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... sts, the interest in the story is the logic of cause and effect, how a series of circumstances presents a logical sequence, each stage flowing logically and naturalistically out of the previous situation, as a result of decisions, motives, and so on quite similar to the logic of real life. In And then stories, by contrast, events simply follow one after the other, often without any clearly logical link between them (as in many childrens stories: This happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and so on... In New Comedies, like The Comedy of Errors (and situation comedies generally), the effect of the play depends upon a tight Hence structure, and the audience has to keep close track of the distribution of information so as to understand the various confusions, misunderstandings, quarrels, and so on, each of which makes logical sense once we understand who knows what. But in the pastoral comedies, like Midsummer Nights Dream (or a childrens fairy story), events tend to follow one another apparently much more casually with no tight logical connection between events (as we shall see in more detail in a few moments). As You Like It and Twelfth Night: Some Initial Observations The two comedies we are discussing, both from the late 1590 s and early 1600 s, illustrate these differing tendencies in comedy.
As You Like It is clearly a pastoral comedy with a country setting, much talk of love of all sorts, a story which consists, for the most part, of a series of accidental meetings one after the other, and a resolution involving implausible transformations of character and divine intervention. Although (as we shall see) the Forest of Ardenne is not a completely idealized pastoral setting, we have here all the standard ingredients of pastoral drama. Twelfth Night is somewhat different. The pastoral element in the play is obviously present in the treatment of love and the leisurely world of Illyria, not quite as pastoral as the Forest of Ardenne, but miles away from the political world of the city. And a good deal of the play follows a loose And then plot structure, once again featuring a series of accidental meetings. However, Twelfth Night contains a sub-plot, the tricking of Malvolio, which is clearly drawn from the style of New Comedy, the comedy of manners, the satiric exposure of folly.
The characters of the sub-plot, like the foolish knight Aguecheek, the clever servant Maria, the boisterous lay-about Toby Belch, and the self-deceiving Malvolio, are all urban types common in New Comedy, and their plot to trick Malvolio depends, as in almost all New Comedy, on a sequence of events which is plausibly crafted (in Hence story tradition). In a sense, Twelfth Night is one more experiment, this time combining two distinct styles in a very interesting and dramatically convincing manner. Preliminary Observations on As You Like It As You Like It will be for many of you a rather difficult play to appreciate and interpret simply on the basis of a reading. The reasons for this are not difficult to ascertain. The play is, as I have observed, a pastoral comedy, that is, a comedy which involves a traditional literary style of moving sophisticated urban courtiers out into the countryside, where they have to deal with life in a very different manner from that of the aristocratic court.
This play, like others in the Pastoral tradition, freely departs from naturalism, and in As You Like It (certainly by comparison with the History plays) there is little attempt to maintain any consistently naturalistic style. This can create problems for readers unfamiliar with the conventions of pastoral, especially those who find it just too artificial and incredible to grasp imaginatively. After all, how are we to understand the unmotivated family hatreds which launch the action? We are simply not given any sufficiently detailed look at why Oliver hates Orlando (he himself does not understand the reason) or why Duke Frederick hates Duke Senior and turns on Rosalind so suddenly or, what is most surprising of all, why the nasty people whose animosities have given rise to the plot so suddenly and so conveniently convert and become nice people just in time to wind the plot up happily under the supervision of the goddess Hymen, the Greek deity of marriage, who arrives as an unexpected but welcome guest. But these features of the plot which we might find unconvincing if we demand naturalism (that is, if we insist on treating the play as a Hence story) are little more than standard plot devices in And then stories, common in a genre like pastoral, which makes no claims to naturalistic motivation. Such plotting serves to launch and to conclude the comic confusion.
The main point of the play here, after all, is not the working out of a carefully constructed plot, but rather the various encounters which take place in the Forest of Ardenne. In fact, the structure of the play is less a carefully complex and unfolding plot than a series of conversations between characters who happen to run into each other amid the trees. You will notice, for example, that most of the central part of As You Like It consists of often random encounters between different characters in the forest. In many cases, they have no particular reason to talk to each other. What these serve to bring out is a series of conversations about life (and particularly about love) in which we witness different attitudes clashing. The effect is to take us through a variety of responses to shared concerns and to get us responding to our own sense of the appropriate ways to deal with experience.
To put this another way. The pastoral style of As You Like It does not encourage a deep psychological approach to any of the characters, to the logic of their motivation. If thats what we demand from a story to make it interesting, then this play is not going to satisfy us. We are not in that sort of a world. There is far more direct pressure on us to see in the interactions between characters the exploration of some themes, especially issues concerning love.
That is not to say that the characters are not theatrically interesting and worth talking about; it is rather to insist that the characters here are serving thematic purposes more obviously than they are in more psychologically plausible plays. So there's little point in seeking to penetrate deeply into the plausibility of the psychological motivation or of the coincidences. To take one obvious example of a thematic concern, very common in pastoral, we notice in the play a repeated contrast between court and country life. The purpose here is not to provide some naturalistic contrast, for the picture of life in the country is obviously idealized a good deal (although not totally, for there are references to the harsher aspects of life away from the comforts of the court and to the realities of working for an absentee landlord). Nor is the purpose any romantic celebration of the values of country living as somehow more authentic than city life.
The pastoral is primarily a vehicle for a (usually) gentle satire on urban values, on some of the corrupting manners of the court (like flattery and excessive attention to clothes or fine language). And we can see this clearly enough in this play. But there is no sense in As You Like It that, given a free choice, any of the principal characters (except Jaques) would actually prefer to live in the country rather than the court. The other great difficulty with As You Like It for inexperienced readers is much of the humour. Here again, what makes little sense on the page (and doesn't come across as very funny) generally works much better in a production. This point is generally true of all comedy, where the physicality of the human interaction (something not always readily apparent from the text of the play alone) is an essential key to understanding and responding to what is going on.
That aspect of comedy, especially Shakespearean comedy, is one reason why, in the curriculum of this course, the comedies are underrepresented. The only quick way to overcome this problem is to focus on seeing the play in production (and there's a useful BBC video version available in the college library). The Pastoral Setting: The Forest of Ardenne Central to the pastoral vision of As You Like It is the setting in the Forest of Ardenne, especially the contrast between it and the ducal court. In the former, there is a powerful political presence which creates dangers. Deception lurks behind many actions, brothers have secret agendas against their brothers, and people have to answer to the arbitrary demands of power. In the Forest of Ardenne, however, life is very different.
For one thing, there is no urgency to the agenda. There are no clocks in the forest, and for the exiled courtiers there is no regular work. They are free to roam around the forest, prompted by their own desires. There is plenty of food to eat, so the communal hunt takes care of their physical needs. That and the absence of a complex political hierarchy creates a much stronger sense of communal equality hearkening back the the mythical good old days. The exiled Duke himself attests to the advantages of living far from the court, free of the deceits of flattery and double dealing and welcomes Orlando to the feast without suspicion.
And, most important here, especially in comparison with the history plays, is the importance of singing. As You Like It is full of songs not performances by professional court musicians, but impromptu group singing which expresses better than anything else the spontaneous joy these people derive from life in the Forest and the joy they give back to others. The songs indicate clearly the way in which in the Forest people can shape their actions to their moods situation totally unlike the court where one has to consider ones actions much more carefully. Hence, the Forest of Ardenne provides for the exiled courtiers an important freedom to experiment with their lives, to discover things about themselves.
In the Forest people can talk openly with whoever they might happen to meet on a stroll through the trees, and that might be anyone, given that in the Forest no one owns any particular territory (there are no rooms, palaces, road sunlike the court where there is a preoccupation with property) and thus one might well meet and have to deal with a person whom one would never get close to in the court (that can have comic results, of course, as Touchstones conversations with Audrey and William demonstrate). In the Forest life is, as I have observed, lived more immediately in the moment with whatever life presents at the moment. Such an approach to life is impossible in the politically charged world of the court. That freedom makes possible Rosalind's transformation and her taking charge of the courtship and makes an interesting contrast between Rosalind and Viola (in Twelfth Night) the latter is not nearly so free to take charge, because she is still operating in a social environment with a clear structure of authority, which she has to respect. Hence, the fortunate outcome of that play relies upon her patience and luck far more in the case of Rosalind, who is the driving force in her courtship (Violas desires very nearly are unfulfilled). We should note, however, that the Forest of Ardenne is not an entirely idyllic setting.
The Duke pays tribute to the often brutal weather, and there are some dangerous animals lurking in the underbrush. Corin, the shepherd, informs us that he works for another mana slight but significant reminder that even in this pastoral setting the realities of power are not entirely absent. And, of course, there is never any sense here (as there might be if this were a Romantic vision of life) that the Forest is a suitable place to live on a continuing basis. Given the opportunity to return to the court, all the exiles (except, significantly, Jaques) seize the chance. The Forest has done its work has educated some, repaired fraternal relationships, brought the lovers to a fuller awareness of their own feelings. Now, they can return to...
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