Lecture podcast available via ‘Approaching Shakespeare’ series on iTunesU or at the Oxford podcast site.

Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poetry: pastoral ‘can show the misery of people under hard lords or ravening soldiers, and …what blessedness is deprived to them that lie lowest from the goodness of them that sit highest; sometimes, under the pretty tales of wolves and sheep, can include the whole considerations of wrongdoing and patience.’

Roger Warren, review of Adrian Noble’s 1985 production, Shakespeare Quarterly 37: The usurping court doubled as the forest court, simply wrapping white dust sheets around their evening dress. When Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone arrived in Arden, they drew behind them more white sheeting that covered the court furniture; later, this furniture was replaced by identical green versions. At times Arden seemed merely a country of the mind, a spiritual voyage of discovery by Duke Frederick, Rosalind and Orlando, but not the others, as when Touchstone was twice ducked in a very real pool

Thomas Heywood, An Apology for Actors

Theatre allows ‘to recreate such as of themselves are wholly devoted to melancholy, which corrupts the blood; or to refresh such weary spirits as are tired with labour, or study, to moderate the cares and heaviness of the mind, that they may return to their trades and faculties with more zeal and earnestness, after some small soft and pleasant retirement.’

Reading List

Gabriel Egan, Green Shakespeare: From Ecopolitics to Eco Criticism (2006)

Northrop Frye, A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance (1965)

Richard McCabe, ‘Elizabethan Satire and the Bishops’ Ban of 1599’, The Yearbook of English Studies 11 (1981), 188-93.

James Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of Shakespeare (2005)

Think about As You Like It with adjacent plays chronologically – Hamlet, Henry V, Julius Caesar – how do they use the Globe space? How do they relate to contemporary events? How do they manage stasis/action? Or with the woods in Midsummer Night’s Dream and Two Gentlemen of Verona, or with the pastoral in The Winter’s Tale or the anti-pastoral of King Lear. Or with usurping dukes/brothers in Hamlet and The Tempest. The cliché pairing to try to avoid is with Twelfth Night.