There is no greater drama than that of learning to love. Romantic love is only one part of that drama, but in it, as in every partial love, we can see the larger drama at work. Director Polly Findlay’s production of As You Like It was especially helpful in highlighting the acute vulnerability and journey that loving requires of us. And this course, Understanding As You Like It, led by theatre critic and academic Kate Bassett, was particularly helpful in revealing the vulnerability and journey accepted by this NT company in offering us this depiction of love.
I will summarise the course, segment by segment, and then conclude with my own thoughts, endeavoring to put As You Like It in the context of Socratic drama.
“More than anything, it [the forest] was like a dream state of overlapping worlds, well within necessary bounds of order, but wild enough to inspire and permit creative freedom.”
Orchards & Forests (Seminar led by Kate Bassett)
The play begins in an orchard, heads to the woods, and promises to return to the court/orchard. No matter whether orchards in our narrative tradition represent civil order, through the education and cultivation of souls, i.e., liberal souls, in the Greek sense — souls made fit for liberty — or the divinely created world before the Fall, matters do get out of hand and go seriously wrong. Because of man’s fallen nature, it ultimately makes no difference whether the gardener is a poor one (Richard II) or perfect (God): no garden in this world is ever going to be based solely on love, and no transformation wrought in the wilderness, no matter how profound, will ever change that.
This flight to the forest is neither a romantic escape to return to natural man, nor a radical attempt to alter the world. It is firmly anchored in the biblical narrative. There can be no mistaking that Shakespeare’s civil gardens are decidedly in the fallen world. The brother versus brother struggles, here as well as in his next play, Hamlet, precede, rather than follow the expulsion, and those who are expelled are not the more corrupted, but the lesser. They seek not to overturn civil order, but restore it, and it is not anarchy that rules in their woods, but a clearly hierarchical authority.
Perhaps the idea of a forest by that time would already have evoked some nostalgia, for European forests were already much altered; but, there is little about which to be nostalgic in this forest of Arden, other than an allusion to Robin Hood. But again, these were no Robin Hoods. Rather, the forest had everyday elements, such as pasturing sheep, as well as menacing elements, some prosaic, i.e., the weather, and others fantastic, almost mythical, such as a lion. More than anything, it was like a dream state of overlapping worlds, well within necessary bounds of order, but wild enough to inspire and permit creative freedom.
Set Design (Conversation with Lizzie Clachan, Set Designer)
Liz Clachan begins by getting a gut reaction to a text, then consults with the director, the author if possible, and other more knowledgeable people, and then does many more re-readings. The task here was to design two strong environments, the court and the forest, and Polly Findlay set the parameters: modern production; change of theatrical form; dark, scary forest; and very convincing sheep.
For the court, she went for a City trading floor, a high-pressure, oppressive office environment, with disturbingly bright carpets. For the forest, which is not meant to be a literal place, but a psychological, inner wilderness, she sought to compose it from as many of the same elements as possible. Desks, chairs, lamps, post-it notes….
The open nature of the set, with little more than hanging objects, made the achievement of atmosphere and space highly dependent on lighting, especially back lighting, as well as music and sound. The Lighting Director (Jon Clark) and Composer (Orlando Gough) got involved in the process, and even in the shaping of the set, much earlier than would normally be the case. It was Gough’s idea to lower part of the chorus down from the rafters, among the trees, making them physical components of the set.
Clachan had never done anything so ambitious as to raise the entire set up in the air and have it dangle over the heads of the cast, but she loves big ideas and challenges. There were some problems, in that roughly a couple of times a week they had to pause the performance for about 8 minutes, when in the raising of the office, the engineers identified something getting tangled, which could pose a threat to safety. Clachan said that these pauses, rather than being an embarrassment, served to draw the audience into the shared process of creating the show. If she could, she might think about doing this with every production, she said with a wink.
The Directing Process (Conversation with Laura Keefe, Staff Director)
Staff Directors at the NT are known as Assistant Directors in most other venues. They rehearse the understudy cast and periodically monitor the performance, giving notes to the Director and the cast.
Laura Keefe reported that Polly Findlay’s approach has been much influenced by director Katie Mitchell, and her book The Director’s Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre. Findlay begins with “table work”, where the cast sit together to unpack and paraphrase the play word by word. In this case, they spent two weeks at the tables, before starting to move about. They break the text into units, each bounded by events (such as entrances and exits, or banishment) which affect every character on stage. They make sure that everyone has a clear and shared understanding of what each unit is about, and they then “action” each line for everyone on stage, so each person knows what to accomplish in each moment.
This was an exceptional production, not only in that it was a six-month project for the cast, but it also called for a highly vulnerable Rosalind. Laura Keefe noted that within its basic bounds it changed dramatically. Of course every play changes with audience feedback, which varies from night to night, but with such a differently focused As You Like It, with rawer roles for the actors, it was a steady process of exploration.
Actors’ Insights (Conversation with Joe Bannister, Orlando & Hazel Gardner, Rosalind Understudy / professional photographer)
“Clearly the game cannot go on, but Orlando will leave it to her to work out: it’s her game, based on her need.”
Unwittingly echoing Laura Keefe’s observation, Joe Bannister relayed that at five months into the production he got a note from Polly Findlay telling him that henceforth he should play Orlando as knowing that Ganymede is really Rosalind, once his brother Oliver discovers that. Certainly other productions have played Orlando that way, and certainly audiences expect that, but with such a vulnerable Orlando and Rosalind, it dramatically heightens their meeting when they discuss the betrothal of Celia (still Aliena) and Oliver.
As Kate Basset had noted earlier, Rosalind (as Ganymede) although strong and dynamic, had been testing Orlando in conversation, promising him nothing but woe in loving Rosalind, as much to protect herself, as to teach him. Having essentially lost her father, her political status, and even her homeland, due to corrupted love, she had good reason to be cautious. I think that Shakespeare confirms this reading of Rosalind’s method, by his employment of a conversation with precisely the same dynamics in the later Macbeth, when in exile Malcolm tests Macduff in the same way.
One question in interpreting Rosalind’s defensiveness is why she does not reveal her identity when she meets her father. At that point, she is certainly as safe as any of them in the woods. Is she just enjoying her newfound freedom as a “male”, or is there some other need for protection that she has yet to resolve?
As the actors pointed out, the great revelation of Rosalind to herself comes in this conversation with Orlando, about Celia and Oliver. The actors play that moment sitting on the ground together, slightly apart, with Orlando knowing who she is, and Rosalind knowing that he knows, yet both still playing along with the game, and both quite scared and fragile. Clearly the game cannot go on, but Orlando will leave it to her to work out: it’s her game, based on her need. And in that quiet pause, when she wonders at the natural ease with which Celia and Oliver met and bonded, she sees that thinking will not make it so, and in thinking and talking she has been running from her own desires: she too must simply and wholly give herself over to love, or be alone.
I would agree with the actors that this was far clearer in performance in March, than it was in January.
A Motley Play & Mirror Images (Seminar led by Kate Bassett)
There are references throughout the play to the motley garb that Touchstone would have worn in a traditional production. Motley would typically mean a diamond pattern, but could also be any pattern of different colours, even half and half. Jaques seemed particularly fascinated not only by Touchstone’s clothing, but also his motley nature, being a wise fool, a “motley-minded gentleman”.
Kate Bassett’s well supported suggestion is that this is a motley play, both in genre and in character pairings. In terms of genre, it stems from Thomas Lodge’s pastoral romance Rosalynde, from 1590, to which Shakespeare added comedy and satire. But it is also a remarkably experimental work, with no forward motion, but rather criss-crossing paths — perhaps an Elizabethan prototype for Chekhov, where nothing really happens. But most importantly, it is motley in the mirror images that the character pairs provide each other.
To consider but one: at the outset, the image of Orlando’s decency fuels Oliver’s sense of inadequacy; and at the end, the image of the happiness of Celia and Oliver inspires Rosalind and Orlando to real action. Modeled virtue has more to say than words, and is the best teacher, yet others will respond to it as they will.
As You Like It & Socratic Drama
In the last ten months, I have seen As You Like It performed six times: once last May by The Shakespeare Company, in Calgary; twice last summer by Shakespeare’s Globe; and this NT production three times, 10 & 18 Jan (reviewed elsewhere on this blog) and 4 Mar (the second last show). The Calgary production, in a very small, sparsely decorated space, was, tight, fast-paced, and had a terrific Rosalind-Celia duo. The Globe’s was a joyful, classic romp, with a great duo, the always superb James Garnon as Jaques, and a finale that soared to the heavens. Both were wonderful productions, but I think this NT interpretation far excelled in exposing deeper elements, and thereby the play’s ties to other, deeper parts of our tradition, such as Socratic philosophy.
“There is good reason why we who live in the ideological age should want to consult Socrates and Shakespeare on the dangers of the spiritual journey.”
To understand the journey taken by Shakespeare’s characters, it is helpful to look at the play alongside a Socratic dialogue, such as the Republic. The dramatic continuities are fairly clear. We leave behind the city or court to a space where everything seems up in the air, both safer and more dangerous. There, a cautious conversation takes place, in which a wiser person helps to guide a novitiate in considering the nature of love, in one form or another. There is an unspoken but dramatically evident reason why this examination of love takes place outside the conventional world, and in a playful conversation: certain types in the drama do not have the constitution necessary to see love, and live life, as it should be. In the best case, they are harmless, and in the worst not. And in the end, the main drama returns to the court or city (or the cave, in the Socratic sense), to live in the conventional world, with some returning with a more profound understanding of love and its tensions, and others at least not having been made the worse by the experience.
Polly Findlay has given us a journey to a place that is alien and threatening. It is clearly not a real forest at all. It’s more like the world as we know it turned upside down, and it could easily represent nothing more than a dream state, in which we are free to consider conventional matters afresh. She has also given us an Orlando, Celia (Patsy Ferran), Jaques (Paul Chahidi), and especially a Rosalind (Rosalie Craig), who are above all else vulnerable. While they long for a new level of love, they are painfully exposed. Nothing in love is certain, and they can feel it. Polly Findlay has thus made more evident just how closely Shakespeare’s drama approaches Socrates’ understanding of the very real dangers of love, and of inquiry.
There is good reason why we who live in the ideological age should want to consult Socrates and Shakespeare on the dangers of the spiritual journey. As both Socrates and Shakespeare portray it, loving, in all its forms, is a highly uncertain venture. It entails real risk and can lead to anything, from true fulfillment and happiness, to the worst effects of spiritual deformation: self-destruction, civil disorder, tyranny, and bloodshed. In our age, we must see the nature of these dangers clearly, for at the very root of the ideological disposition is spiritual failure and a twisted form of love.
We long for meaning, purpose, and communion with something more than what is merely worldly and ephemeral, even while we remain in this world. To obtain this, we must at the deepest level free ourselves from our particularities, not only questioning convention, but, as a Christian would put it, dying to our selves. For only by losing our worldly selves do we see and learn how to love our real selves and everyone else, and thereby learn how to live in the world.
Two very real dangers accompany this. One, which we have no trouble seeing, arises when we complete or are well along in the journey, and are a danger to no one, yet those who are base feel threatened by our very decency. The very existence of Orlando, whose essential decency is clear enough from the outset, is irksome to his baser brother, as is that of Rosalind to her baser uncle. And let us not forget that Socrates was executed for practising nothing more than a gentle, cautious form of conversation.
The second danger is far greater, for it is within the soul itself. In loosening our ties to convention, we may not have the spiritual strength to pursue our longing right through to its proper end, to see and love what is substantial, enduring, and greater than this world; to see others and all things as they are, and not as we want them to be, or as they want to be seen. We risk finding ourselves stranded, unable to complete the journey, yet unable to return home, if not in an abyss, then certainly in a nihilistic, materialist vault of twisted loves. Although this is not the case with Jaques, we easily may become radically dangerous, both to ourselves and the world.
Put in the terms of philosopher Eric Voegelin, we at all times find it difficult to live with uncertainty. We are always tempted to flee from uncertain truth to certain untruth. Instead of embracing an unseen, transcendent God, we make idols of worldly gods, such as equality, liberty and community. Therein lies the gnostic root of ideology and totalitarianism, and therein is why we must reach out to souls such as Socrates and Shakespeare. They can teach us both caution and courage in exploring our souls and learning to love, always aware that our longings reach beyond this world and cannot be here fulfilled.
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