The Bard with Bill
The Bard with Bill
As You Like It
In this episode we venture into the forest of Arden. Now there are lions and snakes in this forest but don’t worry, in this play you’re more likely to suffer from having your brain bamboozled or your beliefs challenged.
If you like woodlands that exist in at least two places at once, lashings of gender noncomformity or want to know which character may be Shakespeare’s solo vegetarian, Join Bill as he gambols like a lovelorn shepherd into Episode 3: As You Like It
Special thanks to Tom Dixon for providing the short'n'snappy Shakespeare Synopsis for this episode
Hello, and welcome to the Bard with Bill. In this episode, we venture into the forest of Arden. Now there are lions and snakes in this forest. But don't worry. In this play, you're more likely to suffer from having your brain bamboozled or your beliefs challenged. If you like woodlands that exist in at least two places at once. lashings of gender nonconformity orl want to know which character may be Shakespeare's solo vegetarian friends, lend me your ears as we gamble like love morning shepherds into Episode Three, as you like it. My name is Bill, and today I shall be your guide into Shakespeare's canon. That is, canon with just two n's as in'body of literary work', not the big metal tube that goes boom, he probably wouldn't be much of a fan of them after one burned down the Globe Theater in 1613. But that's a different story. As always, we'll kick off the fun with the language lounge. That's right, I'm sticking with the name language lounge. This is the part of the episode where I tease out phrases you might be familiar with, but didn't necessarily know could be found in Shakespeare. And if you start to feel those creative juices flow and fingers begin to twitch, why not have a go at illustrating some of these very visually evocative phrases and adding them to our online gallery by posting them to the handlebars Twitter using the#BardwithBill. Now, most people will be familiar with this phrase All the world's a stage. And aside from to be or not to be, I think this is probably the phrase most people would adopt if they were asked to dramatically portray a Shakespearean actor. But the rest of the speech is a lot of fun. And if you feel inspired to dip into a bit of Shakespeare after this episode, I would highly highly recommend having a shift in that speech in its entirety. It's not actually very long, and it's a really delightfully self contained little journey. It's split into the seven roles a person plays in their lifetime, and it's wonderfully visual. I know I keep going on using that word like a stuck record, but it's true. Each portrayed Shakespeare draws blossoms in the mind like a vivid cartoon, I can see the lean and slippered pantaloon, I can picture the whining schoolboy, creeping like a snail unwillingly to school. And now that I'm saying these words, I'm imagining them as a gang of characters getting up to mischief in something like The Beano or Buddha Willie, but enough of references to obscure Scots comic strips back to Shakespeare. This phrase should be familiar, wouldn't kill a fly. We use this to describe a gentle, peaceful person. However, when Orlando uses this phrase in the play or not, not Orlando when Rosalind uses this phrase, when Orlando worries that Rosa Lynn's frown will kill him, he replies, by this hand, it will not kill a fly. Interesting. Interestingly, she's not making a comment on personality, but on physical reality. She's not saying, Oh, she won't kill a fly. She's saying it the hand will not. So we've got this little discrepancy between how Shakespeare uses the phrase and how it's morphed into our common store of idioms today. I like this line for a far more silly reason. And that's because it delivers a lovely opportunity for the actors to have some very silly physical comedy. You can just imagine, when Rosalind says this phrase by this hand, it will not kill a fly. She brandishes her hand and inadvertently swats a poor fly. How about this one, laying it on with a towel. If someone's doing this, they are overstating or exaggerating something and this image is absolutely sumptuous because it's not only visual, it's also very tactile, you can imagine the act of slopping a huge dollop of mortar onto brickwork and trying to evenly smooth it out. In the play. Celia says this, well said that was laid on with a travel and this is just one of many moments where Celia delivers a short but delicious quip. She's so sassy and I really like that about the character. It gives her an edge and it provides Brilliant counterpoint energy to all the very fanciful lovers dramatically expounding on the agonies and delights of love. It's also an instance where the meaning of this phrase seems to have remained intact in the 400 years since Shakespeare used it, which is a really brilliant way of reminding us of the humanity of the Elizabethans, you know, for, for all the numerous differences that exist between our two societies. It's really fun to note that we both feel humorous exasperate for people who lay it on too thick. And to complete the phrases. Let's hear one from the third member of the intrepid trio that ventures into the woods, touchstone. Now the phrase bag and the baggage today means all one's worldly possessions like she threw him out bag and baggage. But touchdown uses this with its original connotations when he says, Let us make an honorable retreat, though not with bag and baggage yet with script and script edge. to retreat with bag and baggage was an old military phrase, possibly as old as the 15th century. That meant an army would take everything with them. So equipment, armaments, provisions, everything in order to deny the enemy of any spoils of war. And with its double alliterative sounds, you've got this repeated b and g bag and the baggage. It's a really fun phrase to say, Andrew here, and Shakespeare plays on this by inventing a new phrase script and script edge. So his script was a small bag or wallet. So therefore script edge are the contents. Now here's a little task for you. In your daily conversations, even if you're talking to yourself or maybe to a pet, try to get in some alliteration because it's very satisfying. And it's a really easy quick way of introducing a bit of creativity into your day and bonus bad points if you can get some double alliteration in there. Now you might be thinking bill Who are these people? What what intrepid trio are you talking about? I haven't seen as you like in ages or maybe I you haven't seen as you like it at all? Well, folks, it is high time we had ourselves a short and snappy synopsize Shakespeare and here today to take on the challenge of delivering us the entire plot of as you like it in under two minutes. His fellow handlebars Tom Dixon, best of luck to you, Tom, Your time starts.
Thomas Dixon:Now. Before the play starts. Duke Frederick usurps the dukedom from his brother Duke Senior runs who away into the forest of Arden with some of his court. His daughter Rosalind stays behind with her cousin Celia, who is Duke Frederick's daughter. The play starts with Orlando who has always been downtrodden by his older brother Oliver. Their father is just died and Oliver keeps all of the inheritance and won't give it any of it to Orlando. To win back his honor Orlando goes to the court to have a wrestling match. He loses but when he's there he meets Rosalind and they instantly fall in love. Suddenly, for no reason. Frederick decides he's going to banish Rosalind so Rosalind and Celia decided to run away into the forest of Arden before they do they disguise themselves Rosalind as a boy called Ganymede and Celia as a peasant girl called Aliena. Orlando also learns that his brother Oliver is plotting to kill him so he also runs away into the forest of Arden Duke Frederick finds out that they've run away and he sends Oliver to go and find them and bring them back and then Duke Frederick decides, you know what, I'm gonna go into the forest of Arden myself, find my brother and kill him once and for all. When in the forest, Orlando leaves love letters for Rosalind all around over all of the trees and Rosalind find some of them disguises Ganymede, she bumps into Orlando and tells him that you can cure him of his love sickness. All he has to do is pretend that she's Rosalind and try and woo her which obviously she is still receiving. So that's really weird thing to do. Anyway, on his way to one of his lessons one day, Orlando sees his brother Oliver being mauled by a lion he saved his brother. This makes his brother become good. His brother Oliver then comes back with him meets Alien who is Celia and they fall in ove. Meanwhile, Rosalind isguises Ganymede is trying to elp Silvius who's a shepherd ho's in love with Phebe but P ebe doesn't love Silvius Phe e actually loves Ganymede, Orla do decides he doesn't want t do his lessons with Ganymede a ymore because he loves R salind and he can't help it. So osalind decides that she's goi g to come clean. She brings eve yone together, Aliena and Oli er Touchstone and Audrey, Phe e and Silvius and Orlando all n front of her father and his court and she reveals her elf to be Rosalind. Suddenly, Hy en, the goddess of marriage app ars and helps everyone get mar ied. Then we hear that rederick has actually decided o become a monk and has given is Dukedom back to his b other, Duke Senior. They all g back to the court. The end.
William Ross-Fawcett:Thank you very much, Tom. How do you think he did? I have one quibble to make Tom and it's that you missed out, Dennis. That's right there is a Dennis in Shakespeare. He is the servant and has all of two lines. He has the misfortune to be one of the often cut characters from Shakespeare. And I just wanted to take a moment in this episode, to give him a bit of a shout out to Dennis. I see you my friend. You will always be an integral part of as you like it to me. But actually, Tom has had a quite singular challenge in summing up as you like it for us this episode because compared to Shakespeare's other works, not much happens in as you like it. There's a bit of parallel at the beginning and then it's just people tromping around the forest chatting. So why is this play held up as one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies? a cynic would say the answer lies in the title. Some people claim that as you like, it is a sarcastic invention that Shakespeare gave to a play full of light fluff to appeal to the simplistic and sentimental tastes of his audience. It's not high drama. There's no great historical reenactments or tragic lovers reaching at our heartstrings. There's a lot of music, there's the most found in any Shakespeare play, which increases this pure entertainment aspect. So the whole place serves as a light retreat from the outside world, it's a bit of a mini break. It's like Shakespeare's Sister Act, or maybe Kinky Boots is a bit more appropriate what with the cross dressing element. And you know what, if that is indeed the case, that is fine. We go to the theater for a multitude of different reasons. And one of those is to spend a bit of time transported out of ourselves to experience joy and delight with no strings attached, that is no less valid or reason than those who are seeking to be challenged, or to be blown away with the power of human performance. Over the centuries, since its debut as you like it, along with all of Shakespeare's works, has been tweaked and tailored to suit the needs of its audience. In 1723, it was heavily cut and mash together with other bits of Shakespeare to become a play, imaginatively titled, love in a forest. Today, as you like, it has a reputation for being a fun piece that's easy to watch. There's no eye gouging, there's no domestic abuse. And it's also very popular today because it places a female character front and center, who carries a quarter of the lines of the play. As we've established in other episodes, Rosalind has the most lines of all of Shakespeare's female characters. So at a surface glance, and you like it fun for the audience's love it but like any forest, it holds hidden secrets for those who are prepared to delve a little bit deeper. And I think you lot are more than willing. When As You Like It debuted in 1599, it would have been received and viewed as a pastoral romance. Now many elements of Shakespeare's work can be described with this particular literary style, most notably, Midsummer Night's Dream, or the Bohemian scenes in The Winter's Tale, but as you like it appears to be the most closest to the pure essence of what a pastoral is. Our past. Oral art was all the rage among the educated elite in Shakespeare's day, and like so many other things in Renaissance art. It has its origins in the ancient Greek and Roman world. writers like scrd and Virgil wrote about an unspoiled wonderous land before all the woes of our modern age like ambition and greed and cities and having to work for a living ruined everything. This fictional ideal was often called Arcadia after a region in ancient Greece, the prose romance or early novels that Shakespeare almost certainly based the play on was called Rosalind. And it was written by a fellow called Thomas Lodge. It's a shining example of pastoral literature. Now, Bill, what is pastoral? Pastore refers chiefly to shepherds. And that's what the genre is full of mostly lovesick mostly scorned by their heart's desire, and mostly coming out with poems or songs rather than doing any actual shepherding. The well protect depicted in our pastoral is always idyllic, it never rains, it's never muddy. It's a world that doesn't exist in reality. The narrative form of a pastor will usually has three parts, fleeing from problems in an urban area, spending some time in nature to reflect and discover the truth of things, and eventually finding a resolution and returning to the city. And I'm sure if you give it a moment, you'll be able to come up with your own examples of this sort of thing. In more modern days cinema or literature or theater because it's proved to be an incredibly popular story. Now, modern psychology even suggests that going away from things and spending time in the natural world is really critical to maintaining good state of mental health. And I'm always really extremely excited when science uncovered something that storytellers and mythmakers have been concerned with. For ages since it highlights how interconnected the arts can be with everyday reality, you know, they're not purely aesthetic things. Speaking of storytelling, the play is also influenced and filled with references to fantastical stories from beyond the scope of the ancient Mediterranean world. Now Duke senior and his men are likened to Robin Hood and his merry man. And this plays with more romanticized version o Robin Hood that are developed b Shakespeare's day. Robin Hoo this character had evolved fro a mysterious folk legend of a elusive dangerous outla ambiguous and identity motiv and geographic home to a mor solidified, codified version o a wrongfully displaced noblema from the East Midlands, livin in exile in the woods with band of jolly loyal followers where the stories focus more o archery contests and th romantic relationship wit Marian they do on resistance t feudal oppression. S Shakespeare is evoking the Me in Tights version of Robin Hood it would be better suited t advertising camping holiday than serving as a rallying cr towards the struggle for fai taxation and social justice There are also many reference to chivalric romance that i tales of heroic knights an their adventures. But lik Arthur and his Knights of th Round Table, the episode o Orlando saving his brother fro snakes and lions will be righ at home in Tales of the medieva troubadour tradition, an Orlando himself likely comes t us from the genre of nightl fiction. Orlando is the lea character in the 16th centur Italian epic poem, Orland furioso by Ludovico Ariosto which in turn is based o earlier French epics about th heroic Paladin or night, Roland Roland in English, it's reall easy to access an open sourc translation of Orlando furios online and it's quite a undertaking to read is ver long. I'm currently making m way through it and it is a wil ride. Now there's there's quit a heavy through line of misogyn through this with Knight competing for and pursuin heavily objectified women, wh are often described as bein wicked for not meekly submittin to the life of a capital woman But there are some real gems t be mined like this femal warrior character bu adamantane, whose bravery an skill at arms and shrew intellect to make her a favorit protagonist. Now, interestingly there are also many episodes i this poem that echo moments i Shakespeare. There's a lon speech about the unfai discrepancy been between the wa women are treated compared t men, which is very similar t Emilio's monologue in Othello There's a scene where there' this scheming going on with maid masquerading as he mistress, meeting a lover i order to make it seem as thoug the lady is being unfaithful This is something we see almos beat for beat repeated in joh Don John's plot, in Much Ad About Nothing. And there's als a story about three daughter two of whom become usurpers While the one remains true lik in King Lear, is like a treasur trove of possible influence behind Shakespeare's works Now granted, Ariosto was himsel repackaging and retellin stories, so Shakespeare coul have got them from somewher else, but the similarities ar tantalizingly close. Now, bac to how this poem might hav influenced as you like it there's a moment where the titl character in the poem Orland loses his wits, and a friend ha to take a flaming chariot to th moon to recover them. It's ver dramatic. In the poem, th reason for alando losing hi wits is the love of a woman. An perhaps Shakespeare i referencing this by castin Orlando as one of the lovesic fools rampaging around th forest, carving Rosalind hi name and all the trees Shakespeare names, Orlando' deceased father in the play Roland, perhaps as a furthe little homage to these ol stories of Sir Roland, and mos interestingly, he calls th brother Oliver. Now, in the epi tales of Sir Roland Oliver is staunch friend. He's a cal headed advisor, and the two o them die side by side in th climactic battle of Ross river but in the play, Oliver start off as Orlando's enemy. Mayb this is Shakespear foreshadowing from the ver beginning, a brotherl resolution at the end of th play. Well, whatever his reason for naming the brothers, I' just very glad he didn't stic with the names in Thomas lodge book, since this would have mad Orlando Rosa Which sounds ver similar to Rosa vind. But eve more problematically, it woul have given the villainou brother the name, Saladin. No for Shakespeare's audience Saladin, or Salah Dean was th name of one of the few Musli historical figures, the majorit of the audience would likel recognize. So by making th villain a salad in the entir play would be colored wit Elizabethan societal attitude towards Islam and on Europeans It certainly would not be th fun, lighthearted comedy we kno and love today
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William Ross-Fawcett:So as you like it satisfies a complete hecklist of romance. It's got hepherds, it's got the ranquility of the natural world ersus the corrupt and stressful ourt. It's got people talking bout love and worrying all the ime. It's a classic pastoral, ut then Shakespeare injects it ith a little spice. He uses a horoughly approvable setting to ut forward statements and rguments that product, the ssumptions of the art form and ther ideas about life. It's ery similar in this respect to nother literary masterpiece hat was penned at the time, but his time in an enemy country. iguel Cervantes book, Don uixote, also lampoon's and arodies the romance genre, but n a much more direct manner. hakespeare was constrained in ow much you could get away with ecause he was writing for the tage. If you join me for the 2th night episode, you might emember I mentioned the uritans and the threat they osed the survival of the heatres in Shakespeare's ondon, any hint of something hat was too on the nose would ave added to their calls for losing down the theaters. So atire and social criticism had o be subtly woven in. We can ctually detect some snaps to he clergy and as you like it, he priest character that ouchdown gets to marry him and udrey is called Sir Oliver artext text as in he mas hi text, he marks it up. touchston explains that he chooses thi priest because he knows that h won't be able to perform proper marriage, which give touchdown and out at some poin down the line if he feels lik ditching Audrey it's als notable that it isn't a pries that marries all the couples a the end. It's the God o marriage hymen. Yeah, maybe thi is a nice bit of whimsy to roun out a thoroughly delightfu jaunt in the woods, but it als serves a little bit of rejection of the clergy. Th part a priest would normall fulfill is taken up by a paga deity, although because it's th Renaissance, Roman and Gree paganism gets a free pass. No I've actually played both so al of them are texts and Timon, an my martex was a happy go lucky but ultimately very useles drunk, which is also somethin that I did for the priest i 12th night with the handlebars And it seems like my go t clergymen is this drunk priest Now that's something that's ver easy for me to do today. In th modern day, there's no negativ repercussions for me, aside fro being accused of makin uninspired and derivative actin choices, but this would not hav been the case in Shakespeare' day. It's a sobering reminder o how free we are to expres ourselves. It's easy to see an enjoy as you like it as a bit o Fun and Fancy Free nonsense. Bu it's worth remembering tha there is a little bit more goin on under the surface. Th setting illustrates thi perfectly. Arden is a place o many layers in lodges romance it's quite clearly the forest o the Almaden region betwee modern day France and Belgium And in some versions of th place script, this Frenc spelling was kept. But in other The forest is the Englis spelling Arden, which is als the name of a forest wher Shakespeare grew up i Warwickshire, and also hi mother's maiden name. The Arde of the play is a place o pastoral romance and poetry, bu it's also home to some rea working country people. We hav these abrupt scene changes wher Orlando's mooning over Rosalin to Korean the old Shepher banging on about how mucky hi hands get when he shares hi flock. Which isn't even hi flock, he's a tenant on the lan and looks after the flock at th sufferings of a landlord who' about to evict him. Corrine is very real reminder that life i the countryside isn't sunshin and rainbows. Many people tal about the contrast betwee country and court is one of th central themes of as you lik it. But for my two cents, think the more interestin contrast is between these tw different forests of Arden tha exists spliced together. One i a romantic blend of Arcadia an the Garden of Eden, which on run together would spell our de coincident. The other Arden is real forest with real peopl drawn from Shakespeare' experience growing up an touring the countrysid throughout his professiona life. Now, the real interestin characters for me are the one that managed to slip betwee these two worlds. And as always in Shakespeare, the ones wit the clearest vision are th fools as you like it has lots o falls at one point or another The characters are in love wit someone and they come acros pretty foolish within that bu two characters stand out a fools with a capital F. An these are the two tha Shakespeare invents for th purpose of the play. touchston is an official full it's hi job. And he actually continue in this function. When h ventures into Arden, he lend his wit to poking fun at th ridiculousness of the lovers an their poetry. And despit becoming a lover himself, h comes across as the mos grounded, since he acknowledge the audience. Audrey is, yo know, rather plain uneducated but she is attainable for him And he recognizes this desire i himself to pair off wit someone. He doesn't see affected by the rose tinte glasses, and he doesn't wear disguise when he goes into th forest The other fool is Jaques, and this one is a bit of a weird one. First of all, what's up with that name? Isn't it Jacques the French? Well, Shakespeare gives many of the characters French names in the play, but it's believed that the Elizabethans would have pronounced this name, jQuery or Jake's. Jake's was contemporary slang for an outdoor toilet, which might single out this character as an object of mirth and ridicule. But that's something that's completely lost on modern day audiences. Many people consider him to be Duke seniors caught for, but actually, if we look in the text, Jaques seems to have been a traveler in the wilds for a while now. The Lords of the forest laugh at his gloominess and Shakespeare uses Jaques sort of as a parody for the contemporary fashion of excessive melancholia. That's something that, you know, we keep returning to in society over the centuries, think of the, the 18th and 19th century gloomy romantics or even in the modern day, you know, the scene kids, emos, but just like touchstone, Jaques refuses to b have like everyone else, and b y into this pastoral ideal. A d this allows him to make some r ther acute observations, the L rd say that he was found w eping in the woods of the fate o a deer that had been killed. A d that leads him to make this c nclusion the Duke and his c hort are just as much a band o user purrs as the ones at the c re to cast them out, since t ey're encroaching on the n tural, peaceful realm of the f rest. And this sympathy for t e plight of the animals and t e ability to give a voice to t e voice less is what moves me t grant Jaques is as S akespeare's solo vegetarian c aracter, or at the very least, o e who espouses environmental c ncerns about man's effect on t e natural world. For all their L rds exalting the simple d lights of the countryside. T ey still ravages serenity w thout a second thought when t eir belly start to rumble. I's a moment in the play where t is bubble of pastoral l veliness gets burst by an a ternative, an orthodox view. Another character that needles at Orthodoxy is Rosalind. She's the only character apart from Orlando's servant Adam, whose name Shakespeare brings over from Thomas lodge his novel of the lines in the play. She's not the only female character in Shakespeare to have the great st amount of lines in a play, b t she does have the highest p rcentage, as with Viola and 12th night, this is a character that on Shakespeare's stages wo ld have had to required feat of double cross dressing o achieve with the young cha acter, young male actor dre sing as a Rosalind who later dre ses as the man Ganymede. He's also making a very defi ite decision to interest young actor with a lead role And this is something that many of his plays around this peri d do is also a very tasty lit le something in that adopted i entity. Gang need is a named dra n surprise surprise from the ythology of ancient Greece. G nymede was a young Trojan Pr nce, whose beauty caught th eye of all those around hi, including the gods. Now, one ay the king of the gods, Zeu took the form of a great Eag e flew down to Troy, and abduc ed Ganymede. on Mount Olympus, he home of the gods Ganymede ame to serve as his uses love, as well as the cup bearer of the gods were eventuall his likeness was cast up into t e stars as Aquarius the water bearer. Now because of this stor, Ganymede was often counted a ongst the Eero taze the gods f the various types of love, and was worshipped as the patron an God of homosexual love, whi h makes this wooing scene bet een two male presentin characters, or lambu and Ganym de, all the more laced with a su versive unorthodoxy. Now, the ecret identity of Ganymede s also taken from Thomas Lo d. So maybe Shakespea e just decided to keep the name ecause he liked its classical nature. But even if we go so far as to imagine he was ignorant f its connotations, and I thi k that's doing Shakespea e to service, members of the au ience certainly wouldn't ave failed to pick it up. Part f me wonders whether this is a bit of a coded nod to certain s ctions of the crowd, in the sa e vein, as Oscar Wilde mentioned in green carnations, and The I portance of Being Earnest. osalind has the epilogue t the end of the play, which the actor acknowledges is unusual f r a female character to do. At the end of a play, poking fu at art and life. The heroine f nishes by turning the joke on t e players themselves, perhaps d fusing any upset there might hav caused. But then, just when we think we're out of those pot ntially scandalous words, Sh kespeare has the actor playing R salind flirt with all the men i the audience. So the lasting i pression is one of the daring, s xy provocation. Now, Rosalind sn't just about inverting sexual norms, she sets out to ri ht wrongs as she encounter them, and she acts to resolve s icky situations like the relat onship between silvius and Phoeb, wherein she gets tangled u in the net of attractio just like viola, although nlike viola, she doesn't l ave everything to time or fate t sort out she determine to resolve it herself. nd Celia also takes on a role of proactive fixer rather than reac ive object that events just happ ned to, which is a criticism that gets laid at the feet of a lot of Shakespeare's female ro es. Celia uses her wealth an status to buy up correns f ock and becomes his landlord, saving him from destituti n. And this raises a bit of a uestion about social status. I Celia rising about the tradi ional role of her gender to take a proactive role in sortin out her adopted community Which would be a win in the st uggle against patriarch? Or does it just serve to ighlight a disparity in class? her wealth and class privilege allows her to Weaver and magic wand and fix issues that seem trifling to her, but are a cas of life or death for Korean? Does Shakespeare use Celia as an instructive moment for the more wealthy audience members way up in the top tier of the theater? Is he saying, use your wealth to go out and help those less fortunate than you? But is that any better? Korean might be saved in the short term. But Hasn't he just changed one master for another? And so isn't his destiny just as precarious as it was before? If this truly was a pastoral utopia, shouldn't Celia have just bought his flock and gifted it to him to eliminate such aesthetically distasteful concerns such as how he's going to feed himself and get a roof over his head? Or am I just seeing what I want to see in a text that I'm injecting with my own social bag and baggage? Well, I absolutely AM. And that's not a bad thing. Shakespeare's plays have survived partly due to their ability to be colored by different ideas, tastes and trends over time. More recently, as you like, it has been reappraised as an anti pastoral. It continuously makes failed jibes and undermines the literary form. It asks questions and challenges the nature of reality and the appearance the status of men and women rich and poor. According to the tradition of a pastoral, this woodland break is a place where truths are revealed. And Arden provides a lot of opportunities to examine, and perhaps confront some hard truths. At the end, after a cosmically absurd instance of deus ex machina, where we're told the villain has suddenly decided to give up and become a hero. The rest of the characters are all set to return to the court we hope wiser and more experienced from this stay in the woods. One character, however, indexed stay, jQuery refuses the call to return to quote unquote, real life, we might leave wondering who makes the right choice. Unfortunately, in theater as well as in the world of the past, oral, we all have to leave when the final curtain falls, but we can hope to take what we've learned or discovered with us. Now, I thrown out a lot of things at you from the underbrush and Arden is some of them might delight you like discovering fresh berries, but others might trip you up or confuse you like gnarled roots. The beauty of Shakespeare is you can pick and choose the bits you like, how much you want to lean into the reverence and the satire, or the commenting on gender and class relations, maybe even the environmental issues raised is completely up to us. Unlike some playwrights Samuel Beckett, there is no standards of Orthodoxy that demands adherence. Despite what the Shakespeare purists might say. We can engage with this play, as we like it, knowing that the dappled shadows of Arden will always be there, waiting for us to come back and explore some more. Thank you for tuning in and joining me in this episode, but we're not out of the woods yet. Join me next time As night falls, and we find ourselves faced with the familiar and perhaps some unfamiliar aspects of the all time fan favorite, A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Lucy Green:This podcast is brought to you by the handlebards. Please remember t subscribe and leave a review. I was produced by Tom Dixon an Paul Moss and researched nd voiced by William Ross fawce t it was introduced by me, Lucy Green, and the music was cr ated and performed by Guy Hug es To find out more abo t the handlebards. Just head ver to our website, handlebards. om or follow us on Twitter, Fa ebook and Instagram. Just sea ch @ha