Unit 12: Classical Theatre Performance & Historical Context

Reminders of what to do for this unit
1. Understand the social historical and cultural background of classical roles.
2. Be able to explore the performance styles of classical texts.
3.Be able to rehearse creatively and responsibly.
4 Be able to perform classical texts.

As you like it

Genre  · Comedy and Romantic
Language  · English
Time and place written  ·  In 1598–1600; London, England.
Date of first publication  · First published in the Folio of 1623.
Publisher  · Isaac Jaggard and Edmund Blount.
Setting (time)  · Sixteenth century.
Setting (place)  · France, primarily the fictional Forest of Arden.
Protagonist  · Rosaline.
Major conflict  · The major conflict is that Rosaline and Orlando fall in love, but Rosaline is  banished from Duke Frederick’s court; Orlando has been both denied of his birth-right by his jealous brother Oliver and he is forced to flee from the evil Duke Frederick.
Rising action · In order to teach Orlando how to be a proper husband, Rosaline disguises herself as a young man named Ganymede and then she instructs him in the ways of love.
Climax  · Rosaline promises to marry Orlando and gets Phoebe to agree to marry Silvius.
Falling action  · Rosalind, appearing as herself, marries Orlando, and Phoebe marries Silvius.
Themes  · The delights of love; human experience; city life vs. country life.
Motifs  · Artifice; homoeroticism; exile.
Symbols  · Orlando’s poems; the slain deer; Ganymede.
Foreshadowing  · Rosaline’s first awkward  encounter with Orlando anticipates the depth of her affection for him.


Historical Context

William Shakespeare was born in the 1564's to a middle-class glover in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Shakespeare went to grammar school, but his formal education did not go on. In 1582 William Shakespeare married an older woman called Anne Hathaway( aged 26), and had three children with her. Around the 1590s, he left his family behind and travelled to London to work as an actor, playwright. Shakespeare became the most popular playwright in England and part-owner of the Globe Theatre. His career was during the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603) and James I (ruled 1603–1625), and he was a favourite of both monarchs. Of course, James granted Shakespeare’s company the greatest compliment by bestowing upon its members the title of King’s Men. Renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of William Shakespeare’s death, literary luminaries such as Ben Jonson called out his works as timeless.

Shakespeare’s work was collected and printed in various -editions in the century following his death, and by the early eighteenth century, his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was very well established. Some scholars believe, concluded that Shakespeare’s modest education that Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by someone else-Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford-but the support for this is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken seriously by many scholars. In my opinion call me old fashioned but I believe he did write all of his plays but he may have had help. Even the best directors such as Steven Spielberg still have people that pitch him ideas. There is nothing wrong with that. 

Shakespeare is the author of the thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets. The legacy of this body of work is huge. The play that I am doing with Esther Asabi and Bicton Watson is As You Like It. It was written around the 1598s–1600s; during the last years of Elizabeth’s reign. The play belongs to the literary tradition known as pastoral: which has its roots in the literature of ancient Greece. Typically, a pastoral story involves exiles from urban or court life who flee to the refuge of the countryside, where they often disguise themselves as shepherds in order to converse with other shepherds on a range of established topics, from the relative merits of life at court versus life in the country to the relationship between nature and art. The most fundamental concern of the pastoral mode is comparing the worth of the natural world, that is represented by relatively untouched countryside, to the world built by humans, which contains the joys of art and the city as well as the injustices of rigid social arrangements. Pastoral literature, has great potential to serve as a forum for social criticism and can even inspire social reform.
In general, Shakespeare’s As You Like It develops many of the traditional features and concerns of the pastoral genre. This comedy is about the cruelties and corruption of court life and gleefully pokes holes in one of humankind’s greatest artifices: the conventions of romantic love. The play’s investment in pastoral traditions leads to an indulgence in rather simple rivalries: court versus country, realism versus romance, reason versus mindlessness, nature versus fortune, young versus old, and those who are born into nobility versus those who acquire their social standing. But rather than settle these scores by coming down on one side or the other, As You Like It offers up a world of numberless choices and endless possibilities. In the world of this play, no one thing need cancel out another. In this way, the play manages to offer both social critique and social affirmation. It is a play that at all times stresses the complexity of things, the simultaneous pleasures and pains of being human.

Duke Ferdinand was forced into exile from the court by his evil brother Duke Frederick. He then took refuge in the Forest of Arden with a band of faithful lords. Rosalind (his daughter) is kept quite uneasily at court as a companion to her cousin Celia; also known as Aliena, Frederick's daughter.

Orlando de Boys, is the youngest son of the late Sir Rowland de Boys, who was kept in poverty by his brother Oliver since his father's death. Orlando decided to wrestle for his wealth/fortune at Duke Frederick's court, where he sees Rosalind and the pair of them fall in love.

The Duke actually banishes Rosalind, for the mere reason that he feels that she is a threat to his rule. Celia, refusing to be parted from her cousin, goes with Rosalind to seek Duke Ferdinand in the Forest. For safety they disguise themselves - Rosalind changes her appearance to match a boy; who in the play Shakespeare calls Ganymede and Celia, Rosalind's cousin as his sister Aliena - and then they manage to persuade the fool Touchstone to accompany them.

When Orlando hears that his brother wants to kill him, he also flees to the Forest of Arden and then takes refuge with the exiled Duke Ferdinand. Orlando then came across Rosalind disguised as Ganymede. She challenged his love and suggested that he should prove the strength of his love by wooing Ganymede as if he were Rosalind. Somewhere else in the forest. Love also blossoms: the shepherd Silivius loves Phoebe, who has fallen for Ganymede which touchstone is chasing after the goat- herd Audrey. 

Then Oliver was sent into the forest as well to hunt down Orlando, has his life saved by his brother, who becomes filled with nothing but remorse for his past behaviour and then he actually falls for Aliena. Orlando started to show that he was unable to continue wooing Ganymede, so then  Rosalind( Ganymede) promises he will conjure up the real Rosalind and that all the lovers will finally wed.

Iambic Pentameter

A line (usually poetry) that has ten syllables in each line, but the alternate syllable is stressed.

How to write a rhythm

The 'da Dum' of a human heartbeat is the most common example of this rhythm. A standard line of iambic pentameter is five Iambic feet in a row:

da DUM da Dum da Dum da Dum da DUM

Key
x= offbeat(da)

/=beat(dumb)

Irregular Rhythms 

Sometimes, this rhythmic variation:

Inversion- reserves the order of the syllables in the foot.

E.G. Richard iii, Act one, Scene one

/ x            x /      x /       x / x /

Now  is the  winter of our discontent

To create a much more weak ending: 

E.g. Hamlet, ACT 3, Scene 1

x /       x /            x/       / x   x/      (x)

To be or not to be, I     that is the   question.

Examples of words to stress

1. Winter

2. Enjoy

3. Macbeth

Where to stress

1. Winter you stress the win

2. Enjoy you stress the joy

3. Mac Beth you stress the Mac