SOURCE: Daley, Arthur Stuart. “The Tyrant Duke of As You Like It: Envious Malice Confronts Honor, Pity, Friendship.” Cahiers Élisabéthains 34 (October 1988): 39-51.

[In the following essay, Daley views Duke Frederick of As You Like It as an example of the stock Elizabethan tyrant character, and assesses his thematic purpose in the drama as it is principally expressed during the wrestling match episode of Act I, scene ii.]

For the first six scenes of As You Like It, Shakespeare concentrates on elaborating an extraordinarily evil world. The first three scenes, making up Act I in the Folio, dramatize by a series of discussions and confrontations, with emblematic actions, the dominance of cruel and disruptive evil in the life of the family and the state, analogically picturing the aristocratic society (or first estate) of a nameless sovereign duchy. There injustice prevails unchecked by law or conscience: the innocent and weak are victimized, unnaturalness divides brothers, the wicked expel the good, threatening to inherit the earth, and treason and usurpation subvert order in the state. Thus Act I opens with Orlando's recital of his shocking mistreatment by his avaricious and envious eldest brother and it closes with the flight of two youthful princesses from the brutality of a tyrannical father and uncle to the harsh ‘liberty’ of banishment.

The persuasive corruption of this world receives continuing emphasis through the first three scenes of Act II as well. In the third, Adam sums up the evil, so inimical to the beautiful and good, and laments, O, what a world is this, when what is comely / Envenoms him that bears it (II.3.14-15).¹ As a matter of fact, the enactment of injustice by fraud and force occupies nearly one third of the comedy! To this conspicuous feature, D. H. Parker gives perceptive recognition: “As You Like It has in it more evil in event and character than any comedy before Measure for Measure.”² Only with the arrival of the fugitive princesses in the Arden pastures does this long opening movement of six consecutive scenes depicting evil and evil men and their victims pause and leave its menace in suspension.

The antagonists in these sombre events are a tyrant duke and a tyrant brother (I.2.288). In this troubled commonwealth the members suffer infection from the head. For its Elizabethan audience the play plausibly assumes, in the words of William Baldwin, For if the magistrates be good, the people cannot be ill. Thus the goodnes or badnes of any realme lieth in the goodnes or badnes of the rulers … for in dede the wealth and quiet of euery common weale, the disorder also and miseries of the same, come specially through them.³Qualis rex, Talis grex was a venerable adage.⁴

Of the two antagonists, my subject here is the usurper duke-uncle seen in terms of a character conceived and manipulated, particularly in the play's second scene, as a traditional tyrant figure. For both the playwright and his audience it was not only a favorite literary type of long standing but also one of the principal political concerns of their century. By 1600 Shakespeare had created three brilliant portraits of the type in Richard II, Richard III, and Julius Cæsar, as well as sketches of the tyrannical character in other plays and Lucrece. The subject still attracted him and, no doubt, his audiences; Hamlet's usurper uncle-king and ‘untitled’ Macbeth were yet to come. The odd circumstance, then, is not that Shakespeare created the Frederick of As You Like It, but that he should turn loose in a comedy a stage type more native to history or tragedy. For Sir Philip Sidney it was a valuable moral function of tragedy that it maketh Kinges feare to be Tyrants, and Tyrants manifest their tirannical humors.⁵

Before taking up the tyrannical humors, perhaps I should point out that philosophers, jurists, and theologians commonly treated tyrants under two categories. The tyrant by usurpation, tyrannus sine titulo, was one who traitorously seized the throne from the legitimate prince, or heir, in defiance of the constitution of the realm. Otherwise, any sovereign ruler, whether reigning de jure or de facto, could be or become a tyrannus exercitio by unjust and self-serving acts offensive to the laws and customs of the realm and detrimental to the well-being of the governed. Both types appear in Shakespeare's plays. There were also likenesses of the despotic governor in the tyrannical father or other kind of head of the family and the tyrant mistress of the romance and the sonnet, a role played well enough by Phebe to merit Rosalind's mark how the tyrant writes (4.3.39).

The tyrant had become a stock character and one evidently as popular with the general audience as thought-provoking for the gentry. My chief humor is for a tyrant, Bottom assures us (Midsummer Night's Dream, I.2.28). An article by W. A. Armstrong provides a comprehensive survey of the Elizabethan treatment of the type from which we can abstract some characteristic traits seen in the behavior of Frederick.⁶ According to the conventions, the tyrant is motivated by the seven deadly sins, especially pride (which includes ambition), envy, and avarice, the sins of the world and the devil. His over-weening ambition and self-interest make him a ruler not only indifferent to the common welfare but also one quick to over-ride the law in order to take the shortest way to reach his ends and protect his position. In the English setting this includes the denial to the accused of due process by substitution of the dictator's will for the law.

The motive of envy results in the tyrant's hatred of virtue and the virtuous, a distinctive and instinctive antipathy of evil men. This antipathy feeds the characteristic malice that makes perilous the envious court (cf. II.1.4). Hence Spenser's malicious envie, who rides on the ravenous wolf, hateth all good workes and vertuous deeds (Faerie Queene, I.4.30.1 and 32.1). A classic statement of this doctrine appears to have been St Augustine's explanation of Cain's motive for killing his brother, Abel: The brothers Cain and Abel [unlike Remus and Romulous] were not moved by the same desire for earthly things; nor did envy arise in the one who slew the other because his power would be restricted if both held it, for Abel did not want power in the city that was being founded by his brother. Cain's envy was rather of that diabolical sort that the wicked feel for the good just because they are good, not wicked like themselves.⁷ This natural malice of the wicked man is the cause of treason and injustice. In As You Like It it is the source of Elder Brother's⁸ hatred of Orlando, and the worldly enemy of virtue that Adam inveighs against in 2.3.

These Elizabethan ideas about tyrants and usurpers arouse audience expectations and progressively define and dramatize the villainy that dominates the first Act of As You Like It. They also explain the expository use of the memory of Sir Rowland de Boys in scene 2, where it is invoked four times and in a way there and elsewhere that has no parallel in Shakespeare's narrative source, Thomas Lodge's romance, Rosalynde. The spirit in the play of aristocratic ideals, Orlando's father serves for a benchmark from which the moral ebb of the dukedom can be gauged and judged. In that connection also, the response of different characters to his memory exposes their moral quality. Sir Rowland de Boys constitutes the criterion or touchstone of the aristocratic ideal in the play. Another feature of As You Like It supplies a conventional counterpart to the detailed portrait of the tyrant, that is a sketch of his antithesis, the good prince, well represented here by Duke Senior. By the one you shall know the other better. On this topic Armstrong states that a favorite author was Pierre de la Primaudaye, “whose lengthy compendium The French Academie was published in English in 1586 and again in 1589. True to the literary convention of the specula, La Primaudaye sets the godly prince in contrast to the lawless and passion-driven tyrant.” Armstrong finds further that “The contrast epitomized by La Primaudaye occurs in almost every serious form of Tudor literature.”⁹ Such a contrast gives this play its initial momentum. Its dynamic oppositions of virtue and vice, the rational and the irrational, and the natural and the unnatural generate fruitful collision.

We first learn about the new duke in scene 1 from Charles, his personal wrestler, whose ‘news’ succinctly defines the duke as both tyrannus sine titulo and tyrannus exercitio. Charles informs us that the old duke is banish'd by his younger brother the new duke, and three or four loving lords have put themselves into voluntary exile with him, whose lands and revenues enrich the new duke (I.1.99-103). He has, then, wrested the crown from the legitimate ruler. Without information to the contrary, it can be assumed that he usurped power by means of a palace coup d'état. In orthodox thinking, as stated by Richard Hooker, impossible it is that any should have complet lawfull power, but by consent of men, or immediat appointment of God.¹⁰ Ipso facto, this usurper lacks the divine right, and from the reports of public opinion provided in scenes 2 and 3 we know that he also lacks the consent of the governed. Their reported sympathies attach exclusively to his victims and his enemies. (See I.2.131-2, 225, 236, 280-1; Le Beau's criticism, and I.3.77-9). Actually, this is an effective expository use of the concept of vox populi to condemn the new duke as a tyrannus sine titulo, a usurper.

Moreover, he comes under the heading of tyrannus exercitio for he uses his confiscatory power not for the good of the commonwealth but, quite nakedly to ‘enrich’ himself. Since avarice typically motivates despots, this will be alleged three more times in the play (i.e., I.2.247, I.3.65, and III.1.9-10).¹¹ In short, like Richard III, he is King in fact onely but tyrant both in title and regiment. It is important also that the new duke should be a usurper. “To the Elizabethan mind”, writes Armstrong, “usurpation is a sin, and it is a major factor in the moral system which underlies the chronicle play and the historical tragedy. Shakespeare provides abundant and consistent illustration of this fact, which is, indeed, fundamental to his interpretation of history”. Further on Armstrong says, “It is noteworthy that the worst stage tyrants are always presented as usurpers and that the legitimate princes who invariably defeat or supersede them possess the moral virtues of model kings.”¹² The prospects for the dukedom look ominous in Act I. The longer the Tyrant lives, the more the Tyrannical humour increases in him, sayes Plato, like those Beasts that grow more curst as they grow old. New occasions daily happen, that necessitate them to new mischiefs, and he must defend one Villany with another.¹³ Two such mischiefs will enliven by turn the next two scenes and will initiate the flight into exile of more of the good and the loving, the best and the brightest. The exodus continues until the reversal of fortunes at the end.

The first mischief is the murderous wrestling bout. In anticipation Celia and Rosalind are given two related topics, the devisal of sports and the opposition between Fortune and Nature's gifts. The girls, of course, speak better than they know for they are on the verge of momentous disports and fortunes. More immediately, the mention of Nature gives a cue to the entry of one of its naturals, a clown named Touchstone.

The jibes occasioned by his pretense to honor (I.2.60) launch his elaborate joke about the knight who swore by the honor that he did not have that the pancakes were good but the mustard naught. In marked contrast to commentators on the play, Celia takes this recital very seriously indeed, enough to warn him that he trespasses on dangerous ground when he connects the knight with her father. (In this she foreshadows Le Beau's caution to Orlando near the scene's end.) But generally Touchstone's story is dismissed as trite jesting, an irrelevant padding. It has been guessed that the impertinency of old Frederick upsets Celia (or Rosalind).¹⁴ I disagree because I read Touchstone's fable as veiling a cogent point. His wisecrack about honor can hardly be fortuitous since the oath has been repeated meaningfully in the dialogue already. Charles has sworn by his gamester's honor to commit mayhem, at least (I.1.130), Celia has just engaged her honor as a friend to restore her cousin's stolen estate (I.2.29-30), Touchstone now invokes a clown's version, and the usurper will soon pledge what passes for his to kill his niece (I.3.88).

Hence the clown's jibe and its connection with the tyrant duke is a hit too palpable to ignore. This is because in a tyranny honor quickly becomes a debased currency; they leave few or none there, that have either honour or conscience.¹⁵ Furthermore, without ideal honor friendship cannot exist, and As You Like It follows the political philosophers in making friendship an indispensable means for obtaining a better world. Celia's pledge to redress Rosalind's wrongs by mine honor announces that theme at the scene's beginning. Before the scene ends, Le Beau will in friendship counsel Orlando about the dangers of the place.

The fool's anecdote exposes the lack of principle in the friendship of a tyrant, a relationship which in itself really is a contradiction in terms. A standard topic with the ancients, this idea finds expression in the chronicle and history plays. An excellent text on the subject may be quoted from the Discours of Étienne de la Boétie, himself an exemplary Renaissance friend: The fact is that the tyrant is never truly loved, nor does he love. Friendship is a sacred work, a holy thing; it is never developed except between persons of character, and never takes root except through mutual respect; it flourishes not so much by kindness as by sincerity. What makes one friend sure of another is the knowledge of his integrity: as guarantees he has his friend's fine nature, his honor [emphasis added], and his constancy. There can be no friendship where there is cruelty, where there is disloyalty, where there is injustice.¹⁶

Duke Senior, the good prince who loved as his soul the honorable Sir Rowland simply cannot have loved the knight of the pancakes-and-mustard (=Shrove Tuesday Fool?) who had no honor, or had sworn it away. It is not Rosalind but Celia, the daughter of the tyrant, who warns Touchstone of his danger. His jest comes too near home. Truly, a ruling prince is, as Celia implies, the fountain of honor in the state, but honor's pure silver drops do not flow from this fountain. The ancients taught that by definition men of virtue, ‘aristocrats’, govern in an aristocracy. Both honor and friendship make known their virtue. Shakespeare grounds As You Like It upon the aristocratic ethos represented in Act I by Sir Rowland and Orlando's calling, and it follows that the clown's joke has organic meaning in the scene as well as implications for the play.

But what is the sport? Touchstone asks Le Beau (I.2.135). In the narrative source of the play, Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde, the killing of two wrestlers by the champion surprises and disgusts the audience: At this vnlookt for massacre, the people murmured, and were all in a deepe passion of pittie.¹⁷ To this, the playwright adds a third victim and generally darkens the atmosphere of despotism. He seems to have adapted an old tale, one which Celia instantly recognizes (I.2.120). He substitutes Orlando for the old tale's youngest brother, who insists on taking his turn against the brutal wrestler who has just killed both of his brothers. He avenges them, of course, by slaying the monster. (In the romance, Rosader likewise kills the Norman, but Orlando only stuns Charles.) As in the tale, but not in the romance or Gamelyn, its source, Charles has been challenged by three proper young men. The prizer has thrown the eldest and broken three of his ribs, that there is little hope of life in him. So he serv'd the second, and so the third (I.2.101-29).¹⁸ In another departure from Rosalynde, the beholders weep for the pitiful dole of the poor old man, their father, sharing their pity, Rosalynd cries, Alas! The clown then raises the pertinent question, But what is the the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have lost? (I.2.135).

The English held wrestling in esteem as a fine sport both for the participants and the spectators, a sport wherein English men were wont to excell as Milton writes in Of Education (1644). Like Elyot, Ascham, Castiglione, and others before him, Milton recommends the exercise for his hopeful youth.¹⁹ Clearly the risk of injury must have been acceptably minimized by the rules of play. Indeed the distinction among the English schools of wrestling would in itself have necessitated their different rules or “law”.²⁰ Gladiatorial contests with vnlookt for massacre were not tolerated; even the extra-legal duel, as Touchstone makes humorously clear, was hedged by punctilio.²¹ Brutality is not emphasized by Stow of London, Carew of Cornwall, or Hentzner of Germany in their accounts of the sport. In 1598, Hentzner saw the annual open wrestling tournament held in London on St Bartholomew's Day and he describes it as a civic event presided over by the Lord Mayor and other city dignitaries.²² In the play, however, the pastime becomes a vehicle for murder; Celia correctly objects that Charles makes a cruel proof of his strength.

With the device of the wrestling bout, Shakespeare sets up a surprising number of effects and applications. Of these, we are particularly interested in how the bout imaginatively expresses the tyranny. On the mundane level, we recognize in the wrestler an old symbol of wrath and worldly strife that Fortune arbitrates. The wrastling for this world axeth a fall Chaucer observes in Truth. This symbolism and recalling what has been said about Fortune, that bountiful blind woman, make it plausible that Orlando can win. Realistically, too, Sir Thomas Elyot approvingly points out that, the weaker person by the sleyght of wrestlynge hath overthrown the stronger. Of the famous Cornish pastime, Richard Carew writes, Many sleights and tricks appertain hereunto, in which a skilful, weak man will soon get the overhand of one that is strong and ignorant.²³ Such a sleight was the trip, and according to Celia it was by a trip that Orlando won. Also, the moves and exertions of wrestling can be excitingly feigned on the stage.

Thus too can be re-enacted the popular motif of David against Goliath, or more exactly the struggle of brains against brawn classically celebrated in Book XXIII of the Iliad, where burly Ajax and wily Odysseus strive for the prize. More narrowly, on the spiritual level, the circumstances of the contest between Charles and Orlando could easily recall the athletic analogy of St Paul, Ephesians VI.12, For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, and against the worldlie gouernours, the princes of the darknes of this worlde, against spirituel wickednesses, which are in hie places. The verse, in slightly different wording, was read in church in the Epistle for the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity.²⁴ Memory of the passage may account for the curious plural in Rosalind's admiring Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown / More than your enemies (I.2.254-5).

In addition to dramatizing the themes, Shakespeare uses the bout to advance both plot and characterization. These aims converge at or very near the midpoint of Act I when Duke Frederick orders, Speak to him, ladies, see if you can move him and steps aside, thus setting up a properly decorous meeting and the occasion for love at first sight. Here, however, we have particular concern for the characterization of the duke as a tyrant by his behavior in his public role. The brutality of the bout must mirror the inevitable disintegration of moral standards under a usurper. Disinterested sportsmanship gives way to strong-arm tactics intended to protect the champion's monopoly of prizes and ‘credit’. Similarly, a little later, Jaques charges that in killing deer for food the forest exiles are mere usurpers, tyrants and what's worse (II.1.61-2 and cf. 27-8). Like master, like man: for Charles, the end justifies the lawless means. In short order, the despotic duke will repeat the cruel proof of lawless strength when he banishes his niece, the heir apparent to the crown, because, like Orlando, the people admire her virtues and she is her father's child.

By protocol, the conduct of the wrestling match depends entirely upon the tyrant's pleasure, and the stock tyrant's pleasure countenances mayhem and manslaughter. His order restricting Charles' bout with Orlando to one fall amply illustrates his rejection of the expected alternative, to play the match by the rules. The new duke speaks hypocritically therefore when he protests that, In pity of the challenger's youth I would fain dissuade him, but he will not be entreated (I.2.159-61).²⁵ This is, incidentally, the second of fourteen uses in the play of pity and its forms; the ‘pastoralism’ of As You Like It partakes strongly of the spiritual kind, i.e. that associated with pastoral care. It follows that pity and the responding virtue, charity, receive both mention and dramatic exemplification. Frederick's ‘pity’ has as little substance as his characteristic claim to be the better part made mercy (III.1.2), a pretense which—if it were true—would pair him with Orlando in respect of renouncing revenge.

In the public role of presiding at a trial of athletic skill like this contest, a prince should observe the customary obligations which he owes to his office and his people. He must uphold order and propriety according to the accepted rules, and he must, as at a titling match or other sporting competition, reward the winner impartially and generously. By these standards, the wrestling match tests the duke's integrity. He fails the test. Duke Frederick has his apologists in the criticism, but in the drama itself none exculpates him. There his condemnation is unanimous. Frederick ignominiously denies to Orlando the praise and largesse he owes such a young and gallant athlete. Like Plato's tyrant, his soul is full of meaness and vulgarity—the best elements in him are enslaved (The Republic, IX). Even while conceding Orlando to be a gallant youth, Frederick dismisses him with a fare thee well. His excuse identifies him as a typical tyrant: I would thou hadst been son to some man else: / The world esteem'd thy father honorable, / But I did find him still mine enemy (I.2.224-6). With a nice irony, his statement echoes closely Plato's dictum that the tyrant must seek occasion to purge the state of the valiant, the high-minded, the wise, and the wealthy (The Republic, VIII).²⁶

Le Beau speaks not only for himself but also for Rosalind and Celia and presumably those beholders mentioned above when he assures Orlando, you have deserv'd / High commendation, true applause and love (I.2.262-3). The judgment on Frederick's churlish conduct comes appropriately from the mouth of his daughter, who is not his daughter if we judge by manners (I.2.271). As Frederick exits, she disassociates herself from his churlishness. Were I my father, coz, would I do this? (231) she asks Rosalind, and then, addressing Orlando too, Celia says indignantly, if sadly, My father's rough and envious disposition / Strikes me at heart. Sir, you have well deserv'd (241-2). Sir Francis Bacon indicates in Of Great Place the force of ‘rough’ where he writes, The vices of authority are chiefly four: delays, corruption, roughness and facility … For roughness, it is a needless cause of discontent; severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate.

What Celia means here by envious may be suggested by James III.14 and 16: But if ye haue bitter enuying and strife in your hearts, reioyce not, nether be liers against the trueth. 16. For where enuying and strife is, there is sedition, and all maner of euil workes. This new court is, in the old duke's judgment, an envious court (II.1.4) and a perilous one.

The audience now has enough information to appreciate in detail Le Beau's counsel (I.2.261-7, 271-85). The situation neatly replays that in scene 1 when the eldest de Boys asks Charles the Wrestler for the new news in the new court; here the courtier who was introduced as full of news brings the youngest de Boys brother up-to-date on the perilous court. The contrast is striking. Of the two observers, the courtier turns out to be the astute insider. Regrettably, interpretations of Le Beau in criticism and productions trivialize his role into that of an affected ninny thereby not heeding Celia's observation that the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show. Here comes Monsieur [Le] Beau (I.2.89-91). To make too great a show of this wise man's little foolery illustrates instead Hamlet's complaint that, there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be consider'd (Hamlet, III.2140-4).

The necessary question here concerns the tyrant's character and the threat it poses not only to the youth but also to the heir apparent herself. The diagnosis exploits two word clusters with irreconcilable meanings. Under condition and manners, the cluster misconsters-humorous-usurping-malice counters the cluster friendship-love (thrice repeated)—virtue-pity. In fact, to a surprising extent these terms gloss the moral issues in the play.

Apart from setting up a malicious consequence of the evil pervasive in the new court, the speech has three dramatic objectives. It corrects the gossipy hearsay (they say … they say) spread earlier by Charles as no news … but the old news, and incidentally cautions us against uncritical acceptance of the gamester's rumours.²⁷ Second, Le Beau clinically diagnoses the tyrant's condition. Finally, Le Beau declares unequivocally the active presence in As You Like It of the noble friendship which guarantees justice in the state and strengthens the virtuous individual against adversity.

The opening words of Le Beau's speech contradict the caricature of him as a character whose heart is overlaid with self-love and expediency.²⁸ On the contrary, they signal a courageous intervention by a bystander in circumstances fraught with personal and deadly danger. Good sir, I do in friendship counsel you / To leave this place are dramatically resonant words. Friendship and counsel are words of grave import, and the fact that they each gave Bacon the topic and the title for an essay gives a sufficient idea of their weight here.²⁹ It might have been that these opening words and others further along stimulated in an Elizabethan audience an empathetic frisson. They appealed to meanings now archaic and they breathed a peril which, outside of a police state, few auditors would perceive today.

Actually, only a genuine friendship, even if suddenly inspired, can account for the profitless risk that Le Beau runs, and clearly knows he runs in saying what he does about his humorous duke. His altruism can only be, therefore, the product of virtues of his own that are kindled by an affinity with those of the boy. Thus, by his good office to Orlando, Le Beau makes in himself a transition from the loving lords of scene 1 to the devoted princesses of scene 3. Moreover, he shows his familiarity with the doctrine of friendship when he defines the ‘loves’ of Celia and Rosalind for one another as dearer than the natural bond of sisters (276; emphasis added). The deliberate contrast needs elucidation, which it has not been vouchsafed. For over half a century a misreading of the relationship of the cousins has been preserved in the New Cambridge Shakespeare (1926), apparently without challenge. There, on p. xv, a sentimental editor improves on the playwright by imagining that, “In the faithful love of Celia for Rosalind (we think) it has not been noted, or not sufficiently noted, that Shakespeare had for his age [!], a curiously deep understanding of sisterly love and loyalty to troth”, and so on.

Le Beau, however, speaking in his character of an Elizabethan courtly gentleman, states flatly and exactly that their loves are not sisterly! He makes a crucial distinction because their attachment is the very different one of that special kind of friendship which, in the next scene, becomes a topic of discourse and dramatic motivation. That is to say, both he and the cousins use the term in its historic and now archaic meaning of an altruistically selfless devotion between two gentle persons of the same sex. This bond is different from and superior to the natural bond of blood. Within the family hierarchy, natural law binds and obligates the members to one another in various degrees of superiority and subordination. Expressing an ancient view, Cicero writes that, The bonds of common blood hold men fast through good will and affection. But, as the play has already amply demonstrated, kinsmen can prove unnatural and flout that bond. Thus, in pursuing the subject, Cicero rates the friendship of equals based upon goodness as nobler than the bond of kinship. The reason is that friendship results from a free and conscious act of choice and commitment grounded in the recognition of mutually shared moral qualities, and the result is, Cicero concludes, as Pythagoras requires of ideal friendship, that several are united in one.³⁰ In the next scene, Celia professes this ideal as the love / Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one. The natural bond is common and disparate, but the virtue-based bond is rare and equivalent. The distinction put here in Le Beau's mouth subtly affirms the superiority of the virtuous over the natural, a premise of As You Like It.

Touchstone has learned that belittling a crony of the new duke can earn a whipping for a fool, and Le Beau knows that talk about the new duke's condition needs not to be ‘misconstered’ to make it treason. Such talk is dangerous, and risks the hangman. The duke is humorous—what he is indeed / More suits you to conceive than I to speak of (I.2.226-7) he warns the boy. Under such circumstances, even thoughts can be suspect, and Rosalind will soon feel impelled to plead, Never so much as in a thought unborn / Did I offend your Highness (I.3.51-2).

To the spectacle of Frederick's rough and envious manners just beheld, Le Beau now adds a prescient commentary on the duke's condition of late, i.e. the progress and outlook of his disease, the tyrannical humor.³¹ A major and dramatic symptom is the increasing distrust of others which ‘misconsters’ their actions and motives. Related to this character disorder is the tyrant's increasing irrationality, revealed by his suddenly (283) acting on, in this case, a recent displeasure 'gainst his gentle niece, / Grounded upon no other argument / But that the people praise her for her virtues, / And pity her for her good father's sake (I.2.278-81). Such mental and moral deterioration follows the accepted doctrine: The longer the Tyrant lives, the more the Tyrannical humor increases in him, says Plato (The Republic, IX), like those Beasts that grow more curst as they grow old.

Essentially, the ground for the duke's displeasure is none other than Cain's ‘argument’ for killing Abel, his instinctive hatred of his brother's virtue. Likewise, Frederick's displeasure finds its roots in that envious malice with which evil men resent virtue in others and, indeed, all manifestations of good. Speaking as one who knows the type, Le Beau shrewdly foresees that the malice of the usurping uncle will suddenly break forth, as it does in the next scene. The present state of affairs has become so dangerous and unpredictable that Le Beau, in taking leave of Orlando, can only promise that, Hereafter, in a better world than this, / I shall desire more love and knowledge of you. Such an eventuality seems to be implied, perhaps an inevitable outcome of the duke's condition, and the recovery of a better world becomes the set aim of As You Like It.

Orlando, of course, fully conceives of the nature of his present world, and the scene closes with his realization of his predicament, summing up the thrust of the first two scenes: Thus must I from the smoke into the smother, / From tyrant Duke unto a tyrant brother. Smoke and smother are familiar features of a hellish landscape as well as stages marking a progression from bad to worse. The closing three words, But heavenly Rosalind!, serve to confirm Orlando's hope-sustaining devotion and remind us of the next victim of the duke's unspeakable humor.

One concludes that the key to the evil state of affairs in the opening movement of As You Like It, and the motivations behind its venom, is provided by the familiar Elizabethan character of the tyrant and its doctrine of tyranny as expressed in its expected stage behavior. Once we recognize his type, therefore, we possess, as did the intended audience, the explanation for Duke Frederick's rebuff of the gallant and deserving victor, and, for the same reason, why Le Beau can confidently, on my life, forecast that the usurper's malice 'gainst the lady / Will suddenly break forth (I.2.282-3). The same logic of the convention reveals the cogency of the clown's quip about honor, or the symbolic fitness of the wrestling bout as the keystone action of Act I, or, among other features, the dramatic function of Le Beau. In this play, the initial dominance of fortune and despotic force and fraud works to trigger the response of, and confrontation with, their traditional remedial virtues, patience, honor, pity, and noble friendship.

Notes

1. My citations of Shakespeare are to The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, 1974).

2. M. D. H. Parker, The Slave of Life: A Study of Shakespeare and the Idea of Justice, Chatto & Windus (London, 1955), 64. Alfred Harbage, William Shakespeare: A Reader's Guide, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, 1963), 223, says of the play's first twenty-two lines, “This is a sombre opening for a play with so beckoning a title”, but does not pursue the insight.

3. The Mirror for Magistrates, ed. Lily B. Campbell, Barnes & Noble (New York, 1938, rpt; 1960), 83.

4. Marcellus Palingenius, The Zodiake of Life, tr. Barnabe Googe, intro. Rosemond Tuve, Scholar's Facsimiles & Reprints (New York, 1947), 167, asserts the maxim, Qualis rex, talis grex, Lyke king like people. A commonplace since ancient times.

5. Cited by W. A. Armstrong, “The Elizabethan Conception of the Tyrant”, The Review of English Studies, 22 (1946), 162.

6. The literature on the good and bad prince was extensive, starting in the fourth century B.C. Lester K. Born gives resumes of the classical and medieval treatises in his translation of Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, W. W. Norton (New York, 1936, rpt. 1968). Robert S. Miola provides helpful references in his “Julius Caesar and the Tyrannicide Debate”, Renaissance Quarterly, 38:2 (Summer 1985), 271-89. Armstrong, cited above, defines and illustrates distinctive elements in the characterization of the tyrant on the Elizabethan stage. J. D. Burnley, Chaucer's Language and the Philosopher's Tradition, D. S. Brewer (Cambridge, 1974) devotes two chapters to “The Tyrant” and “The Image of the Tyrant” in fourteenth-century literature. Essentially, he is represented as a type of churl, hence lacking the aristocrat's capability for pity, a judgment discernible in the play.

7. The City of God, tr. Philip Levine, The Loeb Classical Library, vol. IV, Harvard UP (Cambridge, MA., 1966), Bk IV.5 (429). Discussing the characterization of Cain in the “Plays of the Fall”, Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London, 1972), 374, n. 64, remarks, “Cain's hatred of Abel's virtue was first stressed by Ambrose, De Cain et Abel, ‘forman speciemque virtutis expressam ferre non potuit’.” This and other interesting points are made by J. E. Bernbrock, ‘Notes on the Towneley Cycle Slaying of Abel’, J.E.G.Ph. [Journal of English and Germanic Philology] lxii (1963), 317-22. Hints of the Cain and Abel story appear in As You Like It as they had in Henry IV and would in Hamlet.

8. By convention, critical usage nominates the eldest brother ‘Oliver’, but the only Oliver in the dialogue is the vicar of the village (III.3). The dialogue simply identifies the eldest de Boys as Orlando's brother. The generic name of Eldest Brother accords with the dialogue and emphasizes the role of a well-known Elizabethan social type.

9. “The Elizabethan Conception of the Tyrant”, 168-9.

10. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, ed. Georges Edelen, Harvard UP (Cambridge, MA., 1977), 1, 99, i.e. Bk I, ch. 10.4. Junius Brutus (? Philippe de Mornay, commonly Duplessis-Mornay), A Defence of Liberty Against Tyrants: A Translation of ‘Vindiciae contra tyrannos’, tr. Harold J. Laski, Peter Smith (Gloucester, MA., 1924, rpt. 1963), 182, defines the two kinds of tyrants, “all of which may very well occur in one and the same person. The first is commonly called a tyrant without title: the second a tyrant by practice.” See Miola, 274-5 and 279, and “Tyrannicide”, Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912 edition.

11. The good prince must avoid avarice, teaches John of Salisbury, among others; see Born, 111 and 112. Armstrong, 168-9, finds that “English and French writers came to regard [the tyrant] as an embodiment of most of the seven deadly sins. He is pre-eminently proud, wrathful, lecherous, and avaricious.” Malcolm and Macduff discuss avarice, Macbeth, IV.3.58, 78, 84. Miola calls attention to “the avarice described in 1Sam. VIII.14, a passage that portrayed the typical tyrant for many, including Erasmus, Poent, and Goodman” (282).

12. Armstrong.

13. I quote Edward Sexby (William Allen), Killing No Murder (1657), in A Miscellany of Tracts and Pamphlets, ed. A. C. Ward, Oxford UP (Oxford, 1927), 298. Sexby's zeal to prove Cromwell a tyrant within the justification of tyrannicide results in a compendium of Old Testament and classical commonplaces on the matter: I shall not give you any [Characters] of my own Stamping, but such as I find in Plato, Aristotle, Tacitus, and his highness own Evangelist, Machiaveli (272). Hence I can quote him for his pungency without the risk of anachronism.

14. When not ignored, the joke has passed for incidental patter, but John Russell Brown, Shakespeare and His Comedies, Methuen (London, 1957, rpt. 1964), 143, rightly detects in it the “lack of true honour and wisdom” in the usurper's court, and Alfred Harbage (see n. 2 above), 225, observes that “aspersions are slyly cast upon the usurper” in “the routine clowning”.

15. Sexby, 274, paraphrasing Aristotle, Politics, V.11.1315^a.

16. Étienne de la Boétie, Anti-Dictator: the Discours sur la servitude volontaire, tr. Harry Kurz, Columbia UP (New York, 1942), 48. Between 1574 and 1578 the work appeared anonymously five times in print after circulating in manuscript. La Boétie and Montaigne shared an ideal friendship. The authories generally taught that tyrants were incapable of friendship, e.g. the only friends of Richard III and Macbeth are friends for fear. Socrates maintains in Gorgias that tyrants never taste of friendship, and Aristotle teaches that little or no friendship can exist in a despotism (The Nichomachean Ethics, VIII.11.1161a). Thus “old Frederick” is not the mistake on Shakespeare's part that Dover Wilson insisted on (New Cambridge Shakespeare [1926], 99).

17. Thomas Lodge, Rosalynde. Euphues golden legacie, reprinted in A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: As You Like It, ed. Richard Knowles, the Modern Language Association of America (New York, 1977), 395. The romance was reissued in 1598, not long before the play.

18. No doubt the complications caused by a displaced rib were beyond medical remedy. In Letters Written by John Chamberlain during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. Sarah Williams, Camden Society 1: 79, Johnson Reprint (1861; rpt. New York, 1968), we find, 164, under date of London, November 19, 1602, This morning Robert Knolles had a great mischaunce in riding a horse … that came over him, and hath sore brused or, as some say, broken two of his ribbes, others his bulke [sic], but all generally agree that he is in great daunger, and will hardly scape. Broken ribs would hardly cripple a hero, however. When Gogmagog, the chief giant, broke three of Corineus's ribs with his hug, the founder of Cornwall simply tossed Gogmagog over a rock into the sea.

19. Sir Thomas Elyot, The Book named the Governor, ed. S. E. Lehmberg, Dent (London, 1962), opens section XVII of Book I, on exercises, Wrestling is a very good exercise in the beginning of youth if certain precautions are observed (60). Robert Ascham, The Scholemaster, (1570), Edward Arber, ed., rpt. Constable (London, 1935), 64, includes wrestling among the pastimes that be fitte for Courtlie Ientlemen. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, tr. Sir Thomas Hoby (1561; rpt. J.M. Dent & Sons, London, 1974) mentions the sport on 40, 44, 45, 97, 98, 100, and 188. Spenser's knight of courtesy, Sir Calidore, is an able wrestler.

20. Walter Armstrong, Wrestling, in The Badminton Library: Fencing, Boxing, Wrestling, Longmans, Green (London, 1889) describes the “Four widely separate schools of wrestling [that] have been known from time immemorial” in England, each arguing the superiority of its rules (179 and following). According to Walter Armstrong, 182, Orlando “resembled his prototypes Apollo and Theseus, rather than Hercules”, but he does not explain. He takes Charles's brutality as perhaps indicating that Shakespeare intended a rough Continental style not used in England, but it is, I think, more plausible artistically that the roughness corresponds to the ‘roughness’ of the usurper and his despotism. Armstrong's statement that in the German style of wrestling “almost all the refinements of the art are lost” (187), suggests that the 1539 and 1674 German texts recommended in Shakespeare's England, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1917), 2, 483, should be used with caution.

21. Legal and penal liabilities for a fatal accident in a sporting competition in England appear to be indicated by John Chamberlain's report of the death of a fencer in a great prise and challenge performed at the Swan on February [7], 1603: the case is and wilbe much argued by lawyers whether it will prove chaunce medley, manslaughter, or murder, by reason of malice, and many challenges past betweene them before. The play makes evident the malicious intent of Charles.

22. See John Stow, The Survey of London, J. M. Dent & Sons (London, 1912), 95; Richard Carew, The Survey of Cornwall (1602), ed. F. E. Halliday, rpt. Andrew Melrose (London, 1953), 44, 150-1, avers that Wrestling is as full of manliness, more delightful, and less dangerous [than hurling]. It is a favourite pastime with the boys of Devon and Cornwall. Drayton, The Works of Michael Drayton, vol. IV: Poly-Olbion, ed. J. William Hebel (1933; rpt. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1961), 7, Song I.243-7, celebrating the prowess of Cornish wrestlers, speaks of a spacious ring … made, / According to the law (246-7). For Paul Hentzner's experience, see William Brenchley Rye, tr., England as Seen by Foreigners in the days of Elizabeth and James the First, John Russell Smith (London, 1865), 107-08; the conquerors receive rewards from the Mayor. In Anthony Munday, The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington (1601), Malone Society Reprint, Oxford UP (Oxford, 1964 [1965]), gilt wreaths were the prizes at Mansfield on a wrestling day (ll. 1296-1301).

23. Elyot, 60; Carew, 150.

24. Biblical texts are quoted from The Geneva Bible, A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition, intro. Lloyd E. Berry, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI., 1969). For the Epistle, see The Book of Common Prayer 1559, ed. John E. Booty, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA., 1976), 207.

25. No-one in Rosalynde condescends to ‘entreat’ the youth. In the play the word serves the purpose of justifying Orlando's important speech (I.2.183-93) whereby his qualities of humility, unpretentious courage, and his understandable sense of isolation may be confided in a manner conducive to sympathetic reception by the audience.

26. In his impressive demonstration of the consummate art of this scene, James Russell Brown, Shakespeare's Dramatic Style, Heinemann (London, 1970), 74, finds inexplicable Duke Frederick's rejection of the son of his enemy. He complains that “Shakespeare could have given Frederick words with which to reveal or suggest the basis of his hatred”, which otherwise remains “enigmatic” (75). I hope that this paper shows that for the audience of 1600 there was neither enigma nor lack of art here: Frederick manifests the hatred called for by a usurper-tyrant in the given circumstances.

27. Inspired by the gamester's gossip, one long-standing and popular reading makes the play an escape into an idyllic life of careless ease with a program for singles of wooing games, hunting games, and talk games. The gamester view largely evades the opinion of the fugitives from the tyranny. Their reactions to tribulation and challenge in the desert inaccessible of Arden are canvassed in my article, “The Dispraise of the Country in As You Like It”, Shakespeare Quarterly, 36:3 (Autumn, 1985), 300-14.

28. On the assumed “self-love and selfish expediency” of Le Beau see the extract from Oliphant Smeaton's characterization, A New Variorum (1977), 626-7. Harbage brushes aside as unfounded “the effeminacy that is often projected ad nauseam in modern productions; a slightly vapid timidity should do” (226). John Russell Brown, 80, notices the danger: “nothing that this smooth courtier has said or done prepares for the risk he takes.” As I have explained, however, Le Beau prepares us when he says, I do in friendship counsel you.

29. On counsel, Elyot (238) quotes Ecclesiasticus, Of fools take thou no counsel, for they can love nothing but that pleaseth themselves. Treatises on friendship and governance (and King Lear) stress the need for the kind of frank and courageous counsellor exemplified here by Le Beau, to whom Orlando rest[s] much bounden (I.2.286). By contrast, Orlando desires that he and Jaques may be better strangers (III.2.258). Jaques lacks the virtue for friendship.

30. Cicero De officiis, tr. Walter Miller, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard UP (Cambridge, MA., 1913), 58/59. Also, Cicero De senectute, De amicitia, De divinatione, tr. William Armistead Flaconer, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard UP (Cambridge, MA., 1953), 128/129-30/131, the conclusion of ch. 5. For details of this classical ideal and its use by Tudor and Stuart authors see Laurens J. Mills, One Soul in Bodies Twain: Friendship in Tudor Literature and Stuart Drama (1937; rpt. University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, MI. and London, 1980). A late expression of the superiority of friendship to kinship appears in Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy, III.1.44-5: to me the name / Of Brother is too distant: we are friends, / And that is nearer. Also of interest, Eugene M. Waith, “Shakespeare and Fletcher on Love and Friendship”, Shakespeare Studies 18 (1986), 235-50.

31. It is ominous that the duke is humorous, though it has often been glossed as a relatively harmless eccentricity. A New Variorum (1977), 30, reports such glosses as capricious, wayward, moody. Among others, Kittredge gives “capricious, notional, full of whims and impulses” (like Cleopatra?), and New Arden (1975) “temperamental, is not to be relied on.” Such interpretations may explain why, for example, Michael Jamieson, Shakespeare: As You Like It, Edward Arnold (London, 1965), 29-30, can think that “the usurping duke's condition is temporary” and that evil in the play “turns out to be an aberration merely.” The tyrannical humor, however, grows progressively more malicious and cruel. Bacon warns in Of Ambition that, like choler, unchecked ambition becomes malign and venomous. The general principle was that if its head be sick, the body politic is in grave peril.