High Quality
Open the downloaded document, and select print from the file menu (PDF reader required).
Copyright © (2009) JOHN HUDSON All Rights Reserved
1
AS YOU LIKE IT: A COMIC RELIGIOUS SATIRE
by John Hudsonemail; darkladyplayers@aol.comThis seeming comedy actually has more evil in intent and character than in anycomedy before
Measure for Measure.
1
As You Like It
contains a systematicallegory which accords with some of the latest New Testament scholarship. Itdescribes how after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70CE, the Flavian Emperorsco-opted the Hebrew messiah to create a pro-Roman pacifist Caesar cult—Christianity---so that the Jews would worship them in the guise of the literaryfigure of the gospels. In order to describe what the Romans did and to takeliterary revenge upon them, the playwright uses a double allegory—whichrequires many characters to have multiple allegorical identities.Overall, the Biblical allegory explicitly provides the ‘bookends’ for the play,starting by situating the play fairly clearly in Eden
2
, ending with the clear references to the Flood and Noah’s Ark. This sets the overall expectation that theplay is about the fall from paradise, the evil world, and God’s punishment of awicked generation. The question it then raises is how do the characters and sub-plots fit into this overall schema—and to what wicked generation is the playwrightreferring.The first major character we meet is Orlando who is given a triple allegory, firstlyas an allegory for the heroic figure of Hercules, secondly as a Hebrew leader likeJacob-Israel or David, and thirdly as the gentle pacifist Jesus of the gospels. Theplot of the play therefore poses a question of why Orlando—who we initially seeas a strong wrestler able to defeat the champion Charles and then drawing hissword on Duke S.---is being made so “gentle”. Orlando, is initially “overthrown”
1
Stuart A. Daley ’The Tyrant Duke in
As You Like It’
Cahiers Elisabethains
34 (1981)39-51.
2
Richard Knowles “Myth and Type in
As You Like It’
ELH vol. 33, no.1, March (1966)1-22
Copyright © (2009) JOHN HUDSON All Rights Reserved
2
(1,ii,248) by Rosalind, and soon after Adam asks him “O my gentlemaster…wherefore are you gentle?”. On entering the forest, the Duke countersOrlando by saying “your gentleness shall force/ More than your force move us togentleness” (2,vii,103), and asks him to “sit down in gentleness” (2,vii,125). So itwould appear that Rosalind and Duke S. are both engaged in persuading theHebrew hero to renounce his strength and to become a pacifist ‘gentile’ Jesus. Atthe end of the play Orlando even quotes from Thomas a Kempis
The Imitation of Christ.
Although he
is strong enough to defeat a lion—in an echo of the labor of Hercules, but possibly also renouncing his Judean identity---
he goes into a cavewounded, in an allusion to the cave in which Jesus was buried. There he faints,and awakes, sending out a piece of cloth. It is referred to in two contrasting ways,first as a bloody “napkin” (4,iii, 92, 137,153) and then as a “handkerchief’ (4,iii,96& 5,ii.26). Only one other piece of clothing in the 17
th
century was widely knownboth as a ‘napkin’ and a ‘handkerchief’. This was one of the burial garments of Jesus, which the Geneva Bible translation called “the kerchief” and the Bishop’sBible called the “napkin” (John 20;7). So the playwright is using the words fromboth contemporary Bible translations to indicate the precise Biblical allusion andto continue the allegory of Orlando to Jesus.
3
It also makes sense of the name heis given—a version of Roland the famous Christian hero from the
Song of Roland
, who dies abandoned, outstretched under a tree in the form of a cross.All of this establishes, within the overall schema of the play, that it is allegoricallyset in the first century, and that it concerns how the literary character of Jesuswas created by writers at the Court of the Flavian Caesars after the end of theRoman-Jewish war. It was part of their ‘good news of military victory’ or gospel,
3
In
Othello
it becomes the handkerchief dyed with mummy.
Copyright © (2009) JOHN HUDSON All Rights Reserved
3
to take the Hebrew messiah and re-write it as a gentle pro-Roman literarymessiah that would be a disguise for the worship of Titus and Domitian Caesar.
4
The play starts in the golden age in Paradise, the Garden of Eden. The ruler of the garden, Duke F, will expel people----as God did in
Genesis
. He can also beallegorically identified as the god Saturn who, according to Hesiod, ruled duringthe Golden Age, and was associated with three of the key motifs in the play--manure, time and melancholy.We know this is Paradise because the maidservant is called Hisperia (2,ii,10),who was one of the nine daughters of Atlas who guarded the Garden of theHesperides, an Elizabethan equivalent to Eden. That is why Adam Spencer hasdropped his last name and become plain Adam, a gardener, and why he appearsin an orchard. That is why rib-cracking is a sport for ladies because rib-crackingis how Eve was created as Adam’s broken consort, by being taken from his side.This is alluded to in the reference to broken music in his sides---since brokenmusic was only played by the assembly of instruments known as a ‘brokenconsort’.In classical mythology, Hercules came to the Hesperides to steal the goldenapples, so it is not surprising to find the strong wrestler Orlando being wished“Hercules be thy speed young man” (1,ii,222) in a passage that alludes to one of Hercules’ wrestling matches. He is also given a golden chain that is a weightupon his tongue since this accords with imagery of the French Hercules Gallus,while his lack of words for the princess after his wrestling comes from yet another history of the life of Hercules.
5
4
This is why for example in the gospels the 11 key events in the life of Jesus are eachliterary parodies of 11 events in Titus’ conquest of Judea, see Joseph Atwill
Caesar’sMessiah
(2005).
5
Jeff Shulman ‘The recuyell of the Histories of Troye’ and the Tongue-tied Orlando’
Shakespeare Quarterly
, vol. 31, no. 3. Autumn, (1980), p. 390
Add a Comment
This document has made it onto the Rising list!
writetilak192left a comment
huiosleft a comment