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TVprogram available at 
http://blip.tv/file/1254195/ 
AN ALLEGORICAL PRODUCTION OF
AS YOU LIKE IT 
 BY THE DARK LADY PLAYERS in 2008The latest alternative Shakespeare research claims that the plays were not writtenby the man from Stratford, nor by any of the other 65 candidates---but bysomeone else. Overlooked for 400 years, because of her gender and skin color,her name is Amelia Bassano Lanier (1569-1645). She was a major experimentalpoet, the first woman to publish a book of original poetry, and also was mistressto the man in charge of the English theater. She was a member of the Bassanofamily, dark skinned Venetian Jews, of Moorish ancestry, who had moved toEngland to be the Court Recorder troupe. She has long been known as the so-called 'dark lady' of the Sonnets—which it now appears she wrote in the thirdperson. Not only does this explain the plays' unusual interest in Venice andMoors and recorder music—it also explains their Hebrew puns and the author'sfamiliarity with Maimonides, the Talmud, and the original Hebrew text of Genesis.Amelia's authorship would also explain the recent startling discovery that manyof the plays contain hidden Jewish allegories—several of them about the Roman- Jewish war. The allegory in A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed in 2007by the experimental New York Shakespeare company, the Dark Lady Players andwas reviewed in NJJN in the February 28, 2008 article titled 'Kosher Bard'. Insummer 2008, the Dark Lady Players put on another production, at the MidtownInternational Theatre Festival, showing that an allegory about the Roman-Jewishwar also underlies As You Like It.The classically trained cast of the Dark Lady Players, comprising 10 womenactors, faced the unique challenge of playing not only the 24 normal characters,but a dozen allegorical characters as well, in an adaptation that was squeezed
 
MANHATTAN SPOTLIGHTSPECIALonAS YOU LIKE IT: THE BIGFLUSH
BY THEDARK LADY PLAYERSMIDTOWN INTERNATIONAL THEATER FESTIVAL
 
into 90 minutes. It was a credit to them and to Shakespeare director StephenWisker, that the production managed to demonstrate the underlying allegory onstage through clowning, costuming, physical movement and other framingdevices which made the hidden literary structures in the play concrete andvisible, so they could be untangled from the surface plot. It was, as JohnChatterton, the Festival founder, and publisher of the Off Off Broadway Review(OOBR) puts it "an enjoyable romp through some of the more impenetrablethickets of Shakespeare scholarship."The work being done by the Dark Lady Players changes the meaning of the playsand how they are to be understood and performed. For instance in As You LikeIt, the character Touchstone has a pocket watch and is a fool, indicating that herepresents the informal Court fool Sir John Harrington, the inventor of the flushtoilet, which ends up becoming an important underlying theme of the play. But inaddition, Touchstone is a brilliant poet whose work is not understood, who hasbeen expelled from Court, who hates the clown William (Shakespeare), and whosename in Greek is basanos. All this suggests he is also an allegory for AmeliaBassano —who wrote herself into some of the plays. So the actress playingTouchstone, Kirsta Peterson, needed all her training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) for the unusual challenge of playing the surface characterand two allegorical characters all at once. She also had to depict Bassano onstage as the author, for the first time ever, and she rose to the challenge. "It isexciting to take the text and turn it on its head" said Peterson, "after two yearsworking with the Dark Lady Players, I absolutely believe that Amelia wrote theseplays."AS YOU LIKE IT; A BIBLICAL ALLEGORY?Superficially As You Like It is a pastoral, a genre of literature designed to deceive,to say one thing on the surface, and mean something quite different underneath.So allegorically the play is not about romantic love at all, but a Biblical storywhich starts in paradise, then covers the Fall from paradise, the wicked fallenworld, and finishes with Noah's Flood.In the Hebrew Bible, paradise was the Garden of Eden, while the equivalent inClassical mythology was the Garden of the Hesperides. The identity as Eden isclear from the orchard and the character called Adam. Alexandra Cohen-Spiegler, who brings to the role her training at RADA and the LeCoq theaterschool in Paris—plays him comically as an old, wheezing man, wearing a fig leaf,shown here talking to Orlando/ Hercules. The Classical identity of the Garden asthe Hesperides is indicated by the existence of the character Hisperia who wasone of the guardians of the Hesperides. So the play begins in a convergedHebrew and Classical paradise.Then, almost immediately, it turns into a Nativity scene. We know Orlandorepresents not just Hercules in his lion's skin, but also the Hebrew messiah,because we are told he is growing up in a stable in between an ox and a horse—as in typical Nativity scenes. In order to communicate his identity to theaudience, in this production all the cast form a stylized tableau to greet him. Twoof the youngest cast members, Lindsay Tanner and Sarah Jadin, who are recent
 
RADA and LAMDA graduates, make their first appearance as an animal and thebaby in the manger. The use of such innovative techniques throughout the playled Philip Langner, director of the Theatre Guild, to call this production "the bestpiece of creative theatre I have seen in many years."Then, after a brilliantly executed "wrestling match" introduces the idea of a fallfrom grace, Rosalind and Celia are thrown out, in a version of the Fall fromParadise. We see them crawling on-stage, at Touchstone's feet, encountering thethorns and thistles on the paths outside paradise in the working day world. Theyhave been preceded by Rosalind's father Duke Senior, who was the first personto be expelled from Paradise, and therefore represents Satan. This is why heappears in a freezing wind, which is one of the traditional depictions of Satanbeing carried out of Paradise.The fallen world was associated with original sin and hunting, the latter being atypical Elizabethan metaphor for battle. We are also told that the forest, originallya temple, has been surrounded by a circle, and turned into a desert where peopleare hung on trees, are starving, and the greasy citizens and native burghers of the city are being massacred—like deer—by tyrants and usurpers. The hiddenstory here is that the outlaw satanic Duke is like a "Roman Conqueror" as he isdescribed. These events fit only one historic situation-- the Roman-Jewish war.The Roman conqueror Vespasian Caesar, surrounded Jerusalem and the templewith a circular wall, starved and slaughtered the Jewish citizens, and illegally cutdown all the trees for crosses, turning the country into a desert. So we start tocomprehend that the hunting is an allegory for the Roman-Jewish war, and thedeer are the Jews, who wear tallits and are slaughtered onstage.If Duke Senior's two allegorical identities are Satan and Vespasian, then Rosalindand Celia are allegories for his children Titus and Domitian Caesar. This is why Julius Caesar's maxim "I came, I saw, I conquered" is used to describe how Celiaeventually conquers 'Oliver'—the olive tree being a traditional Jewish symbol. Soin this production Duke Senior wears a pair of horns like Satan but also wears apurple toga like those worn by Rosalind and Celia (played respectively by KateMurray and Emily Moment) who give Roman salutes as they ascend to heaven like Jesus, and as they die in the flood.After various comic satires about hanging on trees and counterfeit resurrection,Rosalind and Celia oddly ascend to heaven. Touchstone begins a dynamicmonologue exemplifying the Partition between Earth and Heaven which comesdown on the Last Day. The moment he finishes, the Partition—namely thecurtain--opens and Rosalind and Celia descend from heaven, in a parody of theLast Day.But the dances and marriages keep being interrupted, because we are toldNoah’s Flood is coming. The two Jaques or ‘Jakes’ characters (representing twotoilets and both played by Jen Browne)—come on stage to interrupt the festivitiesby reciting an ironic and distracting announcement of ‘fair tidings’ or goodnews. Meanwhile their inventor, Touchstone, steals the girlfriend away fromWilliam (Shakespeare)---shown as a cardboard cutout of the First Folioengraving-- and goes off to the Ark with her for a "loving voyage". The Jakes
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