As You Like It is a wonderful pastoral comedy, where living a simple life in exile can solve a lot of a person’s problems and make their lives better. It’s been made many times over, and I distinctly remember Kenneth Brannagh’s production that he made for HBO with Bryce Dallas Howard in the lead role and the setting changed to feudal Japan (while still retaining a mostly white cast…it’s not a perfect production). It’s probably one of the Bard of Avon’s most beloved comedies.
Oddly enough, I’ve never chosen it as a play to teach or have even read that many times. I have no explanation for that.
Notable cast members: The great Helen Mirren makes her first appearance in this series as Rosalind, the rare female lead in a Shakespeare play. True, this one is very much an ensemble, but Rosalind is in so many ways the stand-out character for this play as one of Shakespeare’s most formidable female characters. Mirren will appear in at least two more of these. Beyond that, we can point to actor Richard Pasco as the melancholy Jaques since he has a fairly prominent role in the next production as well. And, in a small role as a wrestler, massive slab of muscle David Prowse gets to show his face since he isn’t wearing the Darth Vader armor.
Trivia: Shakespeare wrote multiple epilogues into his works, usually saying more or less the same thing: if you liked the play, please clap, and if you didn’t, it was just a play, so please don’t hold it against us. As You Like It is, to my recollection, the only one to assign the epilogue to a female character, namely Rosalind. That makes this perhaps the only play Shakespeare wrote that gives the last word to a female character. Usually the last word goes to an authority figure of some kind, so what does that say about Rosalind?
As for this production, it was one of two the BBC made to make use of location shooting. Actually filming the play outdoors in Scotland bothered a lot of critics and viewers, arguing nature overwhelmed the story. Personally, I’d argue this is the one play that maybe should be filmed outdoors. Much of the story deals with the healing power of the pastoral setting. Why not set it outside? It’s not like it’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, also set in a forest, where fairy magic blurs the line a bit between the natural and the supernatural. So, sure, I’m fine with this being in a real forest setting.
The play: As You Like It engages a bit in what I tell my students is called the Bugs Bunny Rule. The idea is that whenever Bugs Bunny puts on a dress or a similar costume, anyone he comes across will instantly fall for said disguise while the audience can see quite clearly it’s still Bugs Bunny in a dress. Shakespeare and his contemporaries used that all the time. Disguises could and did fool even a character’s closest friends, family, and assorted loved ones. That happens here when Rosalind, played by a boy actor in Shakespeare’s age, heads into the Forest of Arden after her evil uncle exiled her as a traitor for no clear reason, opts to go into exile with her closest friend and cousin Celia (Angharad Rees). Unlike her father, Celia is a loving relative, and the only reason Rosalind didn’t go into exile when Celia’s father overthrew Rosalind’s father was due to how much Celia adored Rosalind. To complete the disguise, Celia dresses a lower class woman while Rosalind becomes a boy named Ganymede.
The court jester Touchstone also goes with them, but he doesn’t really disguise himself as anybody.
Point is, Rosalind’s disguise is so good, a shepherdess falls for her when Rosalind tries to give her some harsh truths about accepting love from an admirer, and her own love Orlando doesn’t recognize her at all.
Then again, Orlando is rather dumb. When given a chance to offer some words of adoration just before Rosalind’s exile, he can only stare dumbly at her as she says all she needs to do. His idea of wooing her is to write love poetry and nail the parchments all over the forest in the hopes she finds them. She does, and the poems are bad. Very bad. Epically bad. The net result is Rosalind-as-Ganymede spends all her free time teaching Orlando how to romance her without his ever realizing that the boy is Rosalind despite the fact she keeps saying he needs to think of her as Rosalind.
Beyond that, the story deals like all good sixteenth century pastorals with the healing power of nature. These stories often depicted shepherds as simple people, poor but not needing money, who spent all their time in quiet contemplation with God or writing poetry. This was the work of people who had no idea how hard being a shepherd actually was, but that’s all on display here. Rosalind’s father, the exiled Duke, is living in peace and tranquility with his loyalest followers, with all the food they’d need while living in a forest. The lone exception is the melancholy Jaques. Jaqeus is the is the one man whom nature cannot bring peace. A cynic, he comments on everyone else in the play, and when the characters return to civilization, he stays in the forest as he alone still needs the healing power of the place. He also has the most famous speech in the entire play, the “All the world’s a stage” speech. It’s just another way for Jaques to call everybody a bunch of fools.
The play, like so many comedies, ends with a mass wedding for all the couples, including Touchstone and the simple-minded shepherdess he was romancing, possibly for lascivious reasons. But you don’t tell Hymen, the God of Marriage no when he shows up.
Grade: As much as I like this play, that outdoor filming did on occasion make the audio a little problematic. So, let’s say this one is another B+.
Next: Well, we’ve gotten history and tragedy so far. It looks like the BBC’s next production combined the two for Julius Caesar.
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