Rosalynde,
Gamelyn, and Robin Hood, Food for Shakespeare’s Stage
Nicole
S. Lamana, Life Long Learner
Shakespeare based his comedy
As You Like It primarily on three other works.
Its plot follows the basic structure of Rosalynde, published
in 1590 by Thomas Lodge. The Tale
of Gamelyn, written by an unknown author in the mid-fourteenth century,
is a violent Middle English narrative that was found among Chaucer’s papers
and provides further details for Shakespeare’s work.
With the Forest of Ardenne serving as an escape for our main characters,
Shakespeare takes his details from the countless Robin Hood ballads popular
in Medieval England. This paper will
examine how Shakespeare’s adaptations and alterations of emphasis and plot
from these source works have turned our attention to the role of gender norms
in society, the restrictions of social norms, and human influence on one’s
future. Lastly, included is a brief discussion of how
these factors might influence a production of this clever and entertaining
work.
In
Shakespeare’s play, the question of women’s role is central to theme and plot.
“By assuming the clothes and likeliness of a man, Rosalind treats herself
to powers that are normally beyond her reach as a woman” (Spark 7). She is able to talk, walk and have the freedoms of a man, while
having the heart of a woman. She is
even able to court a lover of her own choice and train him in the art of love.
Shakespeare focuses his work on the drastically different role that
she can take under the guise of a man. In contrast, the novel Rosalynde, focuses
only on the male concerns of the story. The entire story has been directed exclusively to men and made glaringly
obvious in it’s preface beginning with the words, “To Gentleman Readers.”
Throughout the story, Lodge neglects to address women, except for a
brief passage in which Rosalind and Alinda overhear two shepards.
In the final paragraph, Lodge reinforces his focus on men:
Lodge’s Rosalynde
lives in a world where human behavior is repeatedly explained by reference
to long lists of “infallible precepts” that are said to determine our reactions,
not as a reaction to what other people have done or how they feel about each
other (Stout 279). Shakespeare views love as grounded in mutual
behavior, and the interaction between people helps make possible what will
happen in the future. In Lodge, a
common explanation for a character’s actions is some sort of variation on
the claim that “nature must have her course.”
By making absolute claims, Lodge imposes rigidity on the actions of
his characters (Stout 280). In As
You Like It, Shakespeare permits alternatives to be imagined. One scholar observed that the word “if” appears
more frequently in this play than in any other drama by Shakespeare (Kuhn
43) In contrast, words such as fortune
and fate outnumber instances of “if” in Rosalynde. In the wedding scene, Hyman addresses the couples,
both man and wife. He uses the phrases
“you and you” three times” (5.4.120,
121, 124). Jacques on the other hand,
speaks only to the men. We are then
offered the option to consider marriage as a “social institution in patriarchal
society, a public expression of mutual feelings of love, or as an appropriate
outlet for the mutual sexual desire” (Strout 283).
Perhaps, Shakespeare named his play to point out that we do have choices,
to guide our lives to how we would indeed like it to be.
Both Rosalynde and the
Tale of Gamelynde center around the theft of inheritance but in a grim
and far more violent manner. While
Shakespeare chooses the comedy genre to examine these issues and changes,
the roles of the characters to further point blame not at the specific persons
involved, but at the social conventions that guide their actions.
The corresponding characters to Oliver and Orlando in Rosalynde
are not brothers, yet Shakespeare turns them in this direction so “he can
establish with great economy, the corrupt nature of so-called civilized life”
(Spark 6). Orlando’s malice is prompted
out of the social convention of primogeniture (Andrews 2). In Lodge, the father does not follow primogeniture,
the custom by which all property settles on the oldest son, instead he divides
his property among his male offspring according to their merits.
This change in detail further exemplifies our character’s ability to
choose his own path and not take the road that has been set by the normal
laws of human kinds greed and nature. Shakespeare uses his alterations from the original
sources to highlight the pitfalls set for us when we blindly follow the precepts
set up for us by custom. We can easily
plot brother against brother.
In
the Tale of Gamelyn, the brother unjustly takes his inheritance, flees
to the forest to plan his revenge and hangs his brother in the end.
For Lodge, the final solution is war and the disadvantaged wins the
wealth that he has seen as his own from the beginning.
Shakespeare contrives a more peaceful solution in Duke Frederick’s
conversion and ultimate surrender of his wealth and power.
By choosing the lighter, less violent path, we are further shown that
social convention is not a trap that is inescapable.
Oliver and Orlando escaped its convention, as did Rosalind by changing
her clothes.
Shakespeare
uses the forest of Ardenne to create the escape from the confines presented
by the conventional world. In the Tale of Gamelyn, the cheated
brother flees to the forest and becomes a Robin-hood style outlaw, lives in
a forest with a group of loyal followers.
Gamelyne’s forest world comes form the countless ballads recited frequently
in villages, towns, and castles of late medieval England around 1377, about
Robin Hood who was once a nobleman, now an outcast, seen as a hero who could
“defy the law [and] right the wrong doings done by corrupt officials, fleece
the church and be rewarded by the king for his actions” (Hanawalt, 154).
The bandits of the woods set up a very definitive structure of social
code and criminal norms. The poems that have survived form the middle
Ages portray an underground world similar to the one of today’s organized
crime. Rosalind and Celia become part
of this underground world of Adriane. It
has its own rules and its own hierarchy. It is not void of order, but perhaps it lacks the order of the conventional
male world and becomes a world where its visitors can set or make up their
own rules, as they like it.
In
consideration of this chosen emphasis, a production interpretation of As
You Like It would have to place key emphasis in several areas of the action.
Characters would need to make it clear that the choices they are making
are their own. While the lines reflect
this, actor’s interpretation may also reflect a certain amount of hesitancy. It is clear that Celia wants to go with Rosalind
to the forest, yet without a strong female voice, the scene in which the plans
are made, could make Celia appear to be too tied to Rosalind to simply be
alone and therefore have no option but to go. We might ask ourselves is Rosalind in charge
of her destiny all the way through the play?
Does she guide her path? Is
she confident that she can deliver on her promise to have four weddings or
is she just hopeful that fate will come through and all will fall into place? A director’s chose will make a great bit of
difference in interpreting these questions.
Shakespeare
takes a short medieval tale, ballads of the legend of an outlaw and a novel
addressed to men and transforms them into a witty, entertaining play about
the role of women in renaissance England. Through examination of the social conventions
that guide inheritance, brothers become enemies and women caught in the crossfire
escape to the forest and emerge as lovers to the men who once again hold the
power but somehow on a more equal basis. His changes emphasize the roles of gender in
society, how we can breaking the norms of social conventions, and influence
the world to be, as we would like it to be.
Works
Cited
Andrews, John F.. Program Notes
of As You Like It, by William Shakespeare. , The
Shakespeare
Theatre. 8 Nov. 2002 http://www.shakespearedc.org/pastprod/asynotes.html.
Bradbury, Nancy Mason. Writing
Aloud- Storytelling in Late Medievil England. Urbana:
University
of Illinois Press, 1998.
Knight, Stephen and Ohlgren,
Thomas H… ed. “The Tale of Gamelyn: Introduction.” The
Consortium
for the Teaching of the Middle Ages 7 Nov. 2002 http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/gamint.htm.
Kuhn, Maura. “Much Value in It.”
Shakespeare Quarterly 28 (Winter 1977): 40-50.
Hanawalt, Barbara A. ed.. Chaucer’s
England- Literature in Historical Content. Minneapolis:
University
of Minnesota Press, 1992.
Howard, Jean E., “Intoduction
to As You Like It.” The Norton Shakespeare Ed. Stephen
Greenblatt,
et.al. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. 1591-1599.
Prendergast, Maria Teresa Micaela.Rennaissance
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Early
Modern Fiction. Kent: Kent State UP, 1999.
Sparknotes. As You Like It,
by William Shakespeare. 8 Nov. 2002
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/asyoulikeit/.
Strout, Nathaniel. “As You Like
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Tenney, Edward A.. Thomas
Lodge. Ithica: Cornell UP, 1935.