The Forest of Arden

Product Information

Thorkell of Arden, a descendant of the ruling family of Mercia, was one of the few major English landowners who retained extensive properties after the Norman conquest. His progeny, the Arden family, remained prominent in the area for centuries, by the 14th century, under Sir Henry de Arden, the most prominent Ardens had their primary estate at Park Hall, Castle Bromwich, Solihull. [11]

Sir Rowland de Boys (while recently deceased in the world of the play, this character is developed and frequently referred to; A possible 'real world' identity for this character, Sir Rowland Hill, has been conjectured) [1] [2] Now Cambridge University Press has published The Shakespearean Forest, Anne Barton’s final book, based in part on her Clark Lectures in 2003. It has been prepared for publication by Dr Hester Lees-Jeffries, a former research assistant to Barton and now a Shakespeare scholar herself, and a University Lecturer in the Faculty of English. In an editor’s note, Lees-Jeffries describes Barton’s seminars, held in her beautiful rooms at Trinity College, as often intimidating but always with a sense of occasion.Shakespeare uses prose for about 55% of the text, with the remainder in verse. [28] Shaw affirms that as used here the prose, "brief [and] sure", drives the meaning and is part of the play's appeal, whereas some of its verse he regards only as ornament. [29] The dramatic convention of the time required the courtly characters to use verse, and the country characters prose, but in As You Like It this convention is deliberately overturned. [28] For example, Rosalind, although the daughter of a Duke and thinking and behaving in high poetic style, actually speaks in prose as this is the "natural and suitable" way of expressing the directness of her character, and the love scenes between Rosalind and Orlando are in prose (III, ii, 277). [30] In a deliberate contrast, Silvius describes his love for Phebe in verse (II, iv, 20). As a mood of a character changes, he or she may change from one form of expression to the other in mid-scene. In a metafictional touch, Jaques cuts off a prose dialogue with Rosalind because Orlando enters, using verse: "Nay then, God be wi' you, an you talk in blank verse" (IV, i, 29). [31] The defiance of convention is continued when the epilogue is given in prose.

As You Like It was first printed in the collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, known as the First Folio, during 1623. No copy of it in Quarto exists, for the play is mentioned by the printers of the First Folio among those which "are not formerly entered to other men". By means of evidences, external and internal, the date of composition of the play has been approximately fixed at a period between the end of 1598 and the middle of 1599.Deforestation and emparkment has reduced the woodland cover, but it should be kept in mind that "forest" meant a legal and governance territory before it described the tree cover as it does to modern ears. Medieval era [ edit ] The Coughton wayside cross where travellers would pray before entering The Forest of Arden. It is noteworthy that Thomas Lodge's father owned the manor Soulton and his uncle lived there. This place is located inside the boundaries of the English Forest of Arden when the boundaries are taken to be the Roman Roads. It is where the emerging Sir Rowland Hill (who bought the manor from the family) kept up courtly entertainment, and drama in particular, for the internally exiled Protestants of the Tudor elite. [16] [17] [18] [19] In 1758 the Earl of Aylesford and five others founded (or possibly refounded) the Woodmen of Arden. This is an exclusive archery club that takes its offices from the medieval Royal Forest court positions, such as Verderer and Warden. The organisation claims to be a successor to an older organisation of woodmen, however there is scant evidence that forest law ever applied in the forest of Arden.

William Shakespeare's play As You Like It clearly falls into the Pastoral Romance genre; but Shakespeare does not merely use the genre, he develops it. Shakespeare also used the Pastoral genre in As You Like It to 'cast a critical eye on social practices that produce injustice and unhappiness, and to make fun of anti-social, foolish and self-destructive behaviour', most obviously through the theme of love, culminating in a rejection of the notion of the traditional Petrarchan lovers. [32] University of Wisconsin professor Richard Knowles, the editor of the 1977 New Variorum edition of this play, in his article "Myth and Type in As You Like It", [26] pointed out that the play contains mythological references in particular to Eden and to Hercules. Barton, who died in 2013, was Professor of English and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Her many published works included Essays, Mainly Shakespearean (1994) and Ben Jonson, Dramatist (1984), and she was also an influential editor of Shakespeare’s plays. She was vitally interested in performance and staging, and her work has substantially altered and enriched the ways in which Shakespeare and other early modern dramatists have been understood and performed. Why do you think Jaques delivers this speech? What is he trying to achieve? Is he trying to impress Duke Senior? To entertain the group? To lighten the mood?

Analysis

Many of the key engagements of English Civil War of 1642 – 1651 were fought in the Arden area, such as the Battle of Camp Hill. The Countryside Commission considered creating a new national forest in the area in 1989, but the proposal was not taken up. [33] A Community Forest was established in the 1990s to the north of the forest of Arden called the Forest of Mercia, and a national forest has since been established between Leicester and Swadlincote in the East Midlands, however. The main theme of pastoral comedy is love in all its guises in a rustic setting, the genuine love embodied by Rosalind contrasted with the sentimentalised affectations of Orlando, and the improbable happenings that set the urban courtiers wandering to find exile, solace or freedom in a woodland setting are no more unrealistic than the string of chance encounters in the forest which provoke witty banter and which require no subtleties of plotting and character development. The main action of the first act is no more than a wrestling match, and the action throughout is often interrupted by a song. At the end, Hymen himself arrives to bless the wedding festivities. In the Forest of Arden, the banished duke (Duke Senior) and the courtiers who share his exile discuss their life in the country and listen to a story about their fellow-courtier Jaques.