As You Like It by William Shakespeare

Despite some initial misgivings about reading a play by Shakespeare, and feelings of being back at school, most of us enjoyed the play.

The play is mainly about love, sisterly, brotherly, parental and married love (very appropriate for a meeting on St Valentine’s day) and has some connotations with homosexual love, for men and women, especially in the relationship between Rosalind and Celia both played by men acting as women (so in effect doubly so).

The main part of the play revolves around the relationship between Rosalind and Orlando. Orlando sees Rosalind in the court of Duke Frederick, and falls madly in love with her. Rosalind has to flee to the forest of Ardene and for safety’s sake, disguises herself as a man. Rosalind as Ganymede comes across Orlando (also seeking refuge in the forest) and goads him to woo her as if she were Rosalind. Orlando smitten writes reams of very bad poetry that he nails to trees. His love is spontaneous, wild, hectic and romantic, while Rosalind on the other hand, is more measured; her response is more prosaic and realistic. When Orlando says that he will die for want of love, Rosalind responds with “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love”.

We discussed how Orlando's lovemaking follows the tradition of 'courtly' love, where love was seen as a disease and made men slaves to it. Rosalind though expunges these rather extreme emotions and makes fun of them. We realised that this theme, about the differences in the expression of love, continues in the play between the other couples (of which there are many). Touchstone the haughty court jester takes up with the uncouth goatherd Audrey, hardhearted Phoebe eventually accepts the doting Silvius, and Celia marries Oliver after meeting twice and speaking two sentences to him.   

We also realised that the play explored other social differences. These were developed in the many sub plots, for example the differences between life at court and life living in the forest, the differences in family relationships concerning jealousy and revenge. Above all the play also showed us that Rosalind, as a man, was able to express herself with some freedom, and could tell the audience what is it really like to be a woman in love. We thought this would have been quite shocking to a Tudor audience.

This brief synopsis can’t do justice to the other machinations in the play or how much we talked about them. But as usual with a Shakespearean comedy everything ends happily, the bad get their just deserts and the good get married, in this case with four marriages in the last act.

The meeting went on longer than I’d expected; the more we talked the more interest we found and the more we found the more we talked, and so it went round and round only to be ended by coffee and slices of black forest gateaux.