CQ - As You Like It (Acts IV and V)

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

In William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It various themes can be noticed as the play is developed, one of these is the opposition of life among nature and life in the court.

In the beginning of the second act, Duke Senior asks his fellow exiles if it isn’t true that “Hath not old custom made this life more sweet than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods more free from peril than the envious court?” (II. i. 1-4). In his speech it is clear that he now prefers his new life in the Forest of Arden than the life he had in the court from which he was exiled by his brother. Duke Senior points out that life in the court offers more dangers than life in a forest because envy moves the human beings in there and the results are such as the betrayal he himself was victim in the hands of his brother.

Throughout the play the characters leave the court and go to the Forest of Arden as Duke Senior and the other exiles did. We can notice that these characters usually have some sort of transformation when they get there, be it physical or psychological. Rosalind and Celia go to the forest and continue with their disguises as Ganymede and Aliena. Oliver arrives in the Forest with the intention of killing his brother Orlando, but ends up promising to give him their father’s fortune and title in order to stay in the forest as a shepherd married to Aliena. Duke Frederick, who had usurped his brother’s dukedom, goes to the forest to end the congregation of great men in the place. But as he get there he talks to an old man and is also transformed, regretting his errors and restoring his brother to his rightful place. Not only these characters are transformed, but they find happiness in the forest, as the many weddings that occurred there show.

All these examples indicate that the Forest of Arden, the representation of nature in the play, seem a place of transformation and healing. The character abandon the life at court, which is dangerous and full of envy and disputes that disrupt even the family peace, to go to the forest where they find a better version of themselves and make better choices than previously. If it was Shakespeare intention to propose that nature has a powerful effect in the transformation and healing of human beings we cannot be sure, but the elements in the play indicated to this idea.

Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Ed. Michael Hattaway. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2000.