"As You Like It"
Written by William Shakespeare
Summer, 1998.
On this page:
Director's Notes
 |
"As You Like It" |
|
As You Like It is a play about love-love in all its manifestations. Romantic. Excessive. Changeable. Spurned. Inexpressive. Lustful. Genuine. And it's a play about time, for when the various lovers run off to the forest of Arden, time becomes meaningless for them. "There is no clock in the forest," Orlando tells the disguised Rosalind when they first meet, and Charles, the wrestler, wistfully recounts that many have left Court to join the banished Duke in the forest, "where they fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world." The forest is an escape. We're free to forget reality, to forget responsibility, to forget who and what we are, and to enjoy ourselves in whatever ways we wish, without oversight or constraint.
In this idyllic atmosphere, all things are possible. An independent young woman can dress herself as a man and, in that disguise, undertake to teach her future husband the rules of love. An evil brother can undergo an almost instantaneous transformation and, moments later, fall even more instantaneously in love with a young lady whose response equals his own. A mismatched pair of lovers can somehow through the fire of love and the bleakness of disappointment, work their way to happiness. And a terrible villain, intent on slaying his brother, can meet "an old religious man" and in the briefest of conversations be not only diverted from his murderous intent but also from all worldly pursuits.
It is a magical world, the forest, but the escape it offers is only temporary. Time never truly stops; it can only be ignored. It always calls us back to the real world, to jobs, to responsibility, to "the Court." Indeed, most of us want to go back. Most of us! We know the "forest mood" is only momentary. That's why we can enjoy it so fully while we're there. And so we return: refreshed, wiser in knowledge of ourselves and others, more tempered, and better prepared to deal with whatever life holds in store for us.
My wife and I spent March in London. We went to Stratford and among the places we visited was Mary Arden's house. She was Shakespeare's mother, and when she was alive, her home was surrounded by woods. As we stood there and looked around, it took only a little imagination to know that here had been the playwright's Forest of Arden. Here he had come after the grinding labor of As You Like It, labor as shareholder in his acting company, as playwright, and as actor (there's evidence to lead scholars to believe he played Adam) to walk among the trees, to sit on the banks of the river, to let the weariness ebb from body and soul, and to find both the peace and the courage that allowed him to return to London and to the Globe.
We've set our production in the 1920's. No playwright in history speaks with more universality than William Shakespeare. His character, his themes, and his plots, most of which he freely took from all periods of time that preceded him and from mythical places he created to suit his needs-such as this ARden, located somewhere in a France inhabited by snakes and lion-have lent themselves to reinterpretation and transplantation, and the 20's is a perfect match for this play; distant enough to be different, but familiar enough to be easily recognizable, and it offers a whole range of visual possibilities. It's a period when the Rosalind's of the world first began to explore their independence. Women went to work, they won the right to vote, and there were pioneering efforts in both education and training for them. It's a period of all kinds of exploration, the real beginnings of the sexual revolution. Schools became more important that parents in socializing adolescents. The automobile brought more privacy to teenagers and more freedom from adult supervision. And all of this obviously produced intra-generational conflicts and inter-family crises. So, a twentieth century Rosalind has precedents for running away from home and for undertaking the mission of becoming Orlando's teacher in love. It's natural for Celia to join Rosalind, to rebel against her tyrant father, and go marching off to the woods and to her own love affair. And for Oliver to turn against his younger brother, and, as if to show it works both ways, for Duke Frederick to overthrow his elder brother and banish him from Court.
The 20's were a decade of strong passions, heart of head, impulsiveness, experimentation, all of which apply in large measure to As You Like It. Fads of all kinds: crossword puzzles, mah jongg, swallowing goldfish, dance halls and dance marathons, amusement parks, flag pole sitting, marathon running, Miss America, the automobile, Freud, jazz. And Prohibition, with its resultant passion for bootleg liquor, speakeasies and fast living. Altogether an excessive time, and that's reflected in nearly every character in the play, both those from the Court and those from the country.
Finally, it seems to me that As You Like It strikes very familiar chords in Alaskan audiences. As I sit in my cabin writing this, no matter which window I look out of, all I see is forest. Sun-dappled birches, lush green undergrowth, high grasses. It's gloriously beautiful, and it's calming, and peaceful, and restorative, and in some part, it's what brought many of you to Alaska and what has made you stay. When I leave the cabin and go to town, the people I meet are like those in As You Like It. They are fiercely independent, proud, filled with an unbounded zest for life in all of its manifestations, and marked by an optimism that comes from having met life head on and won. It isn't easy here, and it wasn't easy in Arden. Duke Senior describes "the icy fang and churlish chiding of the winter's wind" as it "bites and blows" upon his body. But he also reminds us that such challenges can be met and conquered. "Sweet are the uses of adversity" he tells us. No one can live in Alaska without knowing that.
Return to the top of this page.
| Page last updated 2/20/08 | You are visitor # Counter thank you! |
|
