Gender and Politics in As You Like It

Linda Leuser, 2004

William Shakespeare and the new millennium seem to be diametrically opposed, yet his works are having a renaissance of their own after 400 years in the public domain. Why have some major film producers revisited his works when their language and staging would seem to be hopelessly outdated in our society?Perhaps because unlike modern writers, who struggle with political correctness, Shakespeare speaks his mind with an uncompromising directness that has kept its relevance in this otherwise jaded world.

Gender issues and social commentary are especially relevant in published criticism of Shakespeare’s As You Like It since the beginning of the 1990’s, as evidenced by the number of articles published in scholarly journals during the past twelve years.   Janet Gupton’s review in Theatre Journal, published in 2001as well as Louise Schleiner’s article in the Shakespeare Quarterly in the fall of 1999, both deal with the treatment of gender-subjectivity.

While most scholars deal with the confused sexuality of Rosalind living in the forest, they do not discuss the possibility that if Shakespeare himself was bisexual he would naturally be more conscious of the conflicted feelings of his own psyche, and want to explore the taboos of gender issues on the stage.

Celia and Rosalind are portrayed as having an unusually close relationship in Act 1 Scene 1 of As You Like It.Even before they make an appearance, Oliver and Charles are discussing whether Rosalind has been banished like her father, in terms that indicate a strange relationship.

Oh, no; for the Duke’s daughter her cousin so loves her, being
ever from their cradles bred together...and no less beloved of her
uncle than his own daughter; and never two ladies loved as they do. (1.1.93-97)

Is this Shakespeare’s way of hinting that there is a sexual relationship between the cousins, or is he merely referring to the image of sisterhood that “implies a relationship of mutual duties and pleasures, of spiritual and material solace constructed around familiarity, similarity, pleasure, duty, and presence. ” (Stirm 379).Was this device necessary to the plot, as an example of a stable family relationship to contrast the dysfunctional relationship of Orlando and his brothers? At the height of their sisterhood, while traveling to the forest, “the two become not sisters but siblings, sister and brother, through disguise.” (Stirm 383).This sexual confusion is explored in several Shakespearean plays.

In those plays, the women are the ones who change their sexual orientation through disguise, not the men.In her article about the topic, Martha Clare Ronk writes primarily about the use of visual techniques in medieval drama, however she goes on to discuss how these dramatic tools were used to create confusion when Rosalind was disguised as Ganymede.  She uses a short poem, from Act 3 Scene 2, to illustrate the way in which the verbal image of Rosalind is so cliched that instead of seeming romantic it becomes comic.

From the east to western Inde,
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures fairest lin’d
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no face be kept in mind
But the fair of Rosalind.
(3.2.86-93)

The fact that this is a bad poem adds to the enjoyment of the audience as Rosalind dressed as Ganymede is reading the poem about a woman while disguised as a man. (Ronk 264).So, is it female romantic love that the author despises, or is it Shakespeare’s bias against women that is showing through his work?

Even the physical attributes of women are discounted in the play because males play their roles. Although he compares their beauty to Cleopatra and Helen of Troy, the visual reality is that the boys playing the women’s roles are very ordinary looking, so their beauty and desirability are jokes perpetrated by the men.“One sees according to pre-established patterns.The way we are affected, most obviously, by what we believe we are seeing ...makes scholars interested in the homoerotic, curious about what members of the audience thought when they saw boys playing girls...who were said to “look like” Helen” (Ronk, 265). Some critics even believe that we only get to know Rosalind when she is hiding behind the manly character of Ganymede, possibly indicating that she does not want to have a heterosexual relationship with Orlando. Or, perhaps she wants to be Orlando himself. Here is the author’s fantasy of homoeroticism in full play.  (Marshall, 380-381). If Rosalind cannot be a beautiful woman, it is better to be a man, and at least have the power that men possess.

Rosalind morphs into a boy as a form of protection in the forest, a form of wish-fulfillment for the women who were forced into rigid roles in the society of the day. In the process, she becomes the teacher of romance to Orlando, who has not the least idea of how to win Rosalind. The erotic visual presence of a woman disguised as a boy teaching a man how to love added to the enjoyment of both males and females who could role-play themselves and imagine how that kind of role reversal would feel. For the females, she symbolized the ability to take control of the romantic aspect of their lives and teach men how to woo them as they would like to be wooed. (Ronk 266-267)

Jan Stirm writes from a feminist approach and deals with empowerment as it relates to relationships of sisters or sisters-in-law at the time of Shakespeare. While men were in control of most aspects of women’s lives, these sisterly relationships were understood and accepted. Although Rosalind and Celia are cousins, they have grown up more like sisters, and are inseparable until sexual desire and their impending marriages uncouple them. (Stirm 375)

In the past decade, many scholars were also interested in Shakespeare’s use of historical data and political events of the time to influence the themes of his plays. The Enclosure Crisis of the 1590’s, when noblemen annexed and cleared the forests that had traditionally been open to settlement by the peasant class, was used to create huge farms. They used their political power to withhold their crops, drive up the price of food, and create famine (Wilson 3). “The play is powerfully inflected by narratives of popular resistance and the harshness of its social climate... where customary culture is disintegrating with the stress of social mobility and competition.”(Wilson 4). The dispossession of Duke Senior and the loss of Orlando’s income and property rights both speak to us of the issues facing Britain at that time.

In Act 2 Scene 3, Adam warns Orlando to leave his cottage or his brother will drive him off the land to complete his agricultural clearance. (Wilson, 6)

To burn the lodging where you use to lie,
And you within it. If he fail of that,
He will have other means to cut you off.
(2.3. 24-26)

The use of the name Forest of Arden was intended to evoke memories of Robin Hood, for that forest was the area where displaced people went to live and to plan attacks on the gentry. (Wilson 10)Poaching game from the forests, damaging trees by nailing messages to them, living in areas that would not normally have been inhabited, and cross-dressing of women would have been instantly recognizable to the audience as representations of civil disobedience taking place in the real Midland forests. (Wilson 13-14)

“In the first act, the characters are banished to the forest and become outlaws, like Robin Hood and his merry band, who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Rosalind and Celia are disguised and Ganymede is armed with the equivalent of a bow and arrow, called a gallant curtal-axe and a boar spear. In the second act, games are played in the forest suggesting a more open way of life than the court would allow. The third act culminates in a “magical solidarity when all the characters come together in an integrated group,” thus preserving the structure of society.” (Leach 397-398)

But why include this image of Robin Hood as the religious and social critic unless the play hopes to achieve an objective? Some scholars believe that Shakespeare was trying to invoke the memory of a golden past, before the greed and oppression of the 1500’s. “As You Like It, for all its comic ingenuity, also conveys a sense of something erased and missing, some deep aspect of character, some golden world: the Robin Hood days of yore, the incarnation of the sacred.” (Ronk, 276).

In the end, Shakespeare seems to stand on the side of the status-quo in this play, but of course his livelihood depended on the favor of the monarchy. However, the fact that he included so many of the current events of the day speaks to his interest in reforming British society, and getting back to a simpler time. After all, Orlando does gain favor again with older brother Oliver, and we assume that he was welcomed back into his wealthy family after saving Oliver from the lion in Act 4 Scene 3. The marriages of the two couples also unite the families and prevent further fighting, and Duke Senior is again welcomed back to court.

The world of William Shakespeare was not so very different from the world in which we live. Women’s rights, homosexuality and the struggle for equality are still in the news, and the only difference in family infighting is the use of the courts and lawyers to settle disputes instead of banishment to the forest. The Robin Hoods of our culture are the politicians who try to redistribute wealth, and huge agricultural conglomerates have bought out the family farms of our own midlands to control the price of crops. Perhaps, after all, the new millennium is so enthralled by Shakespeare because he is just like us.

Works Cited

As You Like It. The Norton Shakespeare, 1997. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, NY.

Gupton, Janet L. Women’s Worlds in Shakespeare’s Plays, and: Gender and Performance in Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies.Theatre Journal- Volume 53, Issue 4, 2001.

Leach, Robert.As You Like It-A “Robin Hood” Play.English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature 82, no. 5 Oct. 2001. p 393-400.

Marshall, Cynthia. The Doubled Jacques and Constructions of Negation in As You Like It.Shakespeare Quarterly 49, no. 4 (1998 Winter): p 375-92.

Ronk, Martha Clare, Locating the Visual in As You Like It.Shakespeare Quarterly 52, Issue 2, 2001.

Schleiner, Louise.Voice, Ideology, and Gendered Subjects: The Case of As You Like It and Two Gentlemen.Shakespeare Quarterly 50, no.3 (1999 Fall) p. 285-309.

Stirm, Jan.For Solace a Twinne-Like Sister: Teaching Themes of Sisterhood in As You Like It and Beyond.Shakespeare Quarterly 47, no. 4 (1996 Winter) p. 374-86.

Wilson, Richard.Like the Old Robin Hood: As You Like It and the Enclosure Riots.Shakespeare Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1992 Spring): p. 1-19.