The Comedy of As You Like It was registered at the Stationers', in
London, on the 4th of August, 1600. Two other of Shakespeare's plays,
and one of Ben Jonson's, were entered at the same time; all of them
under an injunction, "to be stayed." In regard to the other two of
Shakespeare's plays, the stay appears to have been soon removed, as
both of them were entered again in the course of the same month, and
published before the end of that year. In the case of _As You Like
It_, the stay seems to have been kept up; perhaps because its
continued success on the stage made the theatrical company unwilling
to part with their interest in it.
This is the only contemporary notice of the play that has been
discovered. As it was not mentioned in the list given by Francis Meres
in 1598, we are probably warranted in presuming it had not been heard
of at that time. The play has a line, "Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not
at first sight?" apparently quoted from Marlowe's version of _Hero and
Leander_, which was published in 1598. So that we may safely conclude
the play to have been written some time between that date and the date
of the forecited entry at the Stationers'; that is, when the Poet was
in his thirty-sixth or thirty-seventh year. The play was never
printed, that we know of, till in the folio of 1623, where it stands
the tenth in the division of Comedies. The text is there presented in
a very satisfactory state, with but few serious errors, and none that
can fairly be called impracticable.
Before passing from this branch of the subject, perhaps I ought to
cite a curious piece of tradition, clearly pointing to the play in
hand. Gilbert Shakespeare, a brother of William, lived till after the
Restoration, which occurred in 1660; and Oldys tells us of "the faint,
general, and almost lost ideas" which the old man had, of having once
seen the Poet act a part in one of his own comedies; "wherein, being
to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so
weak and drooping, that he was forced to be carried by another person
to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating,
and one of them sung a song." This could have been none other than the
"goold old man" Adam, in and about whom we have so much noble thought;
and we thus learn that his character, beautiful in itself, yet more so
for this circumstance, was sustained by the Poet himself.
In regard to the originals of this play, two sources have been pointed
out,--_The Cook's Tale of Gamelyn_, sometime attributed to Chaucer,
but upon better advice excluded from his works; and a novel by Thomas
Lodge entitled _Rosalynd; Euphues' Golden Legacy_. As the _Tale of
Gamelyn_ was not printed till more than a century later, it has been
questioned whether Shakespeare ever saw it. Nor indeed can much be
alleged as indicating that he ever did: one point there is, however,
that may have some weight that way. An old knight, Sir John of
Boundis, being about to die, calls in his wise friends to advise him
touching the distribution of his property among his three sons. They
advise him to settle all his lands on the eldest, and leave the
youngest without any thing. Gamelyn, the youngest, being his favourite
son, he rejects their advice, and bestows the largest portion upon
him. The Poet goes much more according to their advice; Orlando, who
answers to Gamelyn, having no share in the bulk of his father's
estate. A few other resemblances, also, may be traced, wherein the
play differs from Lodge's novel; though none of them are so strong as
to force the inference that Shakespeare must have consulted the
_Tale_. Nor, in truth, is the matter of much consequence, save as
bearing upon the question whether the Poet was of a mind to be
unsatisfied with such printed books as lay in his way. I would not
exactly affirm him to have been "a hunter of manuscripts"; but
indications are not wanting, that he sometimes had access to them: nor
is it at all unlikely that one so greedy of intellectual food, so
eager and so apt to make the most of all the means within his reach,
should have gone beyond the printed resources of his time. Besides,
there can be no question that Lodge was very familiar with the _Tale
of Gamelyn_: he follows it so closely in a large part of his novel as
to leave scarce any doubt that he wrote with the manuscript before
him; and if he, who was also sometime a player, availed himself of
such sources, why may not Shakespeare have done the same?
The practical use of such inquiries is, that they exhibit the Poet in
the character where I like especially to view him, namely, as an
earnest and diligent seeker after knowledge, and as building himself
up in intelligence and power by much the same means as are found to
serve in the case of other men. He himself tells us that "ignorance is
the curse of God, knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to Heaven."
Assuredly he was a great student as well as a great genius; as full of
aptness to learn as of force to create. If he had great faculties to
work with, he was also a greater worker in the use of them. Nor is it
best for us to think of him as being raised by natural gifts above the
common methods and processes of high intellectual achievement.
Lodge's _Rosalynd_ was first printed in 1590; and its popularity
appears in that it was reprinted in 1592, and again in 1598. Steevens
pronounced it a "worthless original"; but this sweeping sentence is so
unjust as to breed some doubt whether he had read it. Compared with
the general run of popular literature then in vogue, the novel has no
little merit; and is very well entitled to the honour of having
contributed to one of the most delightful poems ever written. A rather
ambitious attempt indeed at fine writing; pedantic in style, not a
little blemished with the elaborate euphemism of the time, and
occasionally running into absurdity and indecorum; nevertheless, upon
the whole, it is a varied and pleasing narrative, with passages of
great force and beauty, and many touches of noble sentiment, and
sometimes informed with a pastoral sweetness and simplicity quite
charming.
To make a full sketch of the novel, in so far as the Poet borrowed
from it, would occupy too much space. Still it seems desirable to
indicate, somewhat, the extent of the Poet's obligations in this case;
which can be best done, I apprehend, by stating, as compactly as may
be, a portion of the story.
Sir John of Bordeaux, being at the point of death, called in his three
sons, Saladyne, Fernandine, and Rosader, and divided his wealth among
them, giving nearly a third to Rosader the youngest. After a short
period of hypocritical mourning for his father, Saladyne went to
studying how he might defraud his brothers, and ravish their legacies.
He put Fernandine to school at Paris, and kept Rosader as his
foot-boy. Rosader bore this patiently for three years, and then his
spirit rose against it. While he was deep in meditation on the point,
Saladyne came along and began to jerk him with rough speeches. After
some interchange of angry and insulting words, Rosader "seized a great
rake, and let drive at him," and soon brought him to terms. Saladyne,
feigning sorrow for what he had done, then drew the youth, who was of
a free and generous nature, into a reconciliation, till he might
devise how to finish him out of the way.
Now, Gerismond, the rightful King of France, had been driven into
exile, and his crown usurped, by Torismond, his younger brother. To
amuse the people, and keep them from thinking of the banished King,
the usurper appointed a day of wrestling and tournament; when a
Norman, of great strength and stature, who had wrestled down as many
as undertook with him, was to stand against all comers. Saladyne went
to the Norman secretly, and engaged him with rich rewards to despatch
Rosader, in case Rosader should come within his grasp. He then pricked
his brother on to the wrestling, telling him how much honour it would
bring him, and that he was the only one to uphold the renown of the
family. The youth, full of heroic thoughts, was glad of such an
opportunity. When the time came, Torismond went to preside over the
games, taking with him the Twelve Peers of France, his daughter
Alinda, his niece Rosalynd, and all the most famous beauties of the
Court. Rosalynd, "upon whose cheeks there seemed a battle between the
graces," was the centre of attraction, "and made the cavaliers crack
their lances with more courage." The tournament being over, the Norman
offered himself as general challenger at wrestling. While he is in the
full career of success, Rosader alights from his horse, and presents
himself for a trial. He quickly puts an end to the Norman's wrestling;
though not till his eyes and thoughts have got badly entangled with
the graces of Rosalynd. On the other side, she is equally smitten with
his handsome person and heroic bearing, insomuch that, the spectacle
being over, she takes from her neck a jewel, and sends it to him by a
page, as an assurance of her favour.
This outline, as far as it goes, almost describes, word for word, the
course and order of events in the play. And so it is, in a great
measure, through the other parts and incidents of the plot; such as
the usurper's banishment of his niece, and the escape of his daughter
along with her; their arrival in the Forest of Arden, where Rosalynd's
father has taken refuge; their encounter with the shepherds, their
purchase of the cottage, and their adventures in the pastoral life.
So, too, in the flight of Rosader to the same Forest, taking along
with him the old servant, who is called Adam Spencer, his carving of
love-verses in the bark of trees, his meeting with the disguised
Rosalynd, and the wooing and marrying that enrich the forest scenes.
Thus much may suffice to show that the Poet has here borrowed a good
deal of excellent matter. With what judgment and art the borrowed
matter was used by him can only be understood on a careful study of
his workmanship. In no one of his comedies indeed has he drawn more
freely from others; nor, I may add, is there any one wherein he has
enriched his drawings more liberally from the glory of his own genius.
To appreciate his wisdom as shown in what he left unused, one must
read the whole of Lodge's novel. In that work we find no traces of
Jaques, or Touchstone, or Audrey; nothing, indeed, that could yield
the slightest hint towards either of those characters. It scarce need
be said that these superaddings are enough of themselves to transform
the whole into another nature; pouring through all its veins a free
and lively circulation of the most original wit and humour and poetry.
And by a judicious indefiniteness as to persons and places, the Poet
has greatly idealized the work, throwing it at a romantic distance,
and weaving about it all the witchery of poetical perspective; while
the whole falls in so smoothly with the laws of the imagination, that
the breaches of geographical order are never noticed save by such as
cannot understand poetry without a map.
No one at all competent to judge in the matter will suppose that
Shakespeare could have been really indebted to Lodge, or to whomsoever
else, for any of the _characters_ in _As You Like It_. He merely
borrowed certain names and incidents for the bodying-forth of
conceptions purely his own. The resemblance is all in the drapery and
circumstances of the representation, not in the individuals. For
instance, we can easily imagine Rosalind in an hundred scenes not here
represented; for she is a substantive personal being, such as we may
detach and consider apart from the particular order wherein she
stands: but we can discover in her no likeness to Lodge's Rosalynd,
save that of name and situation: take away the similarity here, and
there is nothing to indicate any sort of relationship between the
heroines of the play and the novel. And it is considerable that,
though the Poet here borrows so freely, still there is no sign of any
borrowing in the work itself: we can detect no foreign influences, no
second-hand touches, nothing to suggest that any part of the thing had
ever been thought of before; what he took being so thoroughly
assimilated with what he gave, that the whole seems to have come
fresh from Nature and his own mind: so that, had the originals been
lost, we should never have suspected there were any.
Shakespeare generally preferred to make up his plots and stories out
of such materials as were most familiar to his audience. Of this we
have many examples; but the fact is too well known to need dwelling
upon. Though surpassingly rich in fertility and force of invention, he
was notwithstanding singularly economical and sparing in the use of
it. Which aptly shows how free he was from every thing like a
sensational spirit or habit of mind. Nature was every thing to him,
novelty nothing, or next to nothing. The true, not the new, was always
the soul of his purpose; than which nothing could better approve the
moral healthiness of his genius. Hence, in great part, his noble
superiority to the intellectual and literary fashions of his time. He
understood these perfectly; but he deliberately rejected them, or
rather struck quite above or beyond them. We rarely meet with any
thing that savours of _modishness_ in his workmanship. Probably the
best judgment ever pronounced upon him is Ben Jonson's, "He was not of
an age, but for all time." For even so it is with the permanences of
our intellectual and imaginative being that he deals, and not with any
transiencies of popular or fashionable excitement or pursuit. And as
he cared little for the new, so he was all the stronger in that which
does not grow old, and which lives on from age to age in the
perennial, unwithering freshness of Truth and Nature. For the being
carried hither and thither by the shifting mental epidemics of the
day, what is it, after all, but a tacit confession of weakness or
disease? proving, at the least, that one has not strength of mind
enough to "feel the soul of Nature," or to live at peace with the
solidities of reason. And because the attractions of mere novelty had
no force with Shakespeare; because his mind dwelt far above the
currents of intellectual fashion and convention; therefore his dramas
stand "exempt from the wrongs of time"; and the study of them is,
with but a single exception, just our best discipline in those forms
and sources of interest which underlie and outlast all the flitting
specialties of mode and custom,--
"Truths that wake, to perish never;
Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy."
_As You Like It_ is exceedingly rich and varied in character. The
several persons stand out round and clear in themselves, yet their
distinctive traits in a remarkable degree sink quietly into the
feelings without reporting themselves in the understanding; for which
cause the clumsy methods of criticism are little able to give them
expression. Subtile indeed must be the analysis that should reproduce
them to the intellect without help from the Dramatic Art.
Properly speaking, the play has no hero; for, though Orlando occupies
the foreground, the characters are mainly co-ordinate; the design of
the work precluding any subordination among them. Diverted by fortune
from all their cherished plans and purposes, they pass before us in
just that moral and intellectual dishabille which best reveals their
indwelling graces of mind and heart. Schlegel remarks that "the Poet
seems to have aimed, throughout, at showing that nothing is wanting,
to call forth the poetry that has its dwelling in Nature and the human
mind, but to throw off all artificial restraint, and restore both to
their native liberty." This is well said; but it should be observed
withal that the persons have already been "purified by suffering"; and
that it was under the discipline of social restraint that they
developed the virtues which make them go right without such restraint,
as indeed they do, while we are conversing with them. Because they
have not hitherto been altogether free to do as they would, therefore
it is that they are good and beautiful in doing as they have a mind
to now. Let us beware of attributing to Nature, as we call it, that
goodness which proceeds from _habits_ generated under Gospel culture
and the laws of Christian society. After all, the ordinary conditions
of social and domestic life give us far more than they take away. It
requires a long schooling in the _prescriptions_ of order and
rectitude, to fit us for being left to ourselves. In some sense indeed
it is a great enlargement of liberty to be rid of all the loves and
duties and reverences which the Past may have woven about us; and many
there are who seem to place freedom of mind in having nothing to look
up to, nothing to respect outside of themselves. But human virtue does
not grow in this way; and the stream must soon run dry if cut off from
the spring. And I have no sympathy with those who would thus crush all
tender and precious memories out of us, and then give the name of
_freedom_ to the void thus created in our souls. The liberty that goes
by unknitting the bands of reverence and dissolving the ties that draw
and hold men together in the charities of a common life, is not the
liberty for me, nor is it the liberty that Shakespeare teaches. I am
much rather minded to say, with a lawyer-poet of our time,
"If we lose
All else, we will preserve our household laws;
Nor let the license of these fickle times
Subvert the holy shelter which command
Of fathers, and undoubting faith of sons,
Rear'd for our shivering virtues."
It is true, however, that in this play the better transpirations of
character are mainly conducted in the eye of Nature, where the
passions and vanities that so much disfigure human life find little to
stir them into act. In the freedom of their woodland resort, and with
the native inspirations of the place to kindle and gladden them, the
persons have but to live out the handsome thoughts which they have
elsewhere acquired. Man's tyranny has indeed driven them into
banishment; but their virtues are much more the growth of the place
they are banished from than of the place they are banished to.
* * * * *
Orlando is altogether such a piece of young-manhood as it does one
good to be with. He has no special occasion for heroism, yet we feel
that there is plenty of heroic stuff in him. Brave, gentle, modest,
and magnanimous; never thinking of his high birth but to avoid
dishonouring it; in his noble-heartedness, forgetting, and causing
others to forget, his nobility of rank; he is every way just such a
man as all true men would choose for their best friend. His
persecuting brother, talking to himself, describes him as "never
school'd, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts
enchantingly beloved; and indeed so much in the heart of the world,
and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am
altogether misprised"; and this description is amply justified by his
behaviour. The whole intercourse between him and his faithful old
servant Adam is replete on both sides with that full-souled generosity
in whose eye the nobilities of Nature are always sure of recognition.
Shakespeare evidently delighted in a certain natural harmony of
character wherein virtue is free and spontaneous, like the breathing
of perfect health. And such is Orlando. He is therefore good without
effort; nay, it would require some effort for him to be otherwise; his
soul gravitating towards goodness as of its own accord: "In his proper
motion he ascends; descent and fall to him is adverse." And perhaps
the nearest he comes to being aware of his virtue is when his virtue
triumphs over a mighty temptation; that is, when he sees his unnatural
brother in extreme peril;
"But kindness, nobler ever than revenge,
And nature, stronger than his just occasion,"
made him risk his own life to save him; and even in this case the
divine art of overcoming evil with good seems more an instinct than a
conscious purpose with him. This is one of the many instances wherein
the Poet delivers the highest results of Christian discipline as
drawing so deeply and so creatively into the heart, as to work out
with the freedom and felicity of native, original impulse.
I must dismiss Orlando with a part of his tilt of wit with Jaques, as
that very well illustrates the composition of the man:
"_Jaq_. I thank you for your company; but, good faith, I had as
lief have been myself alone.
_Orlan_. And so had I; but yet, for fashion's sake, I thank you
too for your society.
_Jaq_. God b' wi' you: let's meet as little as we can.
_Orlan_. I do desire we may be better strangers.
_Jaq_. I pray you, mar no more trees with writing love-songs in
their barks.
_Orlan_. I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading them
ill-favouredly.
_Jaq_. Rosalind is your love's name?
_Orlan_. Yes, just.
_Jaq_. I do not like her name.
_Orlan_. There was no thought of pleasing you when she was
christened.
_Jaq_. What stature is she of?
_Orlan_. Just as high as my heart.
_Jaq_. You have a nimble wit: I think it was made of Atalanta's
heels. Will you sit down with me? and we two will rail against
our mistress the world and all our misery.
_Orlan_. I will chide no breather in the world but myself,
against whom I know most faults."
The banished Duke exemplifies the best sense of nature as thoroughly
informed and built up with Christian discipline and religious
efficacy; so that the asperities of life do but make his thoughts run
the smoother. How sweet, yet how considerative and firm, is every
thing about his temper and moral frame! He sees all that is seen by
the most keen-eyed satirist, yet is never moved to be satirical,
because he looks with wiser and therefore kindlier eyes. The enmity of
Fortune is fairly disarmed by his patience; her shots are all wasted
against his breast, garrisoned as it is with the forces of charity and
peace: his soul is made storm-proof by gentleness and truth: exile,
penury, the ingratitude of men, the malice of the elements, what are
they to him? he has the grace to sweeten away their venom, and to
smile the sting out of them. He loves to stay himself upon the
compensations of life, and to feed his gentler affections by dwelling
upon the good which adversity opens to him, or the evil from which it
withdraws him; and so he rejoices in finding "these woods more free
from peril than the envious Court." In his philosophy, so bland,
benignant, and contemplative, the mind tastes the very luxury of rest,
and has an antepast of measureless content.
* * * * *
Touchstone, though he nowhere strikes so deep a chord within us as the
poor Fool in _King Lear_, is, I think, the most entertaining of
Shakespeare's privileged characters. And he is indeed a mighty
delectable fellow! wise too, and full of the most insinuative counsel.
How choicely does his grave, acute nonsense moralize the scenes
wherein he moves! Professed clown though he be, and as such ever
hammering away with artful awkwardness at a jest, a strange kind of
humorous respect still waits upon him notwithstanding. It is curious
to observe how the Poet takes care to let us know from the first, that
beneath the affectations of his calling some precious sentiments have
been kept alive; that far within the Fool there is laid up a secret
reserve of the man, ready to leap forth and combine with better
influences as soon as the incrustations of art are thawed and broken
up. This is partly done in the scene where Rosalind and Celia arrange
for their flight from the usurper's Court. Rosalind proposes,--
"But, cousin, what if we assay'd to steal
The clownish Fool out of your father's Court?
Would he not be a comfort to our travel?"