Spotlight
Two of the issues that these plays deal with are certainly sex and sexual titillation, although the list of concerns by those opposed to theatres was much longer. In these plays and other comedies, Shakespeare capitalizes on the fact that, as women were not allowed to perform in plays, he had prepubescent boys playing the roles of young women. One of them, Rosalind, then dresses up as a young man and calls herself Ganymede, Jove’s errand-boy – a name with homoerotic associations – and under that disguise woos another young man named Orlando, who in the poem Orlando Furioso by Ariosto (1532) engages in a number of emotionally charged activities, one of which involves his running through the countryside naked.
But even the names of some of the other characters draw attention to the body or bodily functions. Touchstone, for example, may be a ‘touchstone’ of reality, but there is a sexual pun on stones, meaning testicles, and the name Jaques may well refer to the ‘jakes’ or privy, a flushing lavatory that had recently been invented by Sir John Harrington.
Although As You Like It is a romantic comedy, within it there is a great deal of banter and punning on sexual matters and on physical desire, as, for example, in 4.1.138f., when Orlando wishes his wife will be faithful ‘For ever, and a day’, to which Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, replies ‘Say a day, without ever’, later explaining ‘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’. To get outside is to go ‘out of doors’, which suggests that given freedom from restraint women will become ‘whores’, and woman’s ‘wit’ refers both to female anarchic ingenuity (particularly in sexual matters but also in her capacity for subversion generally) and to her apparently insatiable desire. She’ll find an opening ‘out of doors’ and shortly will be found in an adulterous bed with a ‘neighbour’. Indeed, there is a possible sexual pun even on each of the ways out of the house. (See Rubinstein, F. [1989, 2nd edn: 181], A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and Their Significance. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan.)
Much of this punning is now lost on a modern audience or reader without the help of footnotes or specific reference books, but it gives an indication of the earthy humour of the play itself and helps performers in their interpretation, as, indeed, it can the reader. But it is not necessary to get sidetracked in trying to recognize all the puns, since in a number of cases the double entendres depend heavily on context.
Today, of course, women usually play the female roles and so another historical dimension is lost to the plays such as As You Like It, in which the gender disguises would have played such an important part in the performance. Indeed, Rosalind’s final appearance in the Epilogue, now in her woman’s attire but with the boy actor, draws attention to the fact that he is still in a woman’s role: ‘It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue;’ later saying ‘If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied not’ (Epilogue 1–2, 212–15). Catherine Belsey calls this the ‘comedy of uncertainty’, where ‘a male actor and a female character is speaking’ (Belsey, C., in Drakakis, J. [ed.] [1985: 181], Alternative Shakespeares. London and New York: Methuen New Accents).
It is the uncertainty of gender identity that may well have attracted Shakespeare’s audience, but Belsey notes that it may also have exposed the way in which that identity was socially constructed, allowing the audience ‘to glimpse a possible meaning, an image of being, which is not a-sexual, but which disrupts the system of difference on which sexual stereotyping depends’ (Belsey, 1985: 190).
Herein lies the comedy of the play. This isn’t a bawdy play, despite the sexual puns and bawdy innuendos which no doubt delighted the original audience. It goes beneath that to produce a humour of the genders, to a point where in the epilogue the boy actor can refer openly to both genders in a single speech.
‘Conventional or no, the taking of female parts by boy players actually occasioned a good deal of contemporary comment, and created considerable moral uneasiness, even among those who patronized and supported the theatres. Among those who opposed them, transvestism on stage was a main plank in the anti-stage polemic.’
Jardine, L. (1983: 9), Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Press. (See also Dunsinberre, J. [1975: 231].)
The play in this respect was one that ‘took on’ the civil authorities with a challenge that could not be criticized. It is a humour on the edge of what was permitted but it simultaneously demonstrated what it is to be human.
‘Shakespeare is profoundly and continuously interested in sex as a fundamental human instinct and activity, as a source not only of comedy but also of joy, of anguish, of disillusionment and of jealousy, of nausea as well as of ecstasy, as a site of moral and ethical debate, and at its best, as a natural fulfilment of spiritual love.’
Wells, S. (2010: 9–10), Shakespeare, Sex and Love. Oxford: Oxford University Press
In the Forest of Arden
Duke Senior has been usurped by his brother and banished. He lives like Robin Hood in the forest but despite his protestations in 2.1.1–17, that ‘in exile,/Hath not old custom made this life more sweet’, he still conducts himself as an authority figure. Orlando, under the rule of his tyrannical brother, Oliver, escapes into the forest with his father’s old retainer Adam, who almost dies from starvation (2.6.1f.). The two are saved by human hospitality rather than by Orlando’s aggression in trying to steal the exiled duke’s food: entering with sword drawn, he cries ‘Forbear, and eat no more’, to which the melancholy Jaques sardonically replies ‘Why, I have eat none yet’ (2.7.88–9). It is a put-down in relation to Orlando’s expectations concerning the behaviour of ‘outlaw’.
Attention is being drawn to the difference between nature and civilization as well as the differences within humankind inscribed in circumstances and levels of birth. Orlando, Rosalind, Oliver and Celia come from the upper stratum of society and retain that status even in refuge in the forest. Phoebe, Silvius, Audrey and Touchstone are from the lower stratum, although it is their existence at the lower end of society that allows Touchstone the clown to use his urbane knowledge of court behaviour to displace William – a possible reference to the playwright – in love, reducing him to the status of a ‘clown’:
TOUCHSTONE [I am] He sir that must marry this woman. Therefore, you clown, abandon – which is in the vulgar leave – the society – which in the boorish is company – of this female – which in the common is woman. Which together is, abandon the society of this female, or clown, thou perishest;
(5.1.45–50)
Touchstone here assumes a ridiculous linguistic superiority to William, humorously placing himself in a dominant hierarchical position, allying himself in his imagination with a cultural and political superiority. He has found someone, William, whom he can force to relieve him of his position of ‘clown’, which would allow him to move up the social ladder. In reality, however, he does not progress very far in sophistication, since for him marriage is reduced simply to a means of legitimizing sexual gratification: ‘Come sweet Audrey, We must be married or we must live in bawdry’ (3.3.87–8).
For her part, Phoebe, who has aspirations above her social status, falls in love with Rosalind disguised as Ganymede, thereby adding a further, audacious dimension to the sexual interest: two boy actors playing two women, one of whom has fallen for the other in her male attire.
Defying the dream
In the midst of this sexual and social melee within the forest is the malcontent, Jaques. Throughout the drama, Jaques demonstrates that he cannot be assimilated into the illusion that the characters are creating for themselves, since he feels compelled to defy their dream by reminding everyone of the frailty of flesh. His vision of a fallen, postlapsarian world is in conflict with the Duke’s illusory prelapsarian Edenic vision. Jaques offers his own vision of human
progress in the famous Seven Ages of Man speech, in which he goes beyond drawing a parallel between life and the stage to suggest that life is itself a theatrical performance:
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,
His acts being seven ages.
(2.7.139f.)
He continues by drawing out the different phases of human life as it declines towards imbecility and death. Society is constant only in its repetition of the mutability of its members, with the result that the process of living is also an inescapable part of a process of dying.
Key idea
In this context the comic plot builds on the foundation of a Shakespearean formulaic structure, and may be seen as a mating game in a world of birth, copulation and death, where rebirth and an investment in youth are Nature’s way of compensating for the rise and decline of existence.
The structure of the play
Within the structure, the obstacle with which this play begins is twofold: firstly, the usurpation of Duke Senior by his brother Ferdinand leads to the rejection of Rosalind; and secondly, Oliver’s dislike of his younger brother leads to him trying to have him killed in a wrestling match. Within that first stage of the play, not only are the issues set out but Shakespeare includes a wrestling bout which in itself has entertainment value – as have, of course, the songs performed in the forest setting.
In keeping with the formula of escape from a threat, subsequent lovers escape to the forest. There, the various re-articulations of the problem and the finding of a resolution take place under a pretence, a fantasy of the sort that constitutes ‘theatre’, to where the point of teasing and pretending are no longer enough. In 5.2.50–51 Rosalind’s lover Orlando declares, ‘I can live no longer by thinking’ and she replies, ‘I will weary you then no longer with idle talking.’ Their playing must come to an end, as must the play itself. Of course, that will be the point when the lovers’ true identities are discovered.
Rosalind subsequently uses Hymen’s masque, another ‘entertainment’, as a recognition scene, revealing who she is and thereby bringing each of the couples together. In this, Phoebe’s dream is shattered as she realizes that the man she loves (Ganymede) is a woman (Rosalind), and that she should be satisfied with the lover she has rejected (Silvius). But structurally there remain many unanswered questions. What about the original problem of the usurpation of the Duke? While a means has been found to bring Oliver into the wood and for him to fall in love, almost magically, with Celia, a device outside the harmony of the structural formula has to be created by the dramatist in order to allow for a reconciliation between the two dukes.
With only a brief prior reference (1.1.5–6), ‘My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit…’, Sir Rowland de Boys’s second son, confusingly named Jaques (or Jacques in the Arden stage direction), appears on the stage for the first time to convey the news of Duke Frederick’s conversion (5.4.149f.). The audience can scarcely be expected to recall the brief reference to him so early in the play, and so his introduction into the action comes as a surprise. It is a creaky dramatic solution that usually causes the audience to laugh and to forgive the dramatist for its implausibility. Yet, in its artifice, the second son’s appearance draws attention to the construct of the play as much as Hymen’s masque.
Its artificiality proclaims the self-referential nature of the artefact, in an attempt to alleviate the implausibility of the usurping Duke Frederick’s meeting ‘with an old religious man’ (5.4.158) and subsequent departure into a religious life. This also cleverly allows an exit for the malcontent Jaques, who has been left isolated by the plot and who elects to go to the converted Duke Frederick, commenting, ‘Out of these convertites,/There is much to be heard and learned’ (5.4.182–3). The resolution for him neatly suits his character as Shakespeare has him follow Duke Frederick’s fortunes now, as before he had followed Duke Senior in his banishment.
All that is left to do is for Rosalind, as we’ve seen, to close the play with that expression of the comic ambiguity of gender, allowing the audience a completeness and understanding of their place as a necessary component of the total performance. In all of this, however, there is still something highly satisfactory about As You Like It: it is a play that lives up to its name.
8
Twelfth Night; or, What You Will (1601)
Twelfth Night, to my mind, despite charges of being formulaic, is one of the finest comedies ever written. Only perhaps Anton Chekhov and Samuel Beckett come as close to gaining the kind of aesthetic perfection that underpins this comedy, fusing the elements of structure, plot, humour and pathos into a satisfying creative whole. Aesthetic roundness is not, of course, the only determinant of quality but this play has a modulation and movement deep within it that are both inspiring and satisfying.
Each element of the play is interconnected in a more sophisticated way than those set pieces of comedy found, for example, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in the depiction of constancy and loyalty in the episode with Launce and his dog Crab, or the comic masques and sonnet readings of the male lovers in Love’s Labour’s Lost. These are great comic episodes, but Twelfth Night takes the elegance of the structure underpinning As You Like It one step further and does so adventurously through pursuing a correspondence motif, in which comedy is haunted by the threat of death.
Carpe diem
Shakespeare shows an interest in doubles: the two pairs of twins in The Comedy of Errors; the double set of lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; the two women in As You Like It with Rosalind taller than Celia; and Beatrice and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. In his personal life Shakespeare had twins of his own, Hamnet and Judith, separated by the death of Hamnet in 1596.
Spotlight
In the late 1590s and early 1600s Shakespeare’s company clearly had two boy actors of real quality playing the roles of Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It and Viola and Olivia in Twelfth Night. Shakespeare used this resource cleverly and fully until, presumably, one or both of the actors’ voices broke. Some boy actors may have continued to play more mature women’s roles well into their careers but, once the voice had broken, it is doubtful that they played the younger romantic females.
Four years after Hamnet’s death, Shakespeare, perhaps bravely, returns to the portrayal of twins, only this time they are a boy and a girl (as he himself had) named Viola and Sebastian. In this play there are correspondences between a number of characters that share the letters of their names: Viola, Olivia, Malvolio. It is also a comedy haunted by the knowledge of death and the need to appreciate and value life.
Viola survives a shipwreck but fears her brother is drowned. Her brother also survives the shipwreck but fears his sister is drowned. Shakespeare appears on the surface to have returned to the plot territory of The Comedy of Errors, but with a difference. It may be to do with his growth in maturity as a dramatist but, with due caution, we have to note that Hamnet’s death occurred between the writing of The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night, and might have influenced his artistic perception.
Death is present throughout the play, not just as a framing device – as in The Comedy of Errors, where Egeon is sentenced to death unless he can find redemption within the hours of daylight – but permeating the fabric of the play with a gentle melancholy, as exemplified in the Fool’s song:
Come away, come away death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fie away, fie away breath,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid:
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it.
My part of death no one so true
Did share it.
(2.4.51–8)
The carpe diem (‘seize the day’) motif represents a balance between the energy of life and the finality of death.
Spotlight
The play’s title, Twelfth Night; or, What You Will, has attracted the attention of scholars over the years. In the 1950s Northrop Frye (1957) identified archetypal similarities between the comedies in which the action moves into a green world and returns. C. L. Barber (1959) linked Twelfth Night, as he did A Midsummer Night’s Dream and other comedies, with festive traditions in an interpretation that was further explored by other critics such as Anne Righter (1962), whose husband John Barton produced the play for the RSC in 1969–72.
Barber observes that ‘The title tells us that the play is like holiday misrule – though not just like it, for it adds “or what you will”’ (Barber, C. L. [1959: 241], Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press). Towards the end of the century Barber’s views, although still respected, were challenged by post-structuralist critics such as Malcolm Evans and by the new historicist critic Stephen Greenblatt. Greenblatt questions Barber’s claim that in the play there is a ‘basic security’ which ‘explains why there is so little that is queasy in all Shakespeare’s handling of boy actors playing women, and playing women pretending to be men’ (Barber, 1959: 245). Such a critical position prompts Greenblatt to call for a different kind of reading that seeks to place these categories within their historical and historicizing context.
‘…how can we unsettle the secure relation between the normal and the aberrant? How can we question the nature that like a weighted bowl so providentially draws to her bias and resolves the comic predicaments? I propose that…we must historicize Shakespearean sexual nature, restoring it to its relation of negotiation and exchange with other social discourses of the body.’
Shakespeare- a Complete Introduction Page 9