Banishment, a usurping brother (and uncle), envy, and the abuse of authority all surface in the opening act of this comedy, and Rosalind’s situation at the beginning of the play is very close to Hamlet’s. Tragic court, comic Arden, then? Or is it more complex than that?
DC: For me, it is more complex. I think Shakespeare is interested in both simultaneously subverting and supporting all those conventional notions of court as false and country as authentic. There’s always a dialectic, a duality being played out in As You Like It. In the court there is warmth in the intimate relationship between Celia and Rosalind surviving against the odds. There’s loyalty in Touchstone and even Le Beau. While the world of the court is performative, Arden is in some respects even more so. Here, for example, Rosalind is in the permanent state of performing Ganymede. Equally, the country is as full of pain and loss as the court. The first time we see anyone talk about love in Arden it’s Silvius, and he’s in agony. We played Silvius’ pain very strongly in our production, the terrible despair and torture of what Phoebe’s doing to him. Arden’s also a place of great physical hardship: Corin talks about how hard his life is. What’s continually subverted is the sentimental cliché that the country is “nice”—Shakespeare, after all, was a country boy himself and knew that country life and country people can be far from nice. It can be a cruel and dangerous place.
MB: Rosalind is our Hamlet as we would like it. Written around the same time as her less fortunate brother Hamlet, and her other sibling Henry V, Rosalind comes at civil strife and injustice and a world out of joint from a different angle. Perhaps she is blessed that as a woman she was not “born to set it right,” and can therefore behave more like an artist, more like Shakespeare: the “powerless” subversive. She is also allowed a more fully explored exile from court than Hamlet, and As You Like It accordingly invites us to explore the alternatives to the misery of rule by Claudius and Frederick.
Where do you think Jaques’ melancholy stems from?
DC: I speculated that he is someone who had suffered a loss in love that he’s never recovered from. Clearly, the play is concerned with the different ways human beings go about trying to find love. For me, Jaques is the cynic who was once the lover. He was once the Orlando figure, and that’s why he despises Orlando so much: because Orlando represents something that he has crushed within himself—the loving, open-hearted, vulnerable young man who will, in Jaques’ eyes, inevitably get hurt. He cannot tolerate romantic views in anyone, especially in Duke Senior and Orlando.
To me it’s significant that the two characters that Shakespeare invented that weren’t in the source text were Jaques and Touchstone, who are the cynics, the anti-romantics. This was very significant in my understanding of the play. The elements that Shakespeare’s added to the story are the minor notes, the voices of dissent, the anti-pastoral elements. So it is useful to look at what he was trying to do with those characters tonally. In the early court scenes between Celia and Rosalind, Rosalind frequently expresses a romantic view of love and Celia undercuts it. The same dynamic continues in Arden—Jaques is introduced as a foil for Duke Senior, to undercut and puncture the duke’s romantic view of man as a pure being with an essence and a moral core; Jaques’ melancholy is a minor note that cuts against that because it speaks of loss, of human frailty and the inevitability of death.
MB: Rosalind gives the ungenerous answer to this question in her encounter with Jaques. She steps effortlessly into the shoes of the little boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes, and strips Jaques naked with startling clarity. He is revealed as a lonely, would-be monk who thinks he can find truth in ascetic gestures, but who still yearns for company, the court, and pretty youths.
Elsewhere, we, like the duke’s exiled court, find ourselves utterly drawn to what this melancholic has to say about brief mortality, and the wicked and venal nature of the world. That said, the self-importance of the usual treatment of Jaques in the English tradition is surprising, and possibly due to the reputation of the role as a “star part” for important actors.
And what on earth is going on with the other Jaques, the middle brother who suddenly appears at the end? Why did Shakespeare call him Jaques as well? Just lazy writing on Shakespeare’s part? It’s not exactly a rewarding part for an actor, is it?
DC: Shakespeare is often interested in the number three in his plays; the classic example being A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where everything’s structured around three worlds. The number three in drama is very potent. It implies a beginning, a middle, and an end. In the story of As You Like It, Oliver is the beginning, Orlando the middle, and Jaques de Bois is the end. Perhaps the reason he’s called Jaques is that the other Jaques disappears out of the play at the point that he comes in. And the original Jaques disappears because hope wins over and so the minor notes are no longer necessary. The new Jaques brings in a crucial message of hope: transformation is possible, although hard-won.
MB: Jaques de Bois completes the family and the picture of Britain: Orlando in exiled opposition; Oliver, the traitor to his family’s heritage; and Jaques, the secret recusant, allowed to study at university but keeping his faith, and waiting for the return of the “true king.”
Practically speaking, what devices did you use for the cross-dressing of Rosalind?
DC: The main focus was in the physicality and attitude of the character rather than the costume, which we kept simple. Because we were focusing on the continuums between court and country, one of the first decisions Lia [Williams—Rosalind], Rae [Smith—designer], and I came to about the way Rosalind should look, was that she shouldn’t have a wig. Originally we were going to have long tresses in the court, then Lia’s own short hair would be revealed in the country. But we felt it was useful to leave as much of the job of the transformation to the actor and her physical life, rather than using the more obvious visual sign that long hair equals “girl” and short hair equals “boy.” We gave Rosalind a quite formal, classical evening dress in the court. In Arden, she wore a pair of brown jeans, a white shirt with a pair of braces, and boots, so there was a slightly ragamuffin, scruffy feeling about her clothes. Lia also had padding between her legs which helped her stand, move, and feel like a male.
MB: Strangely enough, we let Katy’s hair down for Ganymede. We also threw away the court collar and corset and gave her a small moustache, which made her look like a cross between Antonio Banderas and Katharine Hepburn. Dharmesh Patel wore a wig of even longer hair as Amiens, to afford us a currency of young men with long hair.
And, more profoundly, did your Rosalind become more herself when she was Ganymede?
DC: I don’t really know what this question means. I think the play is partly dealing with how authentic you can be as a person, and what does authenticity mean? Do human beings have a core to them, a moral center, or is life a series of different acts played out, a performance? I don’t think the play comes down on one side or the other. What is undoubtedly true is that by performing and being artificial she discovers the authenticity of Orlando’s feelings. Her disguise allows her to explore Orlando’s feelings for her in safe parameters.
MB: Katy came to rehearsals very confident of her ability to inhabit a young pugnacious male, and it came as a shock to us all to discover that Rosalind was at her most profoundly feminine as Ganymede.
Entered into as a self-protective act of male impersonation, Ganymede becomes a powerful and disturbing disinhibitor that reveals and transforms Rosalind more profoundly than any forest could. Dreams and demons which were inexpressible for a courtly woman of the time come tumbling out to anticipate centuries of gender struggle, striking us as astonishingly contemporary and scaring the pants off both Celia and Orlando.
Is Orlando worthy of Rosalind? Linguistically and psychologically, hers does seem to be the stronger part.
DC: I read James Shapiro’s book 1599 while I was in rehearsal, and that was a big influence on me. His argument is that Orlando knows from the word go that Ganymede is Rosalind in di
sguise. I felt that this would make the playing of the Orlando/Rosalind scenes rather arch and overcomplicated. But I was struck by the idea that Orlando knows that Ganymede is Rosalind as he goes into the final scene. I think there is textual justification for this. Also, if Orlando starts the final scene unaware that Ganymede is in fact Rosalind, he’s both very much behind Rosalind and behind the audience, and therefore never her equal. For me it was important that he was her equal, otherwise her choice is brought into question by an audience, in a way that makes the play unsatisfying. It feels like a bad match that couldn’t possibly survive. Our eventual supposition—and like all Shakespeare interpretations, it is open to question—was that, in the “bloody handkerchief” scene, when Oliver picks up Ganymede after she’s fainted, he discovers through physical contact with her that she’s a woman. I think this is supported by the text: he calls her “Rosalind” at the end of the scene, for example, rather than “Ganymede.” We speculated that between this scene and the scene where Orlando tells Rosalind that he “can live no longer by thinking,” Oliver has told Orlando what he’s discovered. This seems justified by Orlando’s complete change of mood in relation to Ganymede—he’s had enough of the mind games. However, he has learned that role-play, improvisation, and an element of performance are a crucial part of keeping a relationship alive; it’s not all about pinning poems on trees. A successful marriage is built on each partner agreeing to improvise together, to play a variety of roles with conviction, to have flexibility. This is what he has learned from Rosalind, and in our production it became clear through the way he played along when she said “I have, since I was three year old, conversed with a magician.” Therefore, he was a knowing participant in this conspiracy rather than a dupe. This completed Rosalind and Orlando’s journey together. He has learned his lesson and they are now ready to go into marriage together as equals. I was really pleased with this aspect of the production, because I thought it did solve one of the problems of the play, of “Well, why is she marrying that guy, he’s so naive?”
MB: She should be so lucky. Phoebe is not the only woman in As You Like It who is “not for all markets.” The disgraced daughter of a defeated duke, spirited and wanton, and far too intelligent for the average male ego, Rosalind will almost certainly have to look abroad and probably trade down for a husband. In Orlando she has found a man whom she desires on sight, who shares her moral strength, and who surpasses her in potency and sense of wonder. His name is an anagram not just of his father’s but of the great Roland of chivalric legend. His lyric verses are imperfect, but that’s a manly failing. He has the open heart, the wit, and the playfulness to spar as an equal with Rosalind on fire as Ganymede. It is true that the action which ultimately makes him more than worthy of Rosalind takes place offstage: it is Orlando’s love, courage, and physical strength when faced with the lion and Oliver that turns the fortunes of the play and even mystically disarms the troops of Frederick. Orlando in the theater depends heavily on his Oliver to return the favor as he recounts the tale of Orlando’s Christ-like sacrifice of his own blood to cleanse the sins of the world.
How do you see the balance in the relationship between Rosalind and Celia?
DC: We made a decision very early on that Celia is the more naive of the two when it comes to the opposite sex. We went down the line that she was a very learned, slightly swotty, bookish girl, who preferred the company of other girls and hadn’t discovered boys yet. This played well because it allowed Celia’s deflating responses to Rosalind to be based on her lack of experience in love. She is not really interested in boys until she meets Oliver, where everything changes. Tellingly, from that point in the play she’s silent. It’s as if she’s now been bitten by the romantic bug and has nothing more to say. There’s a major shift in the relationship between Rosalind and Celia when Rosalind falls in love with Orlando, and as the love between Rosalind and Orlando deepens, life becomes quite fraught and painful for Celia. She feels excluded. She’s given up everything for Rosalind—her home, her family—and now it feels like Rosalind’s abandoned her. But she’s also intrigued by the strange transformation her friend is undergoing. Celia’s story is about letting go of Rosalind and, on some psychic level, making space for Oliver.
7. Michael Boyd production, 2009: Orlando as a match for Rosalind, “He has the open heart, the wit, and the playfulness to spar as an equal with Rosalind.”
MB: Celia is the daughter of the younger brother and talks of being too young to appreciate Rosalind at the time of Frederick’s coup. So she’s probably younger that Rosalind, even though her voice at court is older and more pragmatic; the voice of authority and merry competence compared with Rosalind’s hesitant and volatile start.
I enjoyed the youth and frailty of Mariah Gale in our production, which is repressed at court and covered with a determined optimism, then revealed as hopelessly out of its depth in the forest as Katy’s older Rosalind sings and bleeds as an adult woman on fire with desire. Celia is brittle but in charge of her father’s court, and, after a delightful burst of bossy grand-dame behavior, has to sit quietly and learn from Rosalind how to be ready for love when it strikes in the shape of Oliver.
In what ways was Touchstone a touchstone in your production?
DC: In the first half of the play in the court I think he is, because he’s saying the unsayable, speaking the truth in a world where the truth is dangerous. He’s someone that Rosalind and Celia can trust to tell them the truth. Within the court world he does what Jaques does within Duke Senior’s court, which is to provide the minor notes, undercutting the myths of power that are being propagated. Once Touchstone’s let loose in the country, however, his story becomes much more about his pursuit of Audrey, his physical drives.
MB: He was Celia’s prickly touchstone at court, licensed to offend her with stinging reminders of the injustice and hypocrisy of her father’s court, even after being silenced by her father, the duke.
He became the audience’s antiheroic touchstone in the forest, allowed to moan at discomfort, selfishly make the most of it with Audrey, and long for home.
At the end of the play Hymen asserts that the audience’s “wonder may diminish,” yet, with the highest marriage count of any Shakespearean comedy, the play’s neat conclusion can still appear implausible. How did you set about making each coupling believable for the audience?
DC: Each of the romantic stories that leads toward those weddings has a specific and detailed journey, each with very clear turning points. It felt crucial to reveal the detail of those journeys in performance, so that when everything comes together at the end it feels natural rather than contrived. To help this we made the Hymen section of the final scene ritualistic. Hymen’s entrance, with Hymen played by Corin, was a quite formal ritual that, in our minds, Rosalind had cooked up. This gave the ending a kind of magic and stopped it from feeling like a playwright trying to tie things up and make them neat. Equally, each of the marriage blessings is different—there’s texture there, so that when you look closely at what’s happening, Shakespeare isn’t creating a happy-ever-after ending for the play. It’s far more nuanced.
There’s always an element of magic at the end of Shakespeare’s comedies. He isn’t writing naturalistically. Frequently, he’s referring to the ritual of theater in a knowing way. There are many references to the theater and role-play in As You Like It. For example, you have a girl playing a boy—and of course in the Jacobean theater it would have been a boy playing a girl playing a boy, so you get that double level of irony and theatricality. Because plays were performed in the open air, and therefore without the division between audience and performers that there is in a contemporary theater, the audience were constantly reminded that they were watching a performance. So events that might read as contrived or artificial in performances are joyously theatrical. None of the plays are documentaries; they’re dealing with archetypes, a distillation of human experience. The gesture of the plays is always mythic, so to do them completely r
ealistically is wrong, I think. There is a difference between being truthful and being realistic, and that distinction is crucial to an understanding of how to perform Shakespeare’s plays.
MB: It is Rosalind’s vivid and moving account of Oliver and Celia’s incontinent dash to the altar that sells it to us as the most natural and enviable thing in the world. In our case we had a real young couple in love offstage (who were also excellent in their understudy roles as Orlando and Rosalind), which made Katy Stephen’s job even easier. Forbes Masson as Jaques implied bitterly that Oliver was marrying power and money, but the audience didn’t believe him.
The entire audience is meant to fall instantly in love with William, and did in our production with Dyfan Dwyfor, but Sophie Russell’s surreal Audrey and Richard Katz’s Dada Touchstone were clearly meant for each other, and will quite possibly prove Jaques’ prediction of a short-lived marriage wrong.
Jimmy Tucker’s Act 5 breakthrough as Silvius was to move from plaintive pastoral minor key to full-on physical passion the moment that Ganymede was revealed as a woman. He did a Benedick on Phoebe and literally stopped her mouth, earning her eleventh-hour conversion with physical masterfulness.
I don’t for one moment buy the idea that Orlando rumbles Rosalind before the wedding, and he does have a lot to reassess on the instant of Rosalind’s self-revelation, but his is the most unconditional male love in Shakespeare, and in any case it’s clear to him that he has passed any covert test set for him by Rosalind disguised as that pretty youth.
PLAYING ROSALIND: AN INTERVIEW WITH NAOMI FREDERICK*
Naomi Frederick, born in 1976, has worked onstage and in film and television. Trained at RADA, she has played Celia in As You Like It for the RSC, where she also appeared in John Fletcher’s sequel to The Taming of the Shrew, The Tamer Tamed. She was Isabella in Com-plicite’s Measure for Measure that played at the National Theatre in London, where she was also Lady Percy (Hotspur’s wife) in the two parts of Henry IV. She talks here about playing Rosalind in the summer of 2009 in Thea Sharrock’s production of As You Like It on the stage of the reconstructed open-air Elizabethan theater in London, Shakespeare’s Globe.
As You Like It Page 17