A close reading examining the concept of education in the forest of Arden...
William Shakespeare’s As You Like It begins with Orlando
bemoaning his elder brother’s neglect for Orlando’s education. Orlando, as
nobly born as his brother Oliver, feels he needs the formal education his other
brother Jaques is receiving as he believes there is no advancement in living
“rustically” (1.1.7). However, the rustic country people met later in the play,
and the natural ways of the forest seem to offer a more honorable and even
Christian knowledge and sense of the world than formal university training
imparts. The forest of Arden in As You
Like It provides the characters with an education they need to live within
the parameters of fallen human nature.
At court, corruption,
deception, and malicious conniving have run amuck. The politics of power have
clouded good, honest sense and judgment while the court formalities restrict
and confine more natural relationships. Brothers such as Duke Fredrick and Duke
Senior turn against one another. Oliver plots against Orlando: “I hope I shall
see an end of him; for my soul (yet I know not why) hates nothing more than he”
(1.1.164-166). Even when reason is acknowledged as absent, Oliver does not
pretend the slightest need of it for motive in getting rid of his brother. Even
when the characters attempt to express love, the court seems to throw up its
barriers. As close as sisters, Celia and Rosalind cannot accurately articulate
their feelings for each other. Celia tries to cheer Rosalind by taking a wrong
approach. Offering Rosalind Celia’s own father to take for her own when he is
the very man that banished Rosalind’s beloved father shows that Celia’s heart
is in the right place but does not actually soothe Rosalind’s sense of loss
(1.2.9-14). Yet, Rosalind still loves Celia, but also cannot communicate her
true affection as Celia notes: “Herein I see thou lov’st me not with the full
weight that I love thee” (1.2.8-9). Romantic love is also confined to the point
that Orlando cannot respond to Rosalind whom he has fallen in love with on
sight. Orlando asks himself, “Can I not say, I thank you?” and “What passion
hangs these weights upon my tongue?” (1.2.249; 257). Contrast these moments to
what happens later in the forest of Arden. Brothers must help one another in
survival, reconciling one another. Friends rely on each other and trust one
another in ways that do not need to rely on speech. Lovers can take the time to
learn about one another and communicate unconstrained. Formal education and
practices of the court seem to fail where informal education teaches within
Christian values and true relationships.
Although the country
rustics are technically uneducated, they demonstrate more knowledge of honest
and sincere living than do the courtiers, initially. As Orlando compares
himself to the rustics, he fits in this category, too (1.1.7-9). His brother
Oliver muses, “Yet he’s gentle, never school’d and yet learned, full of noble
device, or all sorts enchantingly belov’d, and indeed so much in the heart of
the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am
altogether mispris’d” (1.1.166-171). Still, after neglecting Orlando’s formal
education, Oliver finds him knowledgeable and well-loved by his people. Oliver
shows Orlando to have that sincerer connection with others and a gentle
demeanor even though it was not learned at university. In the forest of Arden,
the court clown Touchstone finds some similar attributes to be true of Corin, a
shepherd. Touchstone asks Corin if he “[h]ast any philosophy” in him to which
Corin answers in a series of observations about living life, concluding with,
“he that hath learn’d no wit by nature, nor art, may complain of good breeding,
or comes of a very dull kindred” (3.2.21; 29-31). Corin’s negatives suggest
that “wit” can be in a man’s nature. Touchstone pushes Corin, saying, “Why, if
thou never wast at court, thou never saw’st good manners, then thy manners must
be wicked, and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation” (3.2.40-44). What is
more important here is what Touchstone is not
saying. By not being at court, Corin has also never seen the wickedness and
corruption of the court. Corin
relents, saying that Touchstone has “too courtly a wit” for him, but the word
“courtly” brings along the other corrupted aspects of courly life as well;
Touchstone is being tricky and deceptive in his playful argument. Corin instead
proves his own honesty and sincerity as untainted by the power struggles of the
court.
In the forest of Arden,
the confines and restrictions of the court are loosened, and the characters
learn a more honest way of living within a fallen world that loves to breed
corruption. The courtiers get to play (or act out in) a space without danger or
threats from one another, in so doing, being educated in the life of the
rustics. The rustics, however, are not without knowledge. Their knowledge of
life has been taught to them more informally, but seems to keep their lives
sincere and relationships genuine. Living in direct contact with nature and the
forest seems to provide the characters with a deeper connection to Truth.
Works Cited
Shakespeare,
William. As You Like It. The
Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1997. 403-434. Print.
