O, how full of briers is this working-day world! – As You Like It

I just came across two cool articles about one of my favorite plays – Shakespeare’s As You Like It – and so I’m going to point to them, and also rant and rave on about the play itself.

Here’s a review of As You Like It, now playing out at BAM. Sadly, I cannot go. It sounds to me like this production really NAILED what is, for me, the magic of that whimsical piece. I would call it the complete loss of order – the complete destruction of social conventions – with dukes and duchesses stripped of their titles frolicking about in the Forest of Arden – and … at the end, quick-quick-quick, order is restored. Rosalind stops cross-dressing, she becomes a woman again, she gets married to Orlando, and all is VERY QUICKLY made well.

But … what I love about the play, as a whole, is that, yes, order is necessarily restored at the end. This soothes the audience’s anxieties about chaos.

But … still … Shakespeare does not deny that it seems like so much FUN out there in the Forest! Don’t it? Everything goes INSANE out there. These people may be dukes and duchesses and such, but the second they are freed from the court, all hell breaks loose. It’s hilarious. The Forest is a place where people can be free (“Ay, now am I in Arden: the more fool I. When I was at home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.”) where you can run and laugh, where you can fall in love freely – without worrying about titles and courtship and stuff … and yet – civilization is always there. That’s the dark side. You never ever want to go back to civilization – but civilization doesn’t just DISAPPEAR. Everyone, eventually, must “go back”.

It’s a comedy, yes, and it’s “light” – but I’ve seen the play time and time again, and have pretty much despised it (except for one unbelievable production of it in Philadelphia with the Arden Theatre Company – who are still around, thank goodness). The WORST tone to take with the piece, the tone most usually taken, is one of smugness. There is nothing more insufferable than a smug Rosalind. It’s so WRONG, too.

No. No. She is NOT smug. She has that monologue about how to woo women, but … she’s making it up as she goes along. She’s desperately in love with Orlando. She’s out of control. SHE HERSELF has descended into chaos. Love is chaos. She dresses up as a boy. Orlando has lost his mind because of love. He’s behaving like a lunatic. She takes it upon herself to “train” him in the ways of love, because, frankly, racing around the Forest like a madman pinning love lyrics on trees is kind of … well … ikky. Rosalind decides she needs to teach him how to woo. But … she doesn’t go into it having ANY idea what she is doing.

She says to Orlando: “Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by counsel.”

He says, drip that he is: “You would not cure me.”

She says, “I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me.”

Okay. So there’s the gamble. Hmmm. Let me see if he’ll take this bait. Hmmm. That’s where it gets exciting – when Rosalind doesn’t treat him like he’s a TOTAL idiot … because, after all, she is MADLY in love with the poor guy.

He says something like: “How would you cure me?”

She says: “He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me: at which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles, for every passion something and for no passion truly any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to forswear the full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus I cured him; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep’s heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in’t.”

Heh heh. “I will show you how INSANE women can be … and I will CURE you of it.”

But of course, she really just wants more of an opportunity to hang out with the guy, and see where he stands, in terms of his feelings for “Rosalind”. See if he would be a suitable suitor, or just a wimpy bonehead.

The mistake most productions make is to turn Rosalind into a little snippety PhD candidate. “So. Here is the dissertation on love. I know everything.”

All of this, when done in a SMUG way, is literally disgusting. You want to smack Rosalind and tell her to stop being such a damn know-it-all.

However, ‘SMUGNESS’ is the opposite of what Shakespeare wrote. If you read that play, just READ the damn thing, the LAST thing you will find woven through the words is any sense of smugness.

Also, let us not forget her beautiful line which comes following her first “training session” with Orlando. He leaves her little forest hut … and she re-hashes the whole thing breathlessly with Celia. In typical girl fashion. “And then THIS happened … and then he said THIS … and then THIS …” Celia intercuts her ravings with more prosaic comments, basically saying to her cousin, “Babe, chill out. Don’t get too crazy yet …” Rosalind ends the scene with this beautiful line:

“I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando: I’ll go find a shadow and sigh till he come.”

Ahhh. “Go find a shadow and sigh till he come.” What a perfect description of what it feels like to be in an unrequited unfulfilled love affair. Perfect.

So … Uhm – please tell me: with that line in the play, why do MOST directors make Rosalind to be a smug little know-it-all? Do they just SKIP that line when they read the play, or …?? The SECOND Orlando leaves her, she drops the tutor pose, and completely falls apart. It’s hysterical, and charming, and human, when played correctly.

Rosalind has NO idea what will happen when she gets dressed up like a boy. It’s a survival technique. And … strangely … oddly … she finds herself kind of liberated by the whole thing – but she doesn’t dress up to ‘stick it to male society’ … She does it because to hang out in the Forest as a woman would be unthinkably dangerous. But then a transformation occurs. She actually kind of LIKES being a boy. She is able to become “friends” with Orlando, in a way she NEVER could have, if she were in female garb. She becomes, actually, quite BUTCH. But to assume that Rosalind is OKAY with this shift in the balance, that she is ACCUSTOMED to her new powerful role, is to miss all of the clues Shakespeare has left. She is giddy, yes, she is MADLY in love with Orlando … MADLY. She is NOT smug, and she has NO idea if her gamble will work. Orlando might not be train-able. He may continue to be a ridiculous weenie, mooning about the forest, and refuse to step up to the plate. Rosalind might get her heart broke.

In this way, the stakes are raised. The stakes must be just as high in a comedy, as in a tragedy. THAT’S why it’s funny. Not because oh-ho-ho everything’s-a-lark, hahahaha … NO! David Huxley, in Bringing Up Baby, is hilarious because it is literally LIFE OR DEATH to him to get that brontosaurus finished. It looks ridiculous to US, but it is IMPORTANT to him.

If Rosalind sashays into the forest like a little know-it-all, then … where are her high stakes? Where is her gamble? What are her obstacles? She’s the lead of the damn play. If she has no stakes in anything, then what is the point?

This subtlety in her character (which, I believe, is what makes the play so delicious, so fun, so HUMAN) is often lost. Directors want to make some 20th century point about gender roles, or whatever, or they LOVE the idea of a woman kicking a man around … and so they turn Rosalind into this wymyn’s-studies-petty-tyrant.

But that’s missing the point.

I’m thinking now of the whole Howard Hawks discussion. There is a war between the sexes, there is incomprehension between the sexes … and this will cause anxiety and misunderstanding. But … is there any way to ENJOY the war between the sexes? Is there any way to SPAR with a member of the opposite sex without having it be tinged with humility, smugness, or some sense that you are BETTER than the other one because of your stupid gender? Can’t we ENJOY the difference?

THAT’S what I see going on in those marvelous scenes between Orlando and Rosalind. Equal sparring. BUT – there’s a huge problem. Orlando thinks Rosalind is another guy. Would he ever open up to her like that if he knew her sex?

The play leaves that question unanswered. In a denouement which literally takes 2 seconds, conventional gender roles are back in play, Rosalind puts on a skirt, and she and Orlando are married. Literally – in like 2 seconds. It’s hysterical. It’s like Shakespeare himself didn’t want to drag them all out of the Forest!

Yeah, marriage is cool and all that … but …

… but … what about all that weirdness and intimacy and wildness in the Forest? Is there any place for that stuff in a “conventional” marriage? Is there any way to bring the Forest back into the palace? Would Rosalind EVER be able to COMPLETELY give up what she learned when she put on pants?

Again, Shakespeare answers none of these questions. The play ends with a marriage. Comedies always ended in marriage. The world may get all out of whack during the play … but order must be restored in the end.

I love As You Like It, in particular, because of all of these unanswered issues.

And I guess it’s just my fantasy, but I like to think of Rosalind and Orlando sparring and making up and sparring and making up … LONG after the end of the play.

But I guess we’ll never know. That’s what I like to imagine, though – that the two of them will never stop sparring, never stop learning from each other, will bring the Forest of Arden with them (at least a little bit) wherever they go.

A couple quotes from the review, which I really like:

It’s as if the whole spectrum of human nature had been crammed into a fast-footed three hours: the self-warping perversities of both youth and old age, the irrationality of all-consuming love and cancerous hate, the limited extremes of heedless idealism and joy-killing cynicism, the arbitrary eruptions of kindness and cruelty.

This is what I love about this play, and what I find so missing in most productions of it – the whole “spectrum of human nature” thing.

More:

People are bound to be wounded in this world, but discovering its strangeness is well worth the battle scars. Besides, what choice do you have?

More:

The 22-year-old Ms. Hall, who made a smashing London debut in her father’s production of Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” two years ago, endows Rosalind, the play’s cross-dressing heroine, with not only the restless vigor and romanticism of youth, but also its trepidation as her character braces herself for the leap into dangerous adulthood. And the scenes in which Rosalind, dressed as a boy, teaches the lessons of courtship to the man she adores, the unwitting Orlando (the delightfully goony Dan Stevens), have surely never been so fraught with the fears of how love might go wrong.

This to me sounds EXACTLY right. I mean, hey, whatever, it’s just my opinion … but in MY little world-view of Shakespeare and Rosalind, this “fraught with fears of how love might go wrong” is JUST what those scenes need, and JUST what those scenes so often lack. Again, if Rosalind goes into this situation SURE that she will whip him into shape, SURE that she will succeed, SURE that she won’t be hurt …

Well, first of all, she’s not a very likable or human character then. And second of all: where’s the drama then? If she already knows how it’s all gonna turn out?

Drama 101, here, but most productions of As You Like It miss this completely.

And lastly – to echo all of this:

Both Ms. Hall’s Rosalind and Mr. Stevens’s Orlando wear their feelings close to their skins. You are acutely conscious of their pained sense of betrayal and injustice when they learn, in different scenes, that they have been exiled. With their shared sensitivity and volatility, this Rosalind and Orlando are clearly made for each other. But they are still too raw to be together. And as usual, the forest becomes the schoolhouse for the sentimental and moral education that pushes them into adulthood.

This process can seem didactic in a garden-variety “As You Like It,” with the disguised Rosalind playing witty, controlling and rather smug teacher to the love-struck Orlando. Such pitfalls are averted here. “More than common tall,” as she rightly describes herself, and gracefully gawky as only adolescent girls can be, this Rosalind is by no means mistress of her emotions.

Beautiful. I wish I could see it.

Also – it has always been my feeling that Celia, the cousin, is JUST as good a role as Rosalind, if played well and directed well. But only in that one production in Philadelphia have I EVER seen a Celia AS three-dimensional and fantastic and interesting as Rosalind. I would love to play Celia. She’s got one of my favorite Shakespeare lines ever:

O, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that out of all hooping.

God!!!

The second article states that Bare Naked Ladies have been hired to compose music for yet another production of As You Like It, to be done up at the enormous Stratford festival in Canada. This, to me, seems like a wonderful choice. I love the band – and they have this mixture of whimsy, emotion, bittersweet nostalgia, and sheer goofball humor that seems PERFECT for this particular play.

This entry was posted in Theatre and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

44 Responses to O, how full of briers is this working-day world! – As You Like It

  1. peteb says:

    That’s as good an advocacy of As You Like It as I’ve read, Sheila.. did Jean Arthur ever play Rosalind? I’m guessing Lauren Bacll didn’t.

  2. red says:

    Jean Arthur, to me, would make a great Rosalind, because of that vulnerability thing she’s got going on. Like – she can act all tough and butch in Only Angels, but the second Cary Grant turns his back, she “finds a shadow and sighs till he comes”.

    I’d love to see Claire Danes do the part. I think she’d be terrific as Rosalind.

  3. peteb says:

    Hmm.. but could Claire Danes convincingly fool an Orlando.. even a mad Orlando? If it’s restricted to being on stage it might work. Although I’ve probably not seen enough of her work to judge.

    For film, how about Emma Thompson, if she had chosen As You Like it instead of Much Ado?

  4. red says:

    Emma’s too old. Rosalind should barely be a woman yet. She’s not yet in control of herself, she doesn’t know how to be in love.

  5. red says:

    Also, it must be said: that Orlando is COMPLETELY not in his right mind through most of the play. The guy is a loon, sticking horrible love-sick poems on trees … There’s one funny scene where Rosalind reads one and makes some bitchy comment about how awful it is. He’s not working with a full deck … so I think he would most definitely be easily fooled.

    I’ve always thought there was something heartbreaking in As You Like It (in a comedic way) – like the comedic side of teenage love. How intense and embarrassing it is … You’d need to get people close enough to adolescence to pull it off.

  6. peteb says:

    Well I was thinking of the possibility of a younger Emma playing the role.

  7. red says:

    I would love to see a younger Emma play the role, too. I’m thinking of her WONDERFUL break-down at the end of Sense & Sensibility … how funny it is, and yet how human and real. She could definitely do it.

    I love her.

  8. peteb says:

    Emma could play the role easily.. the vulnerability she can do, just a more insecure sparring than she showed in Much Ado.. and hopefully, none of the over-dramaticism(?) of Angels in America.

    But loon or not, the audience has to be convinced that Rosalind could fool Orlando.

  9. red says:

    I still think Claire Danes could do it. She can be quite androgynous-looking – and her face, while beautiful, can – in other lights, without makeup, whatever – seem quite plain. That horrible movie about her getting locked up in a Thai prison was like that. Terrible movie. But she started out the movie really cute and girlie, and ended up NOT. Not every actress can hide her prettiness, but she can.

  10. peteb says:

    Was that Traffic? I haven’t seen the movie version.. though I saw the original TV mini-series. It’s not quite the flitting back and forth Rosalind would need though, but I am failing abysmally to bring to mind another option for the role.

  11. Linus says:

    Since I just watched Goldeneye last night, my suggestion for the living breathing Rosalind would be Famke Janssen, stipulating that she attack it as she did Xenia Onatopp in the Bond flick. Onatopp is a one-dimensional Bond bad girl, of course, let’s not confuse them, and I have no idea whether Janssen can handle the language. But her gleeful, surreal pounce on the part is part of what is always missing from As You Like It.

    Pity she mostly tones it down now that she’s a reliable second lead.

    Red, interesting thoughts on the play. It survives bad treatment miraculously well, but it nearly always gets bad treatment because of that. Such is the power and curse of masterpiece writing.

  12. red says:

    No. Something like Broken Down Palace …

    Bill Pullman was in it. And Kate Beckinsale. Bad. But I’m a huge Claire Danes fan, from way back. She’s at Yale now and everything … but I think we could still see her come back and pretty much rule Hollywood. She’s very special.

    Well, the only reason I think she would be so great is that plenty of actresses can play the bossy side of Rosalind – and Rosalind does indeed boss this poor guy around! But then … the teenage-in-love-for-the-first-time thing they can’t do. And that’s, for me, what is ALWAYS missing in most Rosalinds. And in my opinion, if THAT’S not in place, the entire play doesn’t work.

  13. red says:

    Oh – that last comment was to you, peteb. Broken Down Palace … horrible movie about two ridiculous girls getting thrown into prison in Thailand.

  14. Bryan says:

    Hi Sheila,

    Just read your analysis. Beautiful!

  15. red says:

    Thanks, Byran!

    We have all now become casting directors. Please feel free to submit your own choices.

  16. red says:

    Oh and for the record: I love Kate Hepburn, and think she would be insufferable as Rosalind. And yet most directors go with bossy Hepburn types … or Hepburn as she was when she was a younger actress, and usually played haughty bossy better-than-thou girls.

  17. peteb says:

    and that’s another one not on The List, Sheila.. and, by the sounds of it, not likely to. I agree with the teenage-in-love-for-the-first-time thing though.. and that’s the balancing act for the role – but it’s no surprise that most directors err on the side of someone who can boss the part.

  18. red says:

    Exactly – they err on the side of the bossy chick, and forget the “sighing in the shadows” part. This production out at BAM seems to have found a nice balance.

    I will NEVER forget the production I saw of it, outside, in Philadelphia – by a fledgling theatre company called The Arden Company. Unknown actors … but it was one of the most memorable evenings of theatre I have ever had in my life.

    The chick who played Rosalind was a little ball of emotions … you could tell when she was the boy that she was “playing” being a boy … she would forget herself at times, and get all girlie, and then have to pull herself together … It was so charming, so perfect. And the second Orlando would turn his back or leave, she would literally fall into a crumpled girlie heap, moaning and laughing and shrieking, as though he were a Tiger Beat cover come to life.

    It was so great. And Celia – who is the TRUE girlie-girl – became very blase, much more worldly … like: “Honey, you have got to calm yourself …”

    I loved it. I saw that production in … 1991 … and I can still remember the staging of certain scenes. Good stuff.

  19. red says:

    Oh, and peteb: yeah, skip Broken Down Palace. It sucks.

  20. peteb says:

    Well, I was with you all the way up to the Tiger Beat cover..

  21. red says:

    Oh, I know it’s ridiculous. But I still say that THAT is the kind of love she is in … squealing-voiced teenage love – where the object of your love is everything that is beautiful and good and right … and not a grown-up kind of love at all. Of course, in the 2 second denouement, she marries the guy, so she’s grown up enough for THAT … but for the rest of it, it is like a Tiger Beat thing. I swear it is!

  22. peteb says:

    Just like the loony Orlando. So.. Clare Danes (after a screen test) and..?

  23. Bryan says:

    I wonder if my beloved Ingrid Bergman could have done Rosalind well. She could be bossy and exuberant when appropriate but could also dissolve into mush when appropriate. That might have worked.

  24. red says:

    Ewan McGregor might be hilarious at playing Orlando. He never seems to take himself seriously. EVER. It’s a rare actor who can really let himself get as gaga-eyed in love as he did in Moulin Rouge.

    Also, he’s funny. Orlando has to be funny.

  25. red says:

    Claire Danes might be able to fool someone that she’s a boy but I don’t think Ingrid Bergman could ever fool ANYONE on that score. Even though I thought she was great in For Whom the Bell Tolls, I thought that having us all pretend that she looked awful with the short hair, when she actually looked like a goddess, was kind of funny. Chop her hair off, give her a black eye, I don’t care … she’s still a luscious ripe woman.

    Thank God for that, I might add.

  26. peteb says:

    If it wasn’t for A Life Less Ordinary I’d be tempted to agree with you on Ewan.. I just don’t think that particular boy could carry it off… plus you’d have to invoke the same time-travel I’d prefer to allow Emma to play Rosalind.

  27. red says:

    Oh. Hm. I loved Life Less Ordinary.

    If Orlando is too much of a wuss, then you start to question Rosalind’s sanity. But he can’t be too manly … a real manly man would not race through the forest putting horrible poems on trees.

    My vote is Ewan. His face is so OPEN (see Big Fish), and he’s also very very funny.

  28. Bryan says:

    Hi Sheila,

    You’re probably right about Ingrid’s ability to impersonate a boy. She could do the tomboy routine, but the voluptous figure wouldn’t be so easy to hide.

  29. peteb says:

    Ignoring the time-travel issue I see.. have you seen him since Zen and the Art of Documentary Film-making

  30. red says:

    Maybe Johnny Depp as an alternative if Ewan isn’t available.

  31. red says:

    peteb: Is that the thing where he motorcycled across the FECKIN’ KARA KUM DESERT, that bastard?

    Are you talking about his beard? He looks like hell. That’s part of why I love the guy. He just doesn’t seem to give a crap.

    A very good friend of mine played his spying judgmental sister in the movie he produced – Nora (about our boy Jimmy Joyce – I’m sure you’ve seen it) – and she spent a couple weeks filming in Trieste and said he was out. of. his. goddamned. mind. Like putting fists through walls and staying out all night dancing on tables, and randomly getting black eyes – which meant that they had to reschedule all of his scenes for the next day.

    And he would randomly grab hold of my friend and scream about how excited he was to be playing James Joyce. ‘AHHHHH, I’M SO EXCITED – ISN’T THIS AMAZING???”

    But yes. The beard has got to go.

  32. peteb says:

    Ok.. Johnny Depp wouldn’t work.. he’s too knowing.

    Yep.. Kara Kum Desert and everywhere else. but Ewan’s too wasted now. *hic*

    I’ve only seen clips of Nora but it’s on The List *hic*

  33. red says:

    Havin’ a bit of wine there, pete??

    Yeah, and in Nora (which isn’t a great movie, but with TONS of good stuff in it – and Susan Lynch is amazing) … my friend plays … what the heck is the sister’s name? Or one of them? She goes to stay with them in Trieste, when they are living in sin, and basically reads the Bible AT Nora.

    Very funny.,

  34. peteb says:

    If I don’t commmiserate with civilization as Emily suggested (celebrations are muted), then who will??

    And you’re going to have to tell me who I should be looking out for when I get around to watching it..

    BTW.. for the later post.. Loved the scholarship suggetion – God Bless Caesar!

  35. Anne says:

    I think this may be my favorite post of yours, ever.

  36. red says:

    peteb:

    My friend appears in the very first scene that Ewan McGregor has – there’s a prologue where we see Nora basically fleeing from her past in Galway. Next time we see her, she is window-shopping in Dublin.

    You hear my friend speak, before you see her … you hear a whining voice say, “When ya comin’ home, Jim?”

    But Jim (ie: Ewan) is not paying attention – he has suddenly noticed Nora. And there is my friend, in a huge black hat, hectoring Jim to come home … She’s in a ton of other scenes, but that first one will help you locate her.

  37. red says:

    Anne, dear, coming from you – that means a lot.

    I am hoping that you are well??

  38. peteb says:

    Nora is being packed and shipped to my well-equipped yurt as I type.

  39. Ken Hall says:

    How about Topher Grace, assuming he could handle Shakespeare? He seemed to handle “lovestruck goob” pretty well on the small screen.

  40. red says:

    Oh, I love him! I like that choice as well.

    His small turn in Traffic was GREAT, I thought. I knew pricks like that in high school – he captured it perfectly.

  41. Anne says:

    Yeah, I’m okay. Shaky weekend. I’ll have to tell you about it sometime.

  42. red says:

    I was gonna send you an email but didn’t want you to think I was stalking you.

  43. Anne says:

    I’m always afraid that I’m stalking YOU.

  44. red says:

    heh heh heh

    What’s a little stalking between bloggers?

Comments are closed.