As You Like It Group

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readingbooks17
Student

Was there an actual Forest of Arden based on the one in "As You Like It"?

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Posted by readingbooks17 on Friday January 26, 2007 at 2:10 PM and tagged with as you like it, forest of arden, setting.

Answers:

  1. merideth
    merideth Teacher
    Middle School

    Why yes, there is an actual forest called Arden that was very important to Shakespeare and his family.  His mother's people, the Ardens, owned it.  Her family has history dating well back in time to do with the land.  There was a female ancestor who was an abbess at the local nunnery.  However, the family was Catholic while Queen Elizabeth made being a Catholic a crime.  Jesuit missionaries, some of them cousins of Shakespeare, hid out in the forest of Arden to lose the Queen's officers who were trying to hunt them down. Some of Shakespeare's family, who were Ardens were tortured and killed because of their religious affiliation.

    And so, the answer is also no.  It would have been politically indiscreet for Shakespeare to create a world where the good and the decent were in the forest of Arden while the crimes and foul-play were happening at court. And therefore the forest of Ardenne is to be found fictionally in France.  

    For more information see Michael Wood's In Search of Shakespeare.

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    Posted by merideth on Saturday August 23, 2008 at 6:50 PM

  2. revolution
    revolution Teacher
    Doctorate

    Yes, there was an actual forest called "Forest of Arden" in the book. It was situated near the Arden's home and this forest was especially important to the whole family for many generations and generations.

    Shakespere compared the forest to the bibilical Eden, which is found in the first chapter of the bible, Genesis. Life in it was compared to the "fallen world" outside and there were similar allusions to the story in the Bible. This forest was a exotic and a magical place to behold, where strange apparitions and coincidences appear out of nowhere, where people are transformed spritually and when love is all around, what a lovely and enchanting environment to indulge!

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    Posted by revolution on Thursday July 16, 2009 at 3:50 AM