As You Like It, by William Shakespeare. It's one of those plays where many words are said, but not very much actually happens. He has three of these: the others being Love's Labours Lost and Much Ado About Nothing. What could I possibly have to say about this play? A good chunk of the dialogue is barely intelligible, being as it is said by the lovably pompous court jester Touchstone. But within the play's premise itself is embedded something interesting. This play is actually about female leaders, maturity, legitimacy, and tyranny. It is also yes, a play whose main characters are a butch bisexual and a femme lesbian but that is not why it's a feminist work. It is a feminist work because of how it updates a classic story to be about a female ruler: and indeed supports a specific female ruler. It is about a girl becoming a duchess, a child becoming a leader. It is a rewriting of one of the oldest stories ever created by humans which is still around today: Jason and the Argonauts. First written down by Hesiod in the 8th Century BCE, it is likely much older than that. Much older. Very likely, this story is about that same mysterious civilization that predated the rise of Mycenae: that was, and yet was not, Greek. Perhaps it originated in Mycenaean times: or just perhaps, the half-burnt male figure found at a temple on Crete represents Jason. We cannot say for sure. What we can say: is what this story is about. It is about what it means to be a good ruler, and how to make a child into a good ruler.
Rosalind, the main character of As You Like It, is the daughter of a Duke. She will one day have a position of leadership. However, she cannot simply become a leader overnight. She must be taught how to lead. In order to learn how to lead, Rosalind needs to enter the forest. The forest in Shakespeare is never simply a place. The forest always has a magical property: it removes illusions. Everyone in the forest has no choice but to be who they really are. Rosalind believes that she is disguised, but in a very real sense she is not. How can we tell? well, in the court Rosalind was afraid to speak to Orlando (because she is attracted to him). She didn't know what to say or do. This tells us that Rosalind is putting on a show of being a "good girl". She doesn't know how to act in this situation because it wasn't one she has been taught to be in. Likewise, Orlando is tongue-tied. Again, because he is putting on an act: in his case of an athlete and manly man. But in the forest, Rosalind can speak to Orlando the way she would speak to anyone else: and Orlando can declare his affection for her to anyone who will listen (including the trees). In the forest, the duke cannot distinguish himself with fancy clothes and a big palace. He sleeps and eats with his followers, works and hunts with them too. In the forest, it is his quality which makes him a duke, his nobility that makes him a nobleman. He deescalates conflict, shares generously, models good conduct for his followers, practices solidarity with those who are physically or mentally left behind, and seeks to build relationships with everyone. He is wise enough to see desperation behind violence, fear behind a false show of anger. He knows that men do not simply hold other men at knife-point because it is fun. He is a duke in the forest, because that is his true self. He is a man who leads other men: a dux in the truest sense of the word.
But, so often we think of our identities as being innate: something we are born with. This is only half true. While we are born with certain traits and desires, our perspective shifts as we enter new states of being. This can be a new stage of life, a new socio-economic class, a new emotional state, or just a new place. Taking medication for anxiety or depression can entirely cure the problem because the medication changes your brain chemistry such that your perspective shifts. The pressures you face are the same, the challenges you need to get through are the same, your life is just as bad as it was before: but your perspective on it has changed. Shakespeare's forest has a similar effect for his characters. Oliver, Orlando's elder brother, enters the forest. He goes there to find and kill his brother, whom he is paranoid about. He believes strongly that his brother is plotting against him, to take his share of their father's land and wealth. But when he enters the forest his perspective shifts: because the economics of the forest are different from the economics of the court. The court enforces the economics of scarcity: hoarding resources and always seeking to obtain more resources is what everyone is expected to do. Oliver believes Orlando has bad intentions because he is in an environment where having bad intentions is expected. The forest however enforces the economics of abundance: hoarding resources doesn't get you anywhere. Only by pulling together and sharing resources with a group can you survive in the forest, because it's resources are harder to get.
A deer is capable of killing you with a single kick, hunting it alone would be foolish. You can't manage a farm or a flock of sheep alone, these tasks require more skills than one person could possibly ever have. In this environment, Oliver can see that his beliefs about Orlando were patently false. Orlando never asked for anything except what was promised to him by their father, and protested his treatment only because it was oppressive. Rather than killing Orlando, Oliver makes up with him. Everyone always has enough, no more and no less, in the forest because they share their skills and resources to make the most of their situation. They waste nothing, no one has extra but no one is lacking.
If you really hate spoilers, stop reading now. But it isn't really a spoiler, because all Shakespeare's comedies end the same way: everyone gets married. As You Like It is no different: all the major characters pair off. But this brings me to something that can make a modern audience uncomfortable: the way that the character of Phoebe is seemingly forced to settle for second-best. However, I would suggest there is something else going on here: Phoebe has unrealistic expectations and is looking for the wrong things in a relationship. Like most women, she has been taught to expect a particular type of man by literature. "Ganymede", Rosalind's alter ego, more closely fits that type than Silvius does. When Rosalind reveals that she is female, Phoebe realizes that what she was looking for in a man doesn't exist: but that the man who will truly make her happy is right in front of her. Silvius does in fact love her, he makes this clear by helping her to court Ganymede. He puts her wishes above his own desires, and that is what true love is. He may not be wealthy, he may not be handsome: but he will do whatever it takes to make her happy. Like many women, Phoebe has been taught that high status will make her happy. The obviously high status Ganymede, therefore attracts her attention.
It is Rosalind's task to bring the people from the court and the people from the forest together.
However, the play does not end with her receiving a title at court. It ends with a marriage in the forest. There is no return journey here, because Rosalind cannot return. The person Rosalind is, cannot exist in the court. Nor can she, in the court, be married to Orlando. Oliver cannot return to the court either: he has changed his thinking and his behavior and is now incapable of functioning at court. Having realized how his abusive behavior harmed both himself and his brother he cannot go back to it. Even Touchstone cannot return, although he seems utterly oblivious to the evils of the court. Even he has changed, because he has come to appreciate the ways in which the forest society is honest. The Exiled Duke has no plans to return, after all the type of society he has created in the forest is still impossible in the court. The tyrant cannot simply be overthrown: the people must move from the tyrant's court into the forest. Of course: the court and the forest are states of mind, not really geographical places. In today's parlance, we might say the people need to get woke. The community in the forest will take in anyone who comes: but they cannot venture beyond the forest. The tyrannical system will remain until there aren't enough people left to prop it up.
Now, it is important to realize one thing: Rosalind's name was not chosen by accident. Nor is it an accident that this one of only two non-history plays that Shakespeare wrote, which is set in England. It is also set in a specific forest, not just the general forest of A Midsummer Night's Dream: the Forest of Arden. That is not simply a euphemism, this is a very real place near Shakespeare's childhood home in Stratford-upon-Avon. Indeed, Shakespeare's mother was Mary Arden, a descendant of the family who once owned the local manor house and the forest. But the name Rosalind refers to a person who would have been in Shakespeare's original audience: Queen Elizabeth I. The German name Rosalind means "gentle rose": Queen Elizabeth Tudor's insignia was, of course, a five-petaled rose. This is a play about the Queen. Except this monarch is only called a "Queen" in retrospect. She signed her letters Elisabetta Rex, Elizabeth the King. Until Queen Victoria: the role of the Queen was entirely separate to that of the King in English society. This goes back to the Anglo-Saxon (pre-Norman) idea of a Cyning and Cyninga: two equally important rulers with distinct roles. Elizabeth Tudor was not a Queen by the description of her own people: she was a female King. Shakespeare is walking on eggshells here, putting a blatant representation of the reigning monarch into his comedy of morals. But that is the reason that Rosalind's masculine attire and demeanor are portrayed so lovingly. Elizabeth is a woman doing a man's job, so she must look and act the part. He's making a statement about what gender means. To Shakespeare: a person's social role is not defined by their gender, their gender is defined by their social role. Perhaps a response to others who felt that
Elizabeth would be too weak to handle power because of her femininity.
Elizabeth Tudor rewarded Shakespeare for his daring implicit support of her unconventional behavior. He became her favorite playwright, shoving out his college-educated colleagues Ben Johnson and Christopher Marlowe. Eventually she chose him to lead and write for her personal troupe. In the end, William Shakespeare, the son of a glover from sleepy Stratford-upon-Avon became a gentleman. Although never exactly rich, he was able to keep his family comfortably: and more importantly, he had a coat of arms. Much ink has been spilled about the meteoric rise of William Shakespeare. Indeed he is the subject of one of the oldest conspiracy theories still in existence: with many people claiming that Shakespeare is not the author of the plays we attribute to him. But a more critical examination turns up a more likely truth: that Shakespeare succeeded not on wit alone, but also on the strength of ideology. The ideas he espoused were in some ways old-fashioned, hearkening back to a medieval era that was barely remembered and already romanticized. But in other ways his ideas were far ahead of his time, particularly his attitude towards women as reflected by the stories he tells about women. These attitudes however, far from getting him in trouble: helped him succeed in a country where a ruler was setting out to change notions of female leadership.
Together, the indomitable Virgin Queen and the mischievous playwright redefined the idea of female leadership, and indeed the idea of what it meant to be a woman. Shakespeare wrote in the 1600s, only a half-century after Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for the sin of dressing like a man. Granted, in her case, this was simply an excuse (the real "crime" was supporting the French King): but it is still telling that it was considered a valid excuse. In that context, Shakespeare's characterization of Rosalind which seems so tame to a modern audience is incredibly radical. It is of course a blow softened by the fact that a boy is playing Rosalind: and so you have the hilarity of man playing a woman pretending to be a man. Still, we have a cross-dressing woman as the hero of our story. Indeed she isn't just a cross-dressing woman, she's a sexually (or at least romantically) deviant woman. It doesn't get less subtle than "close beyond the natural bond of sisters" for circumlocutions: it's a stretch to even call that a euphemism. Rosalind's actions towards Orlando are not precisely what one would call loving, but may indicate genuine desire. However, it is certain that Celia shows no sign of desire or love towards Oliver (beyond simply not disliking him). Thus, what I said at the beginning: our heroines are a butch bisexual and a femme lesbian, in today's terminology. It seems more than a little probable that Orlando and Oliver are basically beards for Rosalind and Celia.
Long before the novelists of the 19th century popularized stories of quasi-romantic friendships between preteen girls: Shakespeare gave us the words to speak about such relationships, to speak about women behaving in unfeminine ways, and to speak about women taking the lead whether in a romantic or political relationship. After all, the two overlap more than people usually admit (a "marriage of convenience" usually denotes a political alliance not an actual marriage for example). Indeed, while this kind of relationship was common in English literature in the 19th century: it was generally not found in the same period in works produced in other languages. The notable exception of course being Russian works, understandable given Russia's almost totally distinct history vis a vis western Europe. It would take until the 1920s for German and French writers to start talking about such relationships in books and plays. It was largely Shakespeare who allowed that to happen by creating literature that simply could not be ignored and could not really be censored either. While the relationship can of course be downplayed by cutting certain lines: it is not possible to truly remove the homoerotic content. As You Like It was too popular and had too much merit to be shunted aside even to please the morality police. Besides, they were too busy laughing their silk stockings off.
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