of the duke's pages, a musical interlude that Touchstone receives ungraciously. The scene and the song, "It was a lover and his lass," seems to be there only to set the mood for the scene that follows, in which everyone gathers to see whether Rosalind/Ganymede can perform his "magic." Ganymede asks the duke if he will give his blessing for Rosalind to marry Orlando if "he" can make her appear, and makes Phebe promise that she'll marry Silvius if she refuses to marry Ganymede. Then she and Celia exit to prepare the great revelation.
The duke observes that "this shepherd boy" looks an awful lot like his daughter, and Orlando admits that he saw the likeness "the first time that I ever saw him," but he assures the duke that "this boy is forest-born." Again, this can be played either straight or tongue-in-cheek. Jaques observes, "There is sure another flood toward, and these couples are coming to the ark," for Touchstone shows up now with Audrey. Jaques asks the duke to welcome Touchstone because he has been a courtier, which Touchstone affirms by citing his courtly achievements: dancing, flattering, playing court politics, making demand on his tailors, and quarreling. His last quarrel, he claims, almost ended in a duel, but they "found the quarrel was upon the seventh cause." This so impresses Jaques that he urges the duke, "Good my lord, like this fellow." The duke says he does, which pleases Touchstone, who announces that he and Audrey -- "an ill-favoured thing sir, but mine own" -- are there to join "the rest of the country copulatives" and get married.
Jaques, however, is eager to hear about the quarrel that foundered because of the "seventh cause," which leads into Touchstone's great lampoon of the etiquette of dueling. It's not as funny for modern audiences as it probably was for Elizabethan and Jacobean ones, but a skilled actor can make it work, and it still has some relevance, particularly when Touchstone observes the crucial importance of "an If."
I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an if, as, "If you said so, then I said so." And the shook hands and swore bothers. Your If is the only peacemaker: much virtue in If.
It's a peacemaker still used by politicians and celebrities caught making racist, sexist or homophobic statements, necessitating the unapologetic apology that shifts the burden from the offender to the offended: "If I offended anyone, I'm sorry."
Touchstone's disquisition on quarreling also serves a theatrical purpose: It gives Rosalind and Celia time to change into their wedding finery and then to enter with Hymen. This wedding masque can come off a bit stilted, and in the modern theater it's probably best to have Hymen played by someone identifiable as a member of the duke's retinue: Amiens is a good candidate for the job, since there is a song to be sung. There is no time for the duke or Orlando to be astonished at Rosalind's appearance (and Ganymede's absence), which to my mind argues for an earlier recognition of the disguise.
No sooner are things sorted out, including Phebe's acceptance of Silvius, than Jaques de Boys enters to tell them that Duke Frederick has abdicated, having got religion from an old man he met on the edge of the forest as he was about to invade and kill his brother. Everything is restored to the status quo ante the usurpation, so they can all go home again. Everyone is happy to hear this, but Jaques is more interested in going to talk to the reformed duke. "Out of these convertites, / There is much matter to be heard and learn'd." So he makes his exit and everybody dances, after which Rosalind comes forth "to speak the Epilogue," revealing that she's a boy who played a woman who played a boy who sometimes played a woman.
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From the televised performance at the 1982 Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Orlando: Andrew Gillies; Adam: Mervyn Blake; Oliver: Stephen Russell; Dennis: Nicholas Colicos; Charles: Jefferson Mappin; Rosalind: Roberta Maxwell; Celia: Rosemary Dunsmore; Touchstone: Lewis Gordon; Le Beau: Keith Dinicol; Duke Frederick: Graeme Campbell; Duke Senior: William Needles; Amiens: John Novak; First Forest Lord: Thomas Hauff; Second Forest Lord: Michael Shepherd; First Lord to Duke Frederick: Steve Yorke; Second Lord to Duke Frederick: Peter Zednick; Corin: Deryck Hazel; Silvius: John Jarvis; Jaques: Nicholas Pennell; Audrey: Elizabeth Leigh-Milne; Sir Oliver Martext: Maurice E. Evans; Phebe: Mary Haney; Jaques de Boys: Christopher Gibson
From the 1978 BBC-TV production. Rosalind: Helen Mirren; Celia: Angharad Rees; Touchstone: James Bolam; Le Beau: John Quentin; Duke Frederick: Richard Easton; Orlando: Brian Stirner; Charles: David Prowse; Corin: David Lloyd Meredith; Jaques: Richard Pasco; Audrey: Marilyn Le Conte; William: Jeffrey Holland; Oliver: Clive Francis; Silvius: Maynard Williams; Phebe: Victoria Plucknett; Duke Senior: Tony Church; Hymen: John Moulder-Brown; Jaques de Boys: Paul Bentall.
From Kenneth Branagh's 2006 film: Jaques: Kevin Kline; Duke Senior/Duke Frederick: Brian Blessed; Rosalind: Bryce Dallas Howard; Celia: Romola Garai; Oliver: Adrian Lester; Orlando: David Oyelowo; Touchstone: Alfred Molina; Audrey: Janet McTeer; Silvius: Alex Wyndham; Phebe: Jade Jeffries; Jaques de Boys: Jotham Annan; Adam: Richard Briers; William: Paul Chan.
Jaques makes an effort to become "better acquainted with" Ganymede/Rosalind, but she scorns his affectation of melancholy. He explains that "it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels." But his traveling also elicits her scorn. When Orlando enters and greets Rosalind in iambic pentameter, Jaques takes his leave: "Nay then God buy you, and you talk in blank verse!" This "meta" bit invariably gets a laugh.
She scolds Orlando for being late and they launch into their game of Rosalind pretending to be Ganymede pretending to be Rosalind, though Celia in what may be an aside comments, "It pleases him to call you so: but he hath a Rosalind of a better leer [glossed as "cheek, complexion, or general appearance"] than you." The charade is beginning to wear thin, and by the end of the act it will have been exposed, but for the time being it remains a charming battle of wits, with Rosalind getting most of the good lines. As Ganymede, she affects to see through all the romantic clichés about lovers dying of rejection: "these are all lies: men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love." She also plays the misogynist: "Make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and 'twill out at the keyhole; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney."
After Orlando takes his leave for two hours to "attend the Duke at dinner," Celia chides Rosalind for slandering their sex, but Rosalind, having dropped her pose as Ganymede, proclaims that she is "fathoms deep" in love with Orlando. "I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando. I'll go find a shadow and sigh till he come." Celia decides to take a nap.
In another part of the forest Jaques encounters some lords, dressed as foresters, who have killed a deer, and he urges them to present the deer's horns to the duke "for a branch of victory" and to sing a song "for this purpose." They sing one that of course plays on the horns as an emblem of cuckoldry. The scene does nothing except indicate the passage of the two hours that Orlando is supposed to be away, for Rosalind and Celia return to the stage, presumably having sighed and napped, to observe that Orlando is late. They are joined by Silvius bringing his message to Ganymede from Phebe.
Rosalind peruses the message and claims that in it Phebe denounces Ganymede: "She says I am not fair, that I lack manners. / She calls me proud, and that she could not love me, / Were man as rare as phoenix." She accuses Silvius of having written it, which he denies. But when she reads the letter, which is in verse, it turns out to be the conventional lover's complaint against the beloved's cruelty and her vow to "study how to die" unless he return her love. "Can such a woman rail thus?" Rosalind asks, puzzling Silvius: "Call you this railing?" Celia pities Silvius in his confusion and love-sickness, but Rosalind sends him off to "say this to her: that if she love me, I charge her to love thee. If she will not, I will never have her, unless thou entreat for her." Silvius trots off dutifully.
Oliver enters. He has been sent to find "A sheep-cote fenc'd about with olive-trees," which Celia tells him is "West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom." (The note feels it necessary to gloss "bottom" as "a low-lying place, a hollow," which amuses me because I grew up in a part of the country where "bottom" is a common word for such a place. It seems to be an Americanism that has grown uncommon in Britain but hangs on in parts of the United States, including Washington, D.C., where Foggy Bottom is the neighborhood that includes the headquarters of the State Department.) In any case, Celia tells him, nobody's home. But Oliver reveals that he has recognized them by the description he was given: "The boy is fair, / Of female favour, and bestows himself / Like a ripe sister." Apparently this last part of the description puzzles some critics, but it doesn't trouble contemporary performers and directors who take it as a cue that Rosalind has let some of her masculine mannerisms slip in her disguise as Ganymede. It can be played for a laugh: Rosalind having assumed a particularly "feminine" pose as Oliver speaks, then suddenly butching it up in embarrassment. The description of Celia -- "low, / And browner than her brother" -- contradicts the earlier assertion that Celia was the taller, but not Rosalind's of herself as "more than common tall" -- but it's a line that may need to be cut if the actress playing Celia is blond or tall.
Oliver then shows them the bloody handkerchief that he has been sent to deliver, and tells how Orlando came across "A wretched ragged man, o'ergrown with hair," sleeping, and with a snake wrapped around his neck. Orlando frightened the snake away, but didn't notice that there was a lioness nearby, waiting for the man to awaken, "for 'tis / The royal disposition of that beast to prey on nothing that doth seem as dead." Oliver says that Orlando discovered the ragged man was his own brother, who had betrayed him, and almost didn't rescue him -- "Twice did he turn his back, and purpos'd so" -- but his better nature took hold and he rescued Oliver when the lioness attacked. When Celia and Rosalind ask, he admits to his identity as the brother who once tried to kill Orlando, but says he is now a changed man.
Rosalind wants to know about the bloody handkerchief, and he tells them that once Orlando got him to the duke's encampment, he discovered that he had been wounded by the lioness, "and now he fainted, / And cried in fainting upon Rosalind." When he recovered, he sent Oliver, "to give this napkin, / Dy'd in his blood, unto the shepherd youth / That he in sport doth call his Rosalind."
Now Rosalind faints. Celia rushes to her, and Oliver observes, "Many will swoon when they do look on blood." Celia replies, "There is more in it. Cousin Ganymede!" Of course, this is a slip: She has been established as Ganymede's brother. And from here on, the actors and the director will have to decide how much Rosalind's secret identity has been discovered. Celia tells Oliver to take Ganymede's arm, which is a good opportunity for Oliver to discover that Ganymede is no man -- he even hints as much in the next line: "You a man! You lack a man's heart." Rosalind, meanwhile, tries to brave it out, and urges Oliver to "tell your brother how well I counterfeited" the faint. He insists, "This was not counterfeit," and when she insists it was he tells her to "counterfeit to be a man." But the key moment comes when Oliver tells her, "I must bear answer back how you excuse my brother, Rosalind." He has clearly seen through the ruse.
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From the televised performance at the 1982 Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Orlando: Andrew Gillies; Adam: Mervyn Blake; Oliver: Stephen Russell; Dennis: Nicholas Colicos; Charles: Jefferson Mappin; Rosalind: Roberta Maxwell; Celia: Rosemary Dunsmore; Touchstone: Lewis Gordon; Le Beau: Keith Dinicol; Duke Frederick: Graeme Campbell; Duke Senior: William Needles; Amiens: John Novak; First Forest Lord: Thomas Hauff; Second Forest Lord: Michael Shepherd; First Lord to Duke Frederick: Steve Yorke; Second Lord to Duke Frederick: Peter Zednick; Corin: Deryck Hazel; Silvius: John Jarvis; Jaques: Nicholas Pennell; Audrey: Elizabeth Leigh-Milne; Sir Oliver Martext: Maurice E. Evans; Phebe: Mary Haney
From the 1978 BBC-TV production. Rosalind: Helen Mirren; Celia: Angharad Rees; Touchstone: James Bolam; Le Beau: John Quentin; Duke Frederick: Richard Easton; Orlando: Brian Stirner; Charles: David Prowse; Corin: David Lloyd Meredith; Jaques: Richard Pasco.
Back at the court, Oliver gets a thorough going-over from Duke Frederick for his failure to find Orlando. Bring him back dead or alive, the duke orders, within a year or risk banishment. And meanwhile, all property is seized. Oliver protests that he has never loved his brother, to which the duke's reply is "More villain thou."
In the forest, Orlando is wandering around writing verses, hanging them on trees, and carving her name into their trunks. When he goes off in search of more trees, Corin enters with Touchstone, discussing the shepherd's life, which Touchstone says is good except that it's a shepherd's, that he likes it because it's solitary but dislikes it because it's private, that it pleases him because it's in the fields but he finds it tedious because it's not in the court, and so on. Corin replies to his contradictory nonsense with some commonsense wisdom, and they wrangle a while over the relative merits of court and country until Corin gets tired and tries to withdraw from the contest.
Fortunately for him, Rosalind enters, reading Orlando's doggerel, which Touchstone deftly parodies. When she says she found them on a tree, Touchstone observes, "Truly the tree yields bad fruit." Celia follows, reading more verses, and sends Touchstone and Corin away so she can talk to Rosalind about them. She teases Rosalind about their author, whom with "a chain, that you once wore, about his neck." Rosalind blushes at the news, and demands that Celia confirm what she obviously suspects. Celia continues to tease her but finally confirms that it's Orlando, which throws Rosalind into a dither:
Alas the day, what shall I do with my doublet and hose? What did he when thou saw'st him? What said he? How looked he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see him again? Answer me in one word.
When Celia gets Rosalind calmed down, she tells him she saw Orlando "under a tree like a dropped acorn ... stretched along like a wounded knight," but before she can say much more, Orlando enters with Jaques. They obviously don't get along very well. Among other things, Jaques has been reading Orlando's verses "ill-favouredly," and he doesn't like the name Rosalind. "There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened," Orlando replies acidly. It's the kind of response that Jaques likes, of course, and he changes his mind about parting from Orlando: "Will you sit down with me and we two will rail against our mistress the world and our misery?" But Orlando declines the invitation: "I am weary of you." And when Jaques tells him "I was seeking for a fool when I found you," Orlando retorts, "He is drowned in the brook. Look but in and you shall see him." Astonishingly, Jaques doesn't get the joke and falls right into the trap: "There I shall see mine own figure." It's so unlike Jaques to be so slow-witted, and it evidently stings when Orlando delivers the punchline: "Which I take to be either a fool, or a cipher." They part on ill terms.
Rosalind summons up the courage to approach Orlando in her disguise as Ganymede, and they begin to banter. It goes considerably better than the exchange between Orlando and Jaques, and when Orlando observes that Ganymede's manner of speaking is more sophisticated than he would expect in the country, she is forced to invent "an old religious uncle ... who was in his youth an inland man" who taught her how to speak. He was also ill-fated in love, she says, "and I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as he hath generally taxed their whole sex withal." She knows that there is a man in the forest who has had the misfortune to fall in love with a woman because he goes around the forest carving "Rosalind" into the trees and hanging "odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles." She could cure him of his love-sickness if she met him.
Orlando admits the he is the man, but she professes not to believe him. Her uncle "taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes I am sure you are not a prisoner." He doesn't have the starved and unkempt look of a lover. He swears that he is, however, so she offers to cure him by pretending to be Rosalind and displaying all the inconstancy of womanhood. She did it once before, she says: "I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness, which was, to forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus I cured him." He says he doesn't want to be cured, but finally agrees to go along with her scheme, so she and Celia take him to where they live.
Touchstone enters with the goatherd Audrey, followed by Jaques, who is spying on them and commenting on Touchstone's efforts to woo Audrey with allusions to Ovid's exile among the Goths. Touchstone has arranged for a vicar, Sir Oliver Martext, to marry them. When Sir Oliver arrives, Jaques comes forward and agrees to give Audrey away, but he then objects that they shouldn't "be married under a bush like a beggar" but in a regular church with "a good priest that can tell you what marriage is." Touchstone in an aside confesses that he chose the vicar because "not being well married, it will be a good excuse for me hereafter to leave my wife." But he exits with Audrey and Jacques.
Rosalind is upset: Orlando hasn't shown up for his lesson in women's inconstancy. Celia, a bit exasperated with Rosalind's carrying-on, tries to settle her down by either praising or criticizing Orlando, depending on what Rosalind's whim may be. They are interrupted by the entrance of Corin, who tells them that Silvius and Phebe are nearby, and if Rosalind and Celia want to see "a pageant truly play'd / Between the pale complexion of true love / And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain," they should follow him.
They do, and they witness Silvius berating Phebe as worse than the executioner, who at least asks his victim to pardon him before he swings the ax. Phebe replies, "I do frown on thee with all my heart, / And if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee," but she insists that he's lying when he says her "eyes are murderers." They don't even leave a mark on him. Silvius hopes that she will one day "know the wounds invisible / That love's keen arrows make," but she tells him to stay away from her until that day comes.
Rosalind charges into the thick of things and denounces Phebe as no great prize and Silvius as foolishly infatuated with her: "You are a thousand times a properer man / Than she a woman." Phebe should fall "Down on your knees / And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love; / For I must tell you friendly in your ear, / Sell when you can, you are not for all markets." Of course, the result is that Phebe instantly falls for Ganymede: "Sweet youth, I pray you chide a year together. / I had rather hear you chide than this man woo." And when Rosalind exits with Celia and Corin, Phebe quotes Christopher Marlowe's "Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight?" But at least it changes her attitude toward Silvius:
Silvius, the time was that I hated thee;
And yet it is not that I bear thee love,
But since that thou canst talk of love so well,
Thy company, which erst was irksome to me,
I will endure; and I'll employ thee too.
But don't expect anything more than that, she warns. Silvius accepts even that as an improvement; "That I shall think it a most plenteous crop / To glean the broken ears after the man / That the main harvest reaps." So when, after enumerating Ganymede's virtues, she decides to "write to him a very taunting letter," Silvius agrees to deliver it to him.
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From the televised performance at the 1982 Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Orlando: Andrew Gillies; Adam: Mervyn Blake; Oliver: Stephen Russell; Dennis: Nicholas Colicos; Charles: Jefferson Mappin; Rosalind: Roberta Maxwell; Celia: Rosemary Dunsmore; Touchstone: Lewis Gordon; Le Beau: Keith Dinicol; Duke Frederick: Graeme Campbell; Duke Senior: William Needles; Amiens: John Novak; First Forest Lord: Thomas Hauff; Second Forest Lord: Michael Shepherd; First Lord to Duke Frederick: Steve Yorke; Second Lord to Duke Frederick: Peter Zednick; Corin: Deryck Hazel; Silvius: John Jarvis; Jaques: Nicholas Pennell; Audrey: Elizabeth Leigh-Milne; Sir Oliver Martext: Maurice E. Evans; Phebe: Mary Haney
From the 1978 BBC-TV production. Rosalind: Helen Mirren; Celia: Angharad Rees; Touchstone: James Bolam; Le Beau: John Quentin; Duke Frederick: Richard Easton; Orlando: Brian Stirner; Charles: David Prowse; Corin: David Lloyd Meredith; Jaques: Richard Pasco.
From a Royal Shakespeare Company production. Rosalind: Katy Stephens; Celia: Mariah Gale; Orlando: Jonjo O'Neill.
From Kenneth Branagh's 2006 film: Jaques: Kevin Kline; Touchstone: Alfred Molina; Audrey: Janet McTeer.
The Duke Senior's speech at the opening of this scene presents a variety of interpretive possibilities for anyone staging As You Like It. It's the scene that introduces the audience to the exiled court, and the ideas and attitudes it advances are worth observing closely. First, the duke announces (via a rhetorical question) that "old custom" has "made this life more sweet / Than that of painted pomp." Already we are confronted with an ambiguity: By "old custom" does the duke mean that they have been there long enough to grow accustomed to the pastoral lifestyle? Or does "old custom" mean something like "traditional wisdom," i.e., that the pastoral life has traditionally been regarded as sweeter than than the artificialities of courtly life?
He then asks, again rhetorically, "Are not these woods / More free from peril than the envious court?" The implication is that the serpents and lions to be encountered in the forest are less noxious than the backbiting and intrigue that drove him and his followers from the court. It's easy enough to assent to the proposition, although one reading of the play is that the duke severely underestimates the perils of the forest, as shown by the eagerness with which he and his followers return to the court once he is reinstated.
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' 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 counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am."
Agnes Latham's note on "the penalty of Adam" argues that "feel we not" means "we are none the worse for" being exposed to the changing seasons, not that they are literally immune to it. But even if we take the duke at his word that they don't suffer harm from the harshness of the weather -- because they take it as a moral lesson -- the speech nonetheless reminds us that they are exposed to it. That wind has a real bite. Moreover, the reference to "the penalty of Adam" (which as one who has just read Paradise Lost I'm well aware of) underscores the fact that Arden is not Eden. The harsh weather provides "counsellors" that remind him that he is fallen, sinful man. And the reference to Adam will shortly be underscored by the entrance of a starving old man named Adam, near death. This somewhat contradicts the cheerful moralizing of the duke:
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venemous,
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.
"Good in everything?" Isn't that more than a bit naïve? Arden is a real garden with real toads in it. So is the duke a Pollyanna or a realist? One approach to the speech is that he's a leader trying to buck up his somewhat worn-down followers, that he doesn't really believe what he's saying, but just working on morale boosting. That's something that the director of the play needs to decide. How much of the harsher side of Arden are we to see? Some even go so far as to give the play a wintry setting, emphasizing the hardship, though it's hard to do that when the characters will soon be banqueting on the fruits of the land.
This is also a speech in prelude to a hunt: "Come, shall we go and kill us venison?" There again, the duke grows sentimental about shooting the deer, which serves to introduce us to "the melancholy Jaques," whom the First Lord and Amiens have recently seen moralizing over a wounded stag. In fact, what Jaques sees in the healthy flock's shunning of their hurt companion is an analogue to court life:
"Ay," quoth Jaques,
"Sweep on you fat and greasy citizens,
'Tis just the fashion. Wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?"
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's worse,
To fright the animals and kill them up
In their assign'd and native dwelling-place.
In other words, Jaques sees scant difference between court and forest: They have been usurped from court and now they usurp the home of the forest creatures. Notice, too, that in reporting the lesson Jaques has learned from nature, the First Lord uses the phrase "this our life," which the duke has just spoken in his addres on the uses of adversity. It's as if Shakespeare is reminding the audience that his story has a relevance to real life.
The duke, of course, is eager to find Jaques in one of his "sullen fits, / For then he's full of matter." But does he want to mock Jaques or learn from him?
Scene II
Back to the court for a moment, where Duke Frederick has just discovered that his daughter has run away, taking not only Rosalind but also Touchstone with her. And a gentlewoman named Hisperia has said that she overheard Celia and Rosalind talking about Orlando, "And she believes wherever they are gone / That youth is surely in their company." She believes wrongly, of course, but that doesn't matter. The duke sends people to look for Orlando, and if they don't find him at home to bring Oliver: "I'll make him find him." Things don't look so good for either brother.
Scene III
Of course, they look worse for Orlando at the moment. He runs into Adam, who is surprised to see him. He tells Orlando that all his virtues -- being "gentle, strong, and valiant" -- are being held against him. That is, Oliver is insanely jealous of Orlando's popularity, which has only increased with his victory over Charles. "O what a world is this, when what is comely / Envenoms him that bears it!" Oliver is so jealous that "this night he means / To burn the lodging where you use to lie, / And you within it. If he fail of that, / He willhave other means to cut you off."
The threat only serves to make Orlando angry. He vows not to run away: "I rather will subject me to the malice / Of a diverted blood and bloody brother." But Adam persuades him otherwise. He has saved up five hundred crowns -- which is half of what Sir Rowland bequeathed to Orlando -- and proposes to give it to Orlando if he'll take him along as his servant. He insists that clean living has made him "strong and lusty" in his old age. Orlando is touched, but warns Adam "thou prun'st a rotten tree, / That cannot so much as a blossom yield, / In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry." Still, he agrees to take Adam with him and go somewhere where they can live simply: "We'll light upon some settled low content." Adam has a twinge of nostalgia: He came to service at Sir Rowland's when he was seventeen, and now he's "almost fourscore," but he's convinced that "fortune cannot recompense me better / Than to die well, and not my master's debtor."
Scene IV
The disguised Rosalind and Celia, accompanied by Touchstone, have reached the forest. They're exhausted, but Rosalind is determined to do her best, especially since she's supposed to be a man and "comfort the weaker vessel" -- i.e., Celia, who is still dressed as a woman -- "as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat." In Shakespeare's theater it would be a lovely moment of sexual confusion: a woman dressed as a man, comforting a woman, both of them played by boys, talking about how the only essential difference in their roles is that one of them wears "doublet and hose" and the other a "petticoat." Clothes literally make the man.
The three of them watch as two shepherds enter "in solemn talk." The young one, Silvius, is conventionally love-struck, "as true a lover / As ever sigh'd upon a midnight pillow." Corin, the elder, tells Silvius that he, too, has experienced the pangs of love that draw Silvius into "actions most ridiculous," but he has "forgotten" them. Silvius takes this as evidence that Corin couldn't possibly have been in love as "heartily" as he is, and that he couldn't have "sat as I do now, / Wearying thy hearer in thy mistress' praise" or "broke from company / Abruptly as my passion now makes me," whereupon he runs off crying, "O Phebe, Phebe, Phebe!" As so often in Shakespeare, love is a kind of contest to see who can go craziest. It also echoes the first scene between Rosalind and Celia, in which Celia argues that Rosalind doesn't love her as much as she does Rosalind.
The only one who takes Silvius completely seriously here is Rosalind, who observes, "Alas, poor shepherd, searching of thy wound, / I have by hard adventure found mine own." Touchstone, naturally, reduces Silvius's passion to its absurdity by likening it to his wooing Jane Smile by kissing the cow's udder that she had milked and giving her a peascod token.
Celia interrupts the conversation between Rosalind and Touchstone to remind them that she's starving. So Touchstone calls out to Corin, "Holla, you clown!" which earns a rebuke from Rosalind, "Peace fool, he's not thy kinsman." She asks Corin if there's a place where they can rest and eat, and he tells her that he's "shepherd to another man" who is in the process of selling "his cote, his flocks, and bounds of feed," and that Silvius is planning to buy the "flock and pasture." Rosalind pre-empts Silvius, saying that she and Celia will buy them. Celia adds, "And we will mend thy wages. I like this place, / And willingly could waste my time in it." ("Waste" just means "spend" here, but the contemporary meaning still echoes: Celia is a child of the city and the court who will just be playacting in her role as a country squire.) They go off to complete the transaction.
Scene V
Amiens sings "Under the greenwood tree" for Jaques, who is indulging his melancholy with music. The song recapitulates one of the themes of the duke's act-opening speech: "Here shall he see / No enemy, / But winter and rough weather." Jaques begs for more music: "I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs." (That's one of those images that remind us of Shakespeare's rural upbringing, and always seem to me one of the things that make it so unlikely that the Earl of Oxford could have written the play.)
This is our first direct encounter with Jaques, and it's the moment for the actor to make us aware of the character. He is witty and self-indulgent, and likes to be in control of the discourse: When Amiens tells him that the duke has been looking for him all day, Jaques replies that he's been avoiding him. "He is too disputable for my company" -- Jaques wants to talk rather than listen to someone else talk. Amiens, accompanied by the "others" supplied by the stage directions, sings another stanza about "Who doth ambition shun / And loves to live i' th' sun," with the same refrain about "winter and rough weather." And then Jaques reveals that he has composed his own verse for the song:
If it do come to pass That any man turn ass, Leaving his wealth and ease, A stubborn will to please, Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame, Here shall he see Gross fools as he, And if he will come to me.
It's a pointedly unsentimental comment on the plight the exiles find themselves in. Amiens naturally bites on the obvious problem, as scholars have done ever since: "What's that 'ducdame'?" Jaques replies, "'Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle." And any director who hasn't arranged the actors in a circle around Jaques has missed the joke. Meanwhile, the picnic for the duke has been prepared, so Amiens goes to call him while Jaques goes off to take a nap -- or to "rail against all the first-born of Egypt" if he isn't allowed to sleep.
Orlando and Adam have reached the forest, but Adam is, like Celia, famished. Or more so, since he is prepared to die and bids Orlando farewell. Orlando tries to cheer him up and hurries off, with some real sense of urgency, to find food.
The duke and company enter for their picnic, and the duke comments on how he has been unable to find Jaques. The First Lord says he was just there, listening to music, which surprises the duke that so discordant a fellow ("compact of jars") should be interested in music: "We shall shortly have discord in the spheres." He sends for Jaques, but unnecessarily, for Jaques himself enters, in a mood of hilarity. He has "met a fool i' th' forest," and now thinks it would be wonderful to be a fool himself. He quotes some of Touchstone's witticisms, and pleads for "a motley coat" for himself, which the duke is perfectly willing to give him. But Jaques will turn fool only on condition that he has liberty to speak his mind freely, to mock anyone he pleases, as the traditional licensed fool did.
And they that are most galled with my folly,
They most must laugh. And why sir must they so?
The why is plain as way to parish church.
He that a fool doth very wisely hit
Doth very foolishly, although he smart,
Not to seem senseless of the bob. If not,
The wiseman's folly is anatomiz'd
Even by the squand'ring glances of the fool.
Invest me in my motley. Give me leave
To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of th'infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine.
This probably needs a little explication: Jacques insists that if you find yourself the target of a fool's jibe, it's best to laugh at it, to pretend that you're not stung by the attack, even if you are. If you show offense, it means that the fool is right in attacking you. The fool may, after all, just be flinging out random jibes. If Jaques were a licensed fool, he says, his attacks would purge the world of its ills, as long as people have patience to listen to what he's saying.
But the duke is no fan of satire, and thinks that a knowledge of sin reveals that the satirist is himself a sinner. Jaques retorts that sins such as pride "flow as hugely as the sea." If he says that "the city-woman bears / The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders," he doesn't mean that any one particular woman is unworthy of her expensive clothing, but that anyone who dresses expensively and ostentatiously is guilty of the sin of pride. Only those who are not guilty of the offense have any right to protest.
But this dispute is interrupted by Orlando, who enters with his sword drawn and orders them to stop eating. Jaques protests that he hasn't even started eating -- characteristically he is unfazed by this surprise interruption. When the duke wonders at Orlando's lack of civility, he begins to apologize for his entrance, but still insists that no one eat any of the fruit "Till I and my affairs are answered." Jaques is undaunted still: "And you will not be answered with reason, I must die." Latham treats this as the usual Elizabethan quibble, "reason/raisin," which it may well be, and the actor may nibble from a bunch of grapes to make the point, but it also emphasizes Jaques's unflappability.
When the duke invites him to "sit down and feed," Orlando caves, begs their pardon, and lays down his sword, then excuses himself to go fetch Adam. While he's gone, the duke observes, "we are not all alone unhappy," which is his usual optimistic spin on things, and then adds. "This wide and universal theatre / Presents more woeful pageants than the scene / Wherein we play in." Cue Jaques's "All the world's a stage" speech. This is such a set-piece, so much like an operatic aria in its discrete relationship to the rest of the play that you have to wonder if it was something Shakespeare had written and saved for the right context. Its characterization of the seven ages of man has been so much commented on -- it serves as the outline for Jonathan Bate's Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare, among other things -- that it doesn't need to be commented-on here. In any case, it is followed by the arrival by a representative of the third age, the lover Orlando, who will soon be "Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad / Made to his mistress' eyebrow," and a representative of the sixth, "the lean and slipper'd pantaloon," who is in danger of slipping into the seventh, "mere oblivion," unless Orlando can get some food into Adam right away.
Which he does, and the act ends with Amiens singing once again about harsh weather -- "Blow, blow, thou winter wind" -- and "man's ingratitude." But somehow we are made to feel that things will turn out all right and that "This life is most jolly."
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From the televised performance at the 1982 Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Orlando: Andrew Gillies; Adam: Mervyn Blake; Oliver: Stephen Russell; Dennis: Nicholas Colicos; Charles: Jefferson Mappin; Rosalind: Roberta Maxwell; Celia: Rosemary Dunsmore; Touchstone: Lewis Gordon; Le Beau: Keith Dinicol; Duke Frederick: Graeme Campbell; Duke Senior: William Needles; Amiens: John Novak; First Forest Lord: Thomas Hauff; Second Forest Lord: Michael Shepherd; First Lord to Duke Frederick: Steve Yorke; Second Lord to Duke Frederick: Peter Zednick; Corin: ?; Silvius: John Jarvis; Jaques: Nicholas Pennell
Kenneth Branagh's 2006 film of As You Like It features Kevin Kline as Jaques
Orlando enters with Adam, an old retainer to the family of Sir Rowland de Boys, complaining that his brother Oliverhas not only withheld from him the thousand crowns Sir Rowland bequeathed him, but has deprived him of the education given to their brother, Jaques, and treated him like a servant. And if Adam doesn't believe it, here comes Oliver now, so Adam should withdraw and listen to what happens.
Oliver does in fact address his brother arrogantly as "sir," and takes offense at Orlando's complaints that although the "courtesy of nations" gives the eldest brother precedence it doesn't give Oliver the right to mistreat him. They get into a fight, and Orlando gets the upper hand. Adam tries to break up the fight, but Orlando is not willing to let go of the hold he has on his brother until Oliver hears his demand to give him the money his father left and let him go seek his fortune. Oliver agrees that Orlando can have "some part" of the money and sends him away, telling Adam, "Get you with him, you old dog." Adam bitterly replies that Sir Rowland would not have called him that.
When Orlando and Adam have left, Oliver vows that he'll get even, and that he certainly won't give Orlando the money, then calls for another servant, Dennis, to fetch the wrestler Charles. Charles has apparently come from the court, because Oliver asks him for news of it, but all Charles knows is that there has also been trouble between brothers there: The younger duke has usurped his older brother, who has gone into exile with three or four of the lords who supported him. Oliver asks if the banished duke's daughter, Rosalind, went into exile with her father, but Charles says that she has stayed behind with her cousin. The exiles, Charles reports, have gone to the Forest of Arden, "and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England. They say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world."
Oliver asks Charles if he is going to "wrestle tomorrow before the new Duke," and Charles not only says yes but tells Oliver that he has heard Orlando plans to challenge him in disguise. He's worried that he'll harm Orlando, and asks if Oliver can either discourage his brother or else give him leave to win the match fairly and squarely. Oliver replies that not only was he aware of Orlando's plan, "I had as lief thou didst break his neck as his finger." He claims that Orlando is "a secret and villainous contriver against me his natural brother," and that he's so wicked that if Charles does "him any slight disgrace, or if he do not mightily grace himself on thee," Orlando will poison him or "never leave thee till he hath ta'en thy life by some indirect means or other." Charles thanks him for the warning and assures him that if Orlando is able to walk after their match, "I'll never wrestle for prize more."
When Charles leaves, Oliver soliloquizes that he doesn't know why he hates his brother so much, except that Orlando is "so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprised." In other words, he's jealous -- a common motive for villainy in Shakespeare.
Scene II
We arenow at the court of the usurping duke, for his daughter, Celia, enters, trying to cheer up her cousin Rosalind. The latter says she's doing her best to be cheerful, but it's hard to forget that her father has been banished. Celia protests that Rosalind doesn't love her as much as she loves Rosalind, and claims that if Rosalind's father had banished Celia's, instead of the other way around, she would have learned to love Rosalind's father as her own. Rosalind says she'll try, and Celia promises that by her "affection" to Rosalind she'll make up for whatever her father has taken away from Rosalind's.
Rosalind makes the effort to cheer up and proposes that they "devise sports. Let me see, what think you of falling in love?" Celia says go right ahead, but don't fall so far in love that it threatens your chastity. She suggests that they make fun of Fortune for not distributing her gifts equally. Rosalind agrees that Fortune's "benefits are mightily misplaced," especially when it comes to women. "'Tis true," Celia says, "for those that she makes fair, she scarce makes honest; and those that she makes honest, she makes very ill-favouredly." Rosalind had something else in mind -- she was thinking of women's place in the scheme of things -- and says that Celia has mistaken Nature's gifts for Fortune's. Celia retorts that that's a distinction without a difference: "When Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by Fortune fall into the fire?" And Nature has given them the gift of wit for such an amusing conversation, and now Fortune sends a fool to interrupt it.
That is, here comes Touchstone, to tell Celia that her father has sent for her. Their banter with Touchstone goes on so long that apparently the duke has had to send another messenger, Le Beau, who tells them that they have missed part of the wrestling, but that the final bouts are going to be performed where they are sitting. In the first bouts, Charles defeated three young men, all of whom are in danger of dying. "Yonder they lie, the poor old man their father making such pitiful dole over them that all the beholders take his part with weeping." It's Touchstone, interestingly, who makes the obvious comment: "It is the first time that ever I heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies." But Rosalind and Celia agree that they will stay to watch the bout that is going to be held where they are.
The court, led by Duke Frederick, enters, along with Orlando and Charles, the combatants. Apparently some effort has been made to discourage Orlando from wrestling, because the duke says, "Since the youth will not be entreated, his own peril on his forwardness." Rosalind is shocked to see how young Orlando is, but she also thinks he "looks successfully." The duke asks if they want to stay, and Rosalind says they do -- it's immediately clear that she's taken a special interest in Orlando. He warns them that it won't be pretty: The odds are against Orlando, and he admits that he has tried to persuade him not to wrestle. Perhaps, he suggests, the young ladies can be more successful.
Celia asks Le Beau to bring Orlando to them, and she tells him to "embrace your own safety and give over this attempt." Rosalind seconds her, and says he won't lose face in their eyes if he does. Orlando replies that he really has nothing to lose by the attempt, "wherein if I be foiled, there is but one shamed that was never gracious; if killed, but one dead that is willing to be so. I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me; the world no injury, for in it I have nothing; only in the world I fill up a place which may be better supplied when I have made it empty." This dude is seriously depressed.
Rosalind and Celia wish him well, although Celia's wish, "Your heart's desires be with you!" is ironically undercut by Charles, who asks, "Come, where is this young gallant that is so desirous to lie with his mother earth?" They cheer him on, and Orlando wins: Charles is borne off unconscious.
The duke congratulates Orlando and asks his name, but is surprised to find that he is the son of an old enemy and departs after saying, "I would thou hadst told me of another father." Celia is shocked, and asks Rosalind, "Were I my father, coz, would I do this?" Orlando proclaims his pride in his parentage, and Rosalind tells him that her father "lov'd Sir Rowland as his soul," and that she would have urged him more strongly -- "given him tears unto entreaties" -- not to wrestle if she had known Orlando was his son. She gives him a token of hers to wear, commenting that she too is "our of suits with fortune" or would "give more but that her hand lacks means."
They begin to depart as Orlando recovers from a bout of speechlessness: "Can I not say, 'I thank you'?" Rosalind thinks -- or wants to believe -- that he has called them back: "Did you call sir? / Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown / More than your enemies." Celia, perhaps a little puzzled, asks, "Will you go coz?" And as they leave, Orlando once again berates himself for being tongue-tied: "I cannot speak to her, yet she urg'd conference. / O poor Orlando, thou art overthrown! / Or Charles, or something weaker masters thee." Neither Rosalind nor Orlando is fully aware that they have fallen in love, and the uncertainty shows in their awkwardness.
Le Beau returns to tell Orlando that the duke has decided that the son of his enemy is his enemy too, and that he should make himself scarce. But Orlando is preoccupied with something else: "Which of the two was the daughter of the Duke / That here was at the wrestling?" Le Beau observes that neither of them ought to be considered the duke's daughter if you judge by their manners, which are much better than the duke, but that the "taller" one is his daughter. Or maybe he says the "shorter" one: The Folio says "taller," but this directly contradicts what we hear in the next scene, when Rosalind decides to disguise herself as a pageboy because she is "more than common tall." So editors very often change "taller" here to "shorter" for consistency's sake. In any case, Orlando seems to figure it out. And Le Beau goes on to tell Orlando "that of late this Duke / Hath ta'en displeasure 'gainst his gentle niece, / Grounded upon no other argument / But that the people praise her for her virtues, / And pity her for her good father's sake." So not only is Oliver jealous of Orlando's popularity, Duke Frederick is jealous of Rosalind's. Le Beau bids him farewell, and Orlando yields to his fate, though somewhat sweetened by his new acquaintance:
Thus must I from the smoke into the smother,
From tyrant Duke unto a tyrant brother.
But heavenly Rosalind!
Scene III
Rosalind is, for once, speechless, which surprises Celia. But she soon guesses what is eating at Rosalind: "Is it possible, on such a sudden, you should fall into so strong a liking with old Sir Rowland's youngest son?" Rosalind says that her father loved his, but Celia isn't buying this as a reason: "By this kind of chase, I should hate him, for my father hated his father dearly; yet I hate not Orlando."
Their conversation is interrupted by the duke, "With his eyes full of anger," as Celia observes. He tells Rosalind, "Within these ten days if that thou be'st found / So near our public court as twenty miles, / Thou diest for it." And when she asks why, he says, "Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not." Here Rosalind shows real backbone; she demands, "Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor, / Tell me whereon the likelihood depends." And when he can't come up with anything other than "Thou art thy father's daughter," she stands up to him admirably:
So was I when your Highness took his dukedom;
So was I when your Highness banish'd him.
Treason is not inherited, my lord,
Or if we did derive it from our friends,
What's that to me? My father was no traitor.
Then good my liege, mistake me not so much
To think my poverty is treacherous.
And Celia stands up for her friend too: "If she be a traitor, / Why so am I." Although Rosalind is one of the great roles for women, the part needs to be cast with a Celia of equal skill.
The duke, of course, will hear none of it, and he condemns Rosalind with one of those damned-if-she-does, damned-if-she-doesn't statements: "her smoothness, / Her very silence, and her patience / Speak to the people and they pity her." It's a perfect Catch-22: If Rosalind were an outspoken critic of the duke, she'd be a traitor. But since she keeps her peace and exhibits patience, attracting popular admiration, she's also a traitor. As for Celia, he says, "Thou art a fool." And then, several lines later, after she's proclaimed her determination to stand by Rosalind, he repeats it, only more harshly: "You are a fool." The harshness of tone is emphasized by the switch from the familiar "Thou" to the impersonal "You."
The duke and his entourage leave, and Celia expresses the bitterness of the scene: "Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine." She proclaims herself banished with Rosalind, and when Rosalind protests, she once again plays the you-don't-love-me-as-much-as-I-love-you card: "Rosalind lacks then the love / Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one." It is, in fact, Celia's idea that they should seek out Rosalind's father in the Forest of Arden, and when Rosalind protests that it's dangerous, it's Celia who suggests that they disguise themselves as poor women. Finally Rosalind gets into the spirit of the thing, and suggests, "Were it not better, / Because that I am more than common tall, / That I did suit me all points like a man?" She'll be disguised as a pageboy and call herself Ganymede like "Jove's own page." Celia decides to call herself Aliena in reference to her alien state, and Rosalind proposes that they take Touchstone to "be a comfort to our travel." And so they go off to prepare, in Celia's words, "Now go we in content / To liberty, and not to banishment."
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As You Like It is so frequently performed that there's no lack of available video. The first here is from a televised performance at the 1982 Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Orlando: Andrew Gillies; Adam: Mervyn Blake; Oliver: Stephen Russell; Dennis: Nicholas Colicos; Charles: Jefferson Mappin; Roberta Maxwell: Rosalind; Rosemary Dunsmore: Celia; Lewis Gordon: Touchstone; Keith Dinicol: Le Beau; Graeme Campbell: Duke Frederick
From the 1978 BBC-TV production. Rosalind: Helen Mirren; Celia: Angharad Rees; Touchstone: James Bolam; Le Beau: John Quentin; Duke Frederick: Richard Easton; Orlando: Brian Stirner; Charles: David Prowse.
From the 1936 film directed by Paul Czinner. Orlando: Laurence Olivier; Le Beau: Austin Trevor.
From a Royal Shakespeare Company production. Rosalind: Katy Stephens; Celia: Mariah Gale; Duke Frederick: Sandy Neilson.
Act V
