Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Todd on AYL final pairings


AYL Final Four (Todd Douglas)
 

            In As You Like It, love is seen as a very consuming thing. The characters in the play have an idea of what it means to be a “true” lover; according to Silvius:

O, thou didst then never love so heartily!

If thou rememb'rest not the slightest folly

That ever love did make thee run into,

Thou hast not lov'd;

Or if thou hast not sat as I do now,

Wearing thy hearer in thy mistress' praise,

Thou hast not lov'd;

 

This speech in compases love in the play because love each of the characters believe that love has some special quality to it. Most of them believes that love can drive a person to be irrational.  Rosalind (as Ganymede) tells Orlando Then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and everything about you demonstrating a careless desolation.” Here Rosalind poses the question that if Orlando is so in love, why isn’t he a mess? When speaking of her own affections for him she says “Oh, they take the part of a better wrestler than myself.”


Orlando also becomes consumed by his passion, and can barely speak in the first act when he first comes into contact with Rosalind, even though he’s attracted to her. The idea of a tortured love sick lover continues throughout the play. Silvius is the perfect example of this, as the young shepard loves a woman that wants nothing to do with him. In in his speech in Act 2 scene 4, he believes “no man has ever loved so.” He follows her around begging her to give him a chance.

Touchstone, on the other hand, can’t make up his mind when to marry Audrey. He goes around in search of the perfect wedding venue. Celia and Oliver waist no time getting to the altar. Even though they don’t meet each other till the end of the play, they decide to get married the quickest of any of the characters.

Love in As You Like It is irrational, and the couples in As You Like It do some “unnecessary” things to get love from their partner. Rather than just marrying them from the beginning, they put each other through a game of sport showing just how insane love is.






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