As You Like It (Shakespeare in Production) - PDF
نویسندگان: William Shakespeare, Cynthia Marshall
خلاصه: Of this play the fable is wild and pleasing’, wrote Samuel Johnson of As YouLike It.1 The play in performance has sometimes veered towards the ‘wild’side, appearing a dangerously subversive work that exposes the instabilityof traditional values. At other moments it has been simply ‘pleasing’, astalwart demonstration of conventional social mores; this aspect promptedGeorge Bernard Shaw to accuse Shakespeare of ‘exploit[ing] the fondnessof the British Public for sham moralizing and stage “philosophy”.’2 Theplay’s ability to encompass these extremes tells an interesting story aboutchanging cultural and theatrical practices. Tracing the history of As YouLike It in the theatre and on film shows the extent to which a playscript is anevolving document that can be radically shaped in performance. Directors,actors, and venues are obviously central to this shaping process, and thecurrent incarnation of As You Like It bears the imprint of various theatricalfigures and general alterations in styles and playing places. Perhaps even moresignificant in following how the play has been evoked is a consideration ofthe wide and shifting context of social codes, gender norms, and attitudestowards the arts, especially theatre. The production history of As You LikeIt affords us a focused view of major social, political, and aesthetic changesover the past four centuries.At the same time, the performance history of As You Like It testifies to theparticular artistic poise of this comedy, written in 1600 when Shakespearewas at the height of his powers. A mode of refreshment and regeneration,Shakespearean comedy does not merely entertain by providing diversion,but seeks to accommodate viewers to the world in which they live. Towardsthis end, As You Like It addresses and seeks to manage a number of tensionsof social life, and achieves success through its ‘power to express conflictand order it in art’.3 Its formal balance does not eradicate the importanceof the play’s historical context, however. Because As You Like It seeks toorder specifically social ills, it draws on and develops changing conceptionsof how people relate to one another, individually and in groups. In otherwords, the interrelation of diachroni