Similarities Between As You Like It And Twelfth Night

Haonan Sun

James Lee

ENG 121-01

Love and Marriages in As You Like It and Twelfth Night

It is well known that Shakespeare’s comedies contain many marriages, some arranged, some spontaneous. During Queen Elizabeth's time, it was considered foolish to marry for love. However, in Shakespeare’s plays, people often marry for love. With a closer look into two of his most famous plays As You Like It and Twelfth Night or What You Will, I found that while marriages are defined and approached differently in these two plays, Shakespeare’s attitudes toward love in both plays share similarities. The marriages in As You Like It’s conform to social expectation, while the marriages are more rebellious in Twelfth Night. Love, in both plays, was defined as

the source of craziness and foolishness, and mutual love seldom exists in Shakespeare’s marriages.

In both plays, one can find a general trend that Shakespeare is not fond of lovers—he describes people in love as foolish and crazy. In As You Like It, Orlando’s role changes from a classic male lead to a slave of love after he meets Rosalind, the heroine of the play. Orlando is illustrated as brave, ambitious and gentle in the beginning of the play. Even without a proper education that matched his identity, his villainous brother Oliver described him as “Yet he’s gentle; never schooled, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all enchantingly beloved”(1628: 141-142). His noble nature, however, is degraded by his affection for Rosalind as he starts to write ill-written love poems about Rosalind and spreads them over the Arden forest. These inelegant actions were opposed to his gentle nature. In Twelfth Night, same stupefied effect happens to Lord Orsino. When Viola implies his affection to Lord Orinso in rather explicit expressions such as “By your favour”, “Of your complexion”, “About your years, ” (1812: 23-27), Orsino does not notice, as he was so in love with Olivia at the time. He realizes the indication of these phrases only at the end of the play when he gives up his pursuit of Olivia and finds out Viola’s true identity. Also, Shakespeare comments on lovers through various characters. For example, in As You Like It, Celia once comments on Orlando’s absence to Rosalind’s date “the oath of a lover is no stronger than the word of a tapster. They are both the confirmer of false reckonings.” (1660: 27-29) In general, Shakespeare’s plays depict love as a negative emotion that stupefy people and drive them crazy.

Besides from depicting people in love as foolish and crazy, Shakespeare agreed with the social value that love is distinct from marriage and is unnecessary. This is best portrayed through Orsino in Twelfth Night, Phebe, Touchstone and Audrey in As You Like It. Orsino falls for Olivia from the beginning of the play, even though he does not even talk to Olivia until the ending scene. In the last scene of Twelfth Night, Orsino and Viola’s marriage is so abrupt that the immediately before their betrothal, Orsino nearly kills Viola (as Cesario) because of Olivia’s affection for Cesario. Right after the misunderstanding of Viola and Sebastian was cleared, Orsino agrees to Olivia and Sebastian’s marriage only because Sebastian was noble; he says “Be not amazed. Right noble is his blood. If this be so, as yet the glass seems true, I shall have share in this most happy wreck” (1843:256-259). As for Phebe in As You Like It, she marries Silvius only because she lost a “bet” with Rosalind, who basically sets her up into this marriage. Also, Touchstone the Clown and Audrey’s marriage is not based on love either. How would Audrey want to marry someone whose vocabulary she cannot even understand and vice versa? Touchstone explains that he was marrying Audrey mainly for lust as he says, “As the ox hath his bow, sir the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man has his desires; and as pigeons bills, so wedlock would be nibbling” (1659: 65-68). On the other hand, the innocent Audrey wants to marry Touchstone only because she wants to be a courtly lady. When everyone was getting married in the end of both plays, everyone in the play is happy for their unions, even though some couples obviously did not have romantic feelings for each other.

In As You Like It, all the marriages conform to the social structure, echoing with the title of the play “As you like it”.

First and foremost, the married couples in As You Like It all have similar social statuses in the society. Shepherd Silvius married shepherdess Phebe, nobleman Orlando married mistress Rosalind, and Touchstone the clown married goatherd Audery. Not only did all the couples share the same social status, but their ideology and actions in the play conformed to the social convention as well. Right after Rosalind met Orlando, Celia asks Rosalind about why she had been silent for so long. Rosalind responded Celia with “Some of it is for my child’s father” (1634: 09-10). Then Celia asks why Rosalind suddenly fell in love with Orlando, to which Rosalind replies “The Duke my father loved his father dearly” (1634: 24). It is clear that Rosalind’s affection towards Orlando stems from his father’s affection to Orlando’s father. It was a convention for parents to arrange their children’s marriages, especially for aristocracy. Therefore, Rosalind knew that she was to marry Orlando and that became the rationale for her further affection towards Orlando. Another example of a character in the play conforming to social convention is Phebe. As a native of the forest of Arden, Phebe was straightforward and somewhat arrogant. She was very clear about her feelings to Ganymede and Silvius. However, in the ending scene, when she realizes that the man of her dream was actually a noble woman, and that she was set up into the marriage with Silvius, Phebe conforms to the arrangement and marries Silvius. With a comedy one might expect Shakespeare to make happen something unconventional. However, the marriage part seems to be very conventional as everything was socially expected. But the title of the play somehow conveys an ironic

flavor.

In the play Twelfth Night or What You Will, in contrast to As You Like It, one can actually find more rebellious expressions on marriage. Olivia, the countess in Illyria, is the only person who actually refused a marriage across both plays. And Sir Toby, Olivia’s kinsman, married Maria, Olivia’s servant, which is the only marriage that crossed social statuses in the two plays. Olivia, in the beginning of the play, was pursued by Duke Orsino, whose rank is higher than her. Olivia used the death of her brother as a valid excuse to avoid marrying Orinso. However, after she falls for Cesario (Viola), she completely “recovers ” from the mourning and is very hasty to marry Cesario. Even though she actually marries Sebastian, a nobleman, in the end of the play, her marriage should not be considered as conventional because Olivia did not care for Cesario’s social status as a servant. Sir Toby’s marriage was similar in this sense as he fell for Maria’s intellectual prank on Malvolio. He said, “I could marry this wrench for this device” (1818: 158). Sir Toby was actually a very smart man even though he was drunk all the time. He strategically made friends with Sir Andrew so that he could have someone pay for his drinks, as he knew that he could never successfully pursue Olivia. Having a countess marry for love and a smart nobleman marry across social ranking in his comedy, Shakespeare defines marriage in a different manner in Twelfth Night as in As You Like It.

Admittedly, love was considered as a foolish reason for marriage during Queen Elizabeth’s time, but Shakespeare’s comedies As You Like It and Twelfth Night suggest differently. Despite Shakespeare’s negative implications about people in love in both plays, some of his characters married for love against social expectation in Twelfth Night, yet in As You Like It, every marriage conformed to the audience’s expectation of the time.

REFERENCE
S. Greenblatt, W. Cohen, and et al. 2008. The Norton Shakespeare Second Edition. As You Like It (pp.1625-1681). Twelfth Night (pp. 1793-1846).