As You Like It is a tale that creates conflicts and resolves them through the mixing of the characters called fortune and nature. While reading the drama it is inevitable to think of the characters as being used to show that there is a continuous conflict between fortune and the forces of nature. It shows the conventional comedy of the era which shows the triumph of good over evil, the triumph of nature over fortune.
The drama reminded me of Robin Hood and His Merry men when I first read the account of the Forest of Arden, but Shakespeare had more in store in the drama than that. The drama shows Orlando being helped by poor farmer Adams with his money. A peasant gives money to an outlaw and Orlando protects the old man. Outlaw and peasant stand together for a world where social relations are constant and true. When banished from the city, Orlando moves to the Forest of Arden and joins the criminal fraternity as he follows the route taken by the Duke and his followers. And in the forest, these men lived like the Robin Hood of England. Further, Robin Hood’s ballad, As You Like It also revealed symbolic systems transgressing spatial bodily and linguistic bounds and inventing the hierarchies of gender, class, and church. Further, there exists a pastoral love theme both in the Robin Hood ballad and As You Like It.
The theme that continuously gets reverberated in the drama is its pastoral romance theme. It relates to a tale of romance. The pastoral element gets highlighted in the tale of the love of Rosalind and Orlando in the Forest of Arden. But to a great extent, Shakespeare develops on the theme. In As You Like It Shakespeare highlighted social themes through the pastoral theme of the drama. He helped in highlighting the social practices of the contemporary world which created injustice and unhappiness. He created comedy out of the anti-social, foolish and self-destructive behavior of contemporary society through a theme of pastoral love.
The drama reveals a connection between nature and society. It reveals a set of “winter and rough weather” to portray the harshness of the social climate. The very scene that introduces Rosalind and Celia has its traces when Celia pleads Rosalind to be merrier in her opening line, Rosalind retorts back: “I show more mirth than I am mistress of, and would you yet I were merrier?” (1.2.2-3). The seriousness of this theme is further accentuated with the famous quote of Jacques, “All the world’s a stage”.
Reading the drama is enjoyable but it does not show Shakespeare at his best. This play clearly demonstrates instances of high drama and crowd-pleasing wit. Otherwise, it has almost all the qualities of a pastoral drama and is a delightful read.