As You Like It

1
As You Like It
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Generic conventions of comedy

• Comedy in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of
  Literary Terms.
• As You Like It is essentially Plautine.
  Shakespeare developed the style of Greek new
  comedy (Menander) as revived by the Roman
  writers Plautus and Terence (c. 2nd c. BCE)
  follows misadventures of young lovers contains
  some elements of farce.
• Comic devices used in this play include clowning,
  song, satire, pastoral.
• Touchstone is the first of Shakespeares allowed
  fools or court jesters coincides with departure
  of Will Kempe, arrival of Robert Armin as clown.
• The dramatic satire (genre) made popular by
  dramatists such as John Marston and Ben Jonson in
  the mid-1590s led to 1599 Bishops Ban on
  Satire.

3

• Titian (Giorgione?), Pastoral Concert (c. 1508?).

4
The play as pastoral

• Pastoral from Italian renaissance idealized
  country life in contrast to values and manners of
  urban aristocracy earlier precedent is Virgils
  Eclogues.
• Contemporary popular pastorals include Sydneys
  Arcadia in early 1590s name comes from Eclogues.
• Thomas Lodges prose narrative, Rosalynde (1590)
  served as immediate source for this play.
• Subtitle of Lodges narrative is Euphues Golden
  Legacy euphues comes from John Lylys Euphues
  (Greek for graceful or witty).
• Euphuism a mannered style of English prose,
  popularized by Lyly, involves highly rhetorical
  constructions typical of verse uses antithesis,
  alliteration, repetition and rhetorical question
  followed principle of balance of verbal elements
  in successive sentences.

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Fraternal rivalries conflict in Act 1

• Orlando and Oliver problem of primogeniture.
• Orlando Roland, de bois of the wood
• Dukes Senior and Frederick usurpation of the
  Dukedom.

Titian, Cain and Abel (c. 1570)
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Rosalind and Celia A marriage of true minds?

• Opening dialogue in 1.2 a good example of
  euphuistic prose.
• Renaissance sexualities pre-Freudian you are
  what you do sexual signifiers are action-based
  words such as sodomite.
• Homoeroticism versus homosexuality.
• Female characters are boy actors in the
  sexually-charged sphere of the theatre.
• Celia becomes Aliena Rosalind becomes Ganymede
  boy as girl as boy as ?.