I. As You Like It
A. Preparation:
1. Introductory Handouts: Nymph and Shepherd; Reading Notes; Bibliography; put materials in Reserve Book Room; handout 10/19
2. Casting Sheet for Players; Jason's article on Performance of IV, i. Information on music and scores for musicians 10/17 and 10/19
3. Arrange videotaping for 10/31; order video in class for 10/24
4. Make quiz--10/25
B. Class Organization
1. Class I--Introduction; Acts I and II
a. AYLI as Entertainment, Musical Comedy, kind of Oklahoma
b. Place in progress of stages of ages; Green World; passage; youth to maturity; springtime work; we do at Halloween; relation to MND, IHIV
c. The Pastoral
i. Introduction: Elizabethan pastoral--nostalgic Imperial-Urban genre (Robert Frost, Wordsworth); Primitivism
(1). Pastoral of Youth: Come live with me; Under the Greenwood Tree--first stanza
(2). Pastoral of Old Age: video of II, i; sermons in stones; Romantic pastoral; Under Greenwood Tree--second stanza
(3). personal involvement--read introduction to Y vs. A.; Bibliography
ii. Positive evocations of pastorals of youth and age
(1). What's wrong with the court?
(a). younger brothers; usurpations; jealousy, deception;
(b). arbitrary power; authoritarianism (I, iii, 80)
(c). daintiness--Le Beau; new news (p. 40, 46)
(1). boredom--I,ii
(d). wrestling--entertainment in competition and violence;
(e). natural courtesy vs. courtly incivility; Fortune (2 senses) vs. nature--Adam and Orlando
(f). "house is a butchery" (p. 64)--where to go; banishment; old age abused
(2). "A better world" (p. 52); liberty, not banishment (p. 58)--"Aliena"--alienated youth
(a). Charles' wondrous description--seductive: I, i, lll
(b). Sweet are uses of adversity II, i--teach us what we are; constant service of the antique world--p. 65; Corin as true laborer (p. 83)
(c). Seven ages of man; all suffer together; social status makes no different; pastoral egalitarianism; Christian
(d). hard necessity; starvation of Adam and Orlando; courtesy of Duke Senior--76: I thought all things had been savage here
(e). First sight of it--this is the forest of Arden p. 66; Touchstone's mock
(3). The debate: Pastoral vs. Anti-pastoral--Ralegh's Nymph; if any fool turn ass--71
(a). old man and young in debate; 66-7
(b). Touchstone and Corin on court vs. country: 81-83
(c). Actual rural economic conditions; buying the farm
2. Class II--Reading complete; quiz
a. Themes and scenes and characters--quiz quotes may be enough
i. Jaques
(1). protecting the deer--p. 60: social critic, vegetarian; animal rights
(2). pastoral of melancholy and alienation; blow, blow thou winter wind
(3). pastoral satire; saturnine critique; the fool in the forest; outsiders--74/5--moral eclogues; Touchstone's court and country cultural relativity--Montaigne's "Cannibals"
3. Class III--read essays, 203-238
a. Return and discuss Midterm Exam
b. Love/ Marriage--The pastoral of youth--Signor Love vs. Monsieur Melancholy--Relation of Love and pastoral: both literary conventions and real experience; both of the Imagination; both possible to mock and still experience
i. Holiday mood; love as game; no clock in the forest (Falstaff)--Time in diverse paces; Ganymede's riddles--91 ff.
ii. Lunatic, Lover and Poet--94
iii. using and mocking literary conventions of pastoral of youth
(1). poems on trees (cf. sermons in stone)
(2). seizure by love; falling in love; love at first sight
(a). Phebe quoting marlowe
(b). Oliver and Celia falling in love--clubs cannot part them
iv. Cure for lovesickness; inoculation therapy--woo me (95)
(1). she knows it wont work--even the whippers are in love; her exposure to Silvius increases it (101); her exposure to Orlando will increase his love; just the opposite effect as claimed
v. Why does she do this to Orlando?
(1). to temper the risk that is marriage--see Touchstone's intentions in next scene ( pp. 96-7) and ever-close dangers of cuckoldry; and general unpredictability of love (Silvius/Phebe) "false oaths of lover"--p. 100; general falseness involved.
(2). leads into IV, i
c. Issues of Gender
i. Forest of Arden/Eden is liminal place of polymorphous sexual possibilities
ii. Roz takes on disguise of Ganymede--for protection and release--liminal, carnivalesque; experiments with maleness but retains feminine core
iii. Orlando's small beard--p.45; his attraction to Ganymede
iv. Phebe's love for Ganymede's body--p. 103
v. Oliver's conversion: snake in mouth; bloody napkin--both suggest loss of feminine virginity; yet agents are both feminine--snake and lioness (Marjorie Garber)
vi. Epilogue--girl is actually boy
vii. Erikson essay vs. opposite one: is this androgyny or partriarcy restored and protected?
d. Act V: Magical revelation; hieratic ritualistic epiphanies--of god Hymen and of Rosalind's strategems; catechistic vows; Importance of vows; more loose ends of plot tied up with Frederick, Jaques, and Jaques de Boys; reaffirmation of courtly punctilio and giving lie; dance--AS YOU LIKE IT
i. Is court, country, life itself good or bad--AYLI
4. Class IV--Halloween; Performance of IV, i and songs by musicians; SM on recorder