Monday, March 12, 2018

Joseph on the AYL Intro

Introduction to AYL (Joseph VanBuren)





“The play’s most sustained examination of human folly focuses on the behavior of those who succumb to love,” says Jean E. Howard in the introduction to As You Like It. This statement sums up the way Shakespeare often showcases the complexity of human emotions in his work by including conventions his audience would expect while simultaneously providing satire of those same conventions.

There are many layers to the relationship between Rosalind and Orlando. While the latter embraces (in exaggerated parody) the Petrarchan tradition of courting and worshipping an unattainable woman, the former teaches him a more practical and realistic view of love. Orlando believes he is getting this advice from a man, since Rosalind is in disguise under the name Ganymede. So, he gets a lesson in love from the woman’s point of view without even knowing it. Disguise is just one of the many pastoral conventions Shakespeare uses in this play to interweave different layers of meaning.

Rosalind does shed her “doublet and hose” to reveal herself at the end of the play. She even breaks the fourth wall and points out to the audience that “she” is played by a “he,” since female characters were played by young boys. We can even go one step further and remind ourselves that “her” dialogue (and all the supposedly female perspective that comes with it) was, of course, written by a “he.” Nothing in life or in love is as simple as it seems, and Shakespeare uses these layers of complexity in As You Like It to make commentary on a range of social situations, including the traditions of his time regarding love.

Picture: Jupiter Kissing Ganymede, fresco by Anton Raphael Mengs and Giacomo Casanova (1758).

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