The Deeper Meaning of As You Like It
Shakespeare's As You Like It is a good play for anyone to read or see. Some readers would enjoy one aspect of it, some would enjoy another. But all would, in general, enjoy the play. Albert Gilman says that Shakespeare intended to imply that all that people need to live together in harmony is "good sense, love, humor, and a generous disposition." (Gilman lxvii) This play is deeper than the surface, and that is part of its appeal to every kind of person.
As its title declares, this is a play to please all tastes. ".For the simple, it provides the stock ingredients of romance....For the more sophisticated at d, it p propounds...a question which is left to us to answer: Is it / better to live in the court or the country?....For the learned and literary this is one of Shakespeare's most allusive plays, uniting old traditions and playing with them lightly... (Gardner 161)
The title of the play came from a note to his "gentlemen readers" in Thomas Lodge's book, Rosalynde, in which he said, "I f you like it, so." (Lodge 108) People interpret different lines and actions of the characters as they wish, and we know Shakespeare would not object; it says so right in the title of the play! Actors and Directors have taken this literally, and have made various changes to the script, such as having Phebe gnaw on a turnip or an apple between her lines and having Rosalind kiss the chain before giving it to Orlando.
The characters in As You Like It are easy to understand because they follow their simple wishes; they do something because it suits them. For example, Oliver hates Orlando because he wants to. There is no reason for him to resent him, none at all: "... for my soul, though I know not why, hates nothing more than he." (Shakespeare 8) Duke Frederick banishes Rosalind because people felt sorry for her for her father's sake. Finally, Rosalind herself had no other reason than a simple whim to not tell Orlando who she really was.
Touchstone added the humor to the story, and Jacques added the melancholy. Shakespeare entered both of these characters into the play to balance each other. He also added Audrey and William to give all of the characters someone to love.
Dead Man Walking is a nonfiction book written by Sister Helen Prejean which details her world of being a spiritual advisor for inmates facing the death penalty. Sister Prejean first became the spiritual advisor for Elmo Patrick Sonnier who was being executed for his role in the murder of two teenagers. After she went through the execution process with Sonnier she became the spiritual advisor for another man and became a well-known abolitionist. This piece chronicles Sister Prejean’s passage through the execution system and her experiences along the way.
In the Dead Sea Scrolls’ case, however, the author is unknown and the working conditions do not seem promising. Speculation only leads to doubt in this case. Use of the scrolls alone in biblical study would be hazardous to the religious and non-religious communities alike due to the fact that the scrolls do not exemplify uniformity and do not adhere completely to the texts that religions all around the world use today.
Until 1946 there was little assumption that additional knowledge could be uncovered regarding the Holy Scriptures however through the discovery of ancient scrolls excavated in a settlement located near the Dead Sea, more details have become available to historians regarding both the first century Jewish and Christian communities. Uncovered were several hundred scrolls that have now become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This is explained by a story they tell about a race between a bird and a snake. Because of these unlucky ghosts, the Dani and other surrounding tribes are at a constant state o...
“Why Are the Scrolls Important.” The Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation. N.p., 2008. Web. 26 May 2010.
Narration: When it comes to the death penalty there are Opponents and Proponents and although both aim to defend and protect society from crime their beliefs differ in how to accomplish this.
The appearance, mannerisms and attitude of the main character, Matthew Poncelet, in "Dead Man Walking," closely resembled those of real-life death row convict Robert Lee Willie, whom Sister Prejean spiritually counseled. Also, the experience of the victim, Hope Percy, in the movie and the reaction of her family, closely paralleled those of the young girl, Faith Hathaway, who was savagely raped, beaten, and killed by Willie. And since Sister Prejean deliberately intended that her book rally people against the death penalty, and because this book served as the central groundwork for the movie "Dead Man Walking," I believe it is important that people be made aware ...
this is an exception for it does not aim to enforce one side of the
As a result of a war, as I have mentioned, it definitely created a huge negative impact on a certain country as in this case of the Britain, a post war condition was so bad that some of the right-wing historians have condemned the whole war effort as inefficient and as a major cause to responsible for an upcoming subsequent British economic. (www.fordham.edu)
Shakespeare has been around for centuries and will continue to be around for many more centuries to come. With the current day and age, Shakespeare is still relevant in today’s time. It is especially more relevant to young adults in this age of time. Shakespeare’s plays are a classic that can be interpreted in many ways. The human nature and human behavior has not changed, but only the motivating factors and conditions through time.
Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. Comp. Folger Shakespeare Library. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009. Print.
This shepherd boy had been clambering around the clefts and gullies of a rock face on Wadi Qumran, north of the Dead Sea hoping to find one of his lost lambs. Thinking that it could have taken refuge in a cave he threw stones at the opening. He heard a jar break, became fearful and ran to fetch his fellow tribesmen. What they discovered were written scrolls of ancient papyrus, stuffed in jars and wrapped in linen. The Bedouins thought that they could make money on the black market in Bethlehem so sold them for a few shekels. A bundle of four of these scrolls was purchased by “the Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, Yeshue Samuel who then stored them in St. Marks Monastery”. (Albright, 1954, 403)
Gender issues and social commentary are especially relevant in published criticism of Shakespeare's As You Like It since the beginning of the 1990's, as evidenced by the number of articles published in scholarly journals during the past twelve years. Janet Gupton's review in Theatre Journal, published in 2001as well as Louise Schleiner's article in the Shakespeare Quarterly in the fall of 1999, both deal with the treatment of gender-subjectivity.
It makes sense to me to see in this Shakespeare's sense of his own art--both what it can achieve and what it cannot. The theatre--that magical world of poetry, song, illusion, pleasing and threatening apparitions--can, like Prospero's magic, educate us into a better sense of ourselves, into a final acceptance of the world, a state in which we forgive and forget in the interests of the greater human community. The theatre, that is, can reconcile us to the joys of the human community so that we do not destroy our families in a search for righting past evils in a spirit of personal revenge or as crude assertions of our own egos. It can, in a very real sense, help us fully to understand the central Christian commitment to charity, to loving our neighbour as ourselves. The magic here brings about a total reconciliation of all levels of society from sophisticated rulers to semi-human brutes, momentarily holding off Machiavellian deceit, drunken foolishness, and animalistic rebellion--each person, no matter how he has lived, has a place in the magic circle at the end. And no one is asking any awkward questions.
In Shakespeare's As You Like It loyalty is dominant theme. Each character possesses either a loyalty or disloyalty towards another. These disloyalties and loyalties are most apparent in the relationships of Celia and Rosalind, Celia and Duke Fredrick, Orlando and Rosalind, Adam and Orlando, and Oliver and Orlando. In these relationships, a conflict of loyalties causes characters to change homes, jobs, identities and families.