Shelter-In-Place Reading Roundup: Shakespeare Goes Cottagecore

An As You Like It triptych by Arthur Hughes c. 1873, now in the Walker Art Gallery.

My Shakespeare book club is still going strong, so here are my thoughts on two Shakespeare plays that contrast corrupt, decadent court life and wholesome, natural countryside life.

The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Winter’s Tale is strange and beautiful late Shakespeare, combining the dream-like wonder of a fairy tale with some of Shakespeare’s densest and most complex language. Leontes’ rants of crazed, spiraling jealousy and Hermione’s dignified but heartfelt speech of self-defense make them come alive as individual characters rather than an abstract fairy-tale King and Queen.

On my latest read, I was most struck by Polixenes’ description of his childhood friendship with Leontes:

We were as twinn'd lambs that did frisk i' the sun,
And bleat the one at the other: what we changed
Was innocence for innocence; we knew not
The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream'd
That any did. Had we pursued that life,
And our weak spirits ne'er been higher rear'd
With stronger blood, we should have answer'd heaven
Boldly 'not guilty’.

The images here will echo in subsequent acts: Hermione’s bold “not guilty” claim in Act 3, and the sheep-shearing festival in Act 4. Moreover, in this speech, Polixenes seems to recognize that in adulthood, he and Leontes have lost their open-hearted innocence. Both will behave with capricious cruelty to their nearest kin before the play is out. (Leontes’ cruelty gets more stage time, but, I mean, Polixenes threatens to disown his son and disfigure his son’s girlfriend!) They must atone, and they must give way to a younger generation who can show them a path back to this pastoral bliss. As the Oracle says, what was lost must be found.

In keeping with the fairy-tale atmosphere, I see the play’s three strong female characters as each representing a face of the Triple Goddess. Perdita is the maiden, the flower-decked queen of the pastoral festival—though I also love her practical side, her acknowledgement of the difficulties she faces as a shepherdess in love with a prince. (I also love Florizel’s commitment to fight for his love! Unlike the other men in the play, he is wholly a stand-up dude.) Hermione, the mother, gracious and compassionate, defending her honor not for her own sake but for that of her children. (Perhaps the way to make the ending most effective and palatable for modern audiences is to emphasize Hermione’s reunion with her long-lost daughter rather than with her cruel husband.) Paulina, the crone, defiant and almost transgressive in her fierce denunciation of Leontes’ cruelty—a character that you do not often see in old plays, the woman who presumes to speak to the king as an equal.

Of course, my Shakespeare reading group also discussed the most famous stage direction in Western drama. Even though Antigonus is written in a sympathetic fashion, we wondered whether he gets eaten by the bear as karmic punishment for agreeing to abandon the baby princess in the wilderness. And in keeping with the play’s themes of the pastoral and feminine triumphing over the sins of the patriarchy, I have decided to think of the bear as a protective mama bear.

As You Like It by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

People often refer to As You Like It as a “pastoral comedy” but maybe a more modern way to think of it is as a “hangout play.” I mean, check out this list of the characteristics of the “hangout film” and then compare it to As You Like It. Chill vibe, check. Armchair philosophizing about the meaning of life, check. Musical sequences, check. Young adults flirting and loving and lusting, check.

Indeed, the vibe is so chill, the plot is so aimless, that some people think Shakespeare wrote As You Like It as a parody of pastoral hangout comedies. Learning this made me like the play better. Maybe the series of offstage contrivances that bring the story to a close are intentionally ridiculous, as opposed to lazy plotting. Maybe we’re supposed to find dramatic irony, rather than inconsistency, in the play’s treatment of romantic conventions like love at first sight. Rosalind and Orlando fall in love instantly, but the pragmatic Rosalind seems not to trust this, and she spends much of the play testing Orlando to make sure his love is true. But then, she eagerly cheers on her cousin Celia when Celia and Oliver fall in love at first sight. Even though Oliver is not just a sudden lover, but a suddenly reformed villain!

As You Like It is still one of Shakespeare's top-10 most-produced plays, but I get the sense that it used to be esteemed even more highly. (There seem to be a lot of Victorian-era sources that gush about the play’s and/or Rosalind’s charms/delights/perfection. I suspect some of this had to do with the titillating novelty of seeing a woman in doublet and hose.) Nowadays, if you want to do a “zany times in the forest” Shakespearean comedy, you do A Midsummer Night's Dream , and if you want to do a “girl disguised as a boy” Shakespearean comedy, you do Twelfth Night . As I’ve implied, I think both of these alternatives are much more tightly constructed than As You Like It, with more immediately accessible jokes. But maybe there’s still a place for As You Like It in 2020. Hangout movies are popular. Romantic conventions are still ripe for critique and parody. And hey, it’s a play about a genderfluid person who falls in love with a himbo while living the cottagecore life. What could be more contemporary than that?