SOURCE: Bracher, Mark. “Contrary Notions of Identity in As You Like It.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 24, no. 2 (spring 1984): 225-40.

[In the following essay, Bracher assesses the thematic structure of As You Like It in terms of two opposing conceptions of identity—one exclusive and expressed via satire, the other inclusive and portrayed through romance and love.]

In her chapter on comedy in Feeling and Form, Susanne Langer observes that comedy “sets up in the audience a sense of general exhilaration, because it presents the very image of ‘livingness.’”¹ This “immediate sense of life” which is “the essence of comedy”² derives from the essential comic action, which, “whatever the story may be, … takes the form of a temporary triumph over the surrounding world.”³ The experience of comedy is thus an experience “of human vitality holding its own in the world,”⁴ an experience of “organic unity, growth, and self-preservation.”⁵ Life can triumph over the otherness of the world, however, in basically two ways, as Langer herself notes in passing:⁶ it can either negate this obstacle of otherness, excluding it from the world of the organism, or it can accommodate itself to this otherness, changing its own identity so as to include the other as other.

Now, if comic action consists in a triumph of life over the world, and if this triumph of life can occur in two fundamentally different ways, we might expect that there would be two fundamentally different types of comedy corresponding to the two modes of triumph.⁷ Such is in fact the case, as Northrop Frye has observed. Noting in his Anatomy of Criticism that “comedy blends into irony and satire at one end and into romance at the other,”⁸ Frye declares that “there are two ways of developing the form of comedy: one is to throw the main emphasis on the blocking characters; the other is to throw it forward on the scenes of discovery and reconciliation. One is the general tendency of comic irony, satire, realism, and studies of manners; the other is the tendency of Shakespearean and other types of romantic comedy.”⁹ We can identify ironic or satiric comedy, which emphasizes the blocking agent, with triumph through exclusion; and we can detect a similar kinship between Shakespearean or romantic comedy and fulfillment through inclusion of otherness. For while the denouement of satiric comedy consists in the exclusion, through defeat (and in the purest form of this comedy, through expulsion as well) of the blocking agent, the denouement of Shakespeare's romantic comedy tends more toward the inclusion of this agent.

In thus portraying fulfillment in such fundamentally different ways, these two basic modes of comedy embody two fundamentally different perspectives on the nature of life itself: while satiric comedy focuses on life or the self as exclusive of otherness, Shakespearean comedy emphasizes that one's being is inclusive of otherness. The former evokes the “immediate sense of life” through opposition to and the defeat of otherness, while the latter produces this “sense of general exhilaration” through relation to and acceptance of otherness.

But in thus evoking different experiences of life itself, these two types of comedy, one could argue, may well predispose their audiences to two fundamentally different strategies of existence: for if we are made to apprehend the self as primarily exclusive, we will be more likely to seek fulfillment by being exclusive, whereas if we are made to grasp the self as for the most part inclusive, we will tend to seek fulfillment through inclusion—through relation and participation with others.

Such, at least, are the assumptions which seem to inform As You Like It. For in this play Shakespeare presents us with two groups of characters embodying opposite types of self—one exclusive and the other inclusive. These actual selves, moreover, can be seen to result from the characters' tacit and largely unconscious assumptions about the fundamental nature of the self—about what constitutes one's identity. Thus one group of characters tacitly assumes that human selves are primarily closed entities opposed to other selves, and this largely unconscious assumption is manifested by the envious, antagonistic, and even violent behavior of those who hold it. The other group of characters experiences the self as intrinsically open to and inclusive of other selves, a perspective which results in actions of love and sacrifice for others.

Through the action of As You Like It, Shakespeare demonstrates the validity of both perspectives on the self, but accords a certain priority or privilege to the perspective of inclusiveness. Because of this perspective, and because Shakespeare, in addition, accords only subordinate or provisional status to the central attitudes and modes of being that characterize satiric comedy, the play works to lead the audience, both theoretically and affectively, away from the exclusive self and into an experience of identity as inclusive rather than exclusive of others. This inclusive self, moreover, is shown to be constituted by a plurality of perspectives or personalities—since one person can be open and loving to another only if he or she meets the other with a perspective or mode of being that is tailored to the uniqueness of the other.¹⁰

I

The view of the self as a monolith opposed to other monadic selves can be seen to underlie the major conflicts of the play. The play begins, in fact, with just such a conflict, with Oliver attempting to stymie Orlando. The fact that Oliver apparently has no good reason for opposing Orlando has puzzled critics, especially since the motivation of Lodge's Saladyne, Shakespeare's source for Oliver, is quite clear (Saladyne is covetous of the ploughlands bequeathed Rosader by their father). Sylvan Barnet notes that “Shakespeare might have followed Lodge in having the eldest son envious of his younger brother's ample possessions, but instead Shakespeare makes Oliver's conspiracy against Orlando less intelligible by giving Orlando only ‘a poor thousand crowns’ (I.i.2-3),¹¹ a ‘poor allotery’ (I.i.71-72) that does not seem to interest Oliver.”¹² Although the elimination of any tangible basis for animosity could simply reflect Oliver's minor stature in the play, the effect of the elimination is to force us to focus on the soul, the inner self, of Oliver,¹³ and when we do so, his behavior can be seen to derive from his unconscious assumption of what constitutes his identity or being. This assumption is especially evident at the end of the scene, where Oliver soliloquizes on Orlando:

I hope I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he. Yet he's gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved; and indeed so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprized.

(I.i.159-65)

The final clause reveals that Oliver's hatred derives from the tacit assumption that individual selves are fundamentally opposed to one another,¹⁴ and that consequently the enhancement of one self entails a diminution of the other. Identity is a function of exclusiveness, in Oliver's view: each self is essentially an isolated entity, and as with Touchstone's cup and glass, “filling the one doth empty the other” (V.i.45-46).

This assumption about the nature of identity and fulfillment is even more apparent in the behavior of Duke Frederick. When Charles tells Oliver that young gentlemen are flocking to Duke Senior every day, there is an intimation that a jealousy similar to Oliver's,¹⁵ based on an identical view of the self, might be one cause of Frederick's usurpation and his banishment (exclusion) of his brother. This inference is confirmed in the following scene when Frederick says to Orlando, “The world esteemed thy father honorable, / But I did find him still mine enemy” (I.i.221-22). Duke Frederick portrays the relation of these clauses as one of contrast (“but”), but it is evident that the relation is actually one of cause and effect: the world esteemed Orlando's father honorable, therefore Frederick saw him as an enemy. In the character of Frederick, Shakespeare is thus once again portraying a self that is constituted by opposition to other selves—by exclusiveness—and thus feels threatened by the success of another. And once again Shakespeare has diverged from his source in order to present such a portrait: Frederick's reaction is the opposite of the inclusive response of the king in Lodge, where we find that “when they knew him to be the youngest Sonne of Sir John of Bourdeaux, the King rose from his seate and imbraced him, and the Péeres intreated him with al favourable courtesie.”¹⁶

The exclusive view of the self is also the cause of Frederick's behavior toward Rosalind, which, Le Beau informs us, is “Grounded upon no other argument / But that the people praise her for her virtues” and pity her for the sake of her father (I.ii.274-75). As with Oliver's antagonism toward Orlando, Shakespeare has removed the motivation which is found in Lodge. Torismond, Frederick's counterpart in Lodge, banishes Rosalynd because he fears that a nobleman might marry her and then “in his wifes right attempt the kingdom.”¹⁷ In Shakespeare's version, however, there is no such obvious motive for the duke's action, and the only overt explanation we receive is Le Beau's remark, “The duke is humorous” (I.ii.262). This absence of a clear motive forces us once again to examine the soul of the agent. When we do so, we find once again the notion that identity is a function of exclusiveness, a notion which Frederick himself makes explicit in the following scene. When Celia protests the banishment of Rosalind, he tells her: “Thou art a fool. She robs thee of thy name, / And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous / When she is gone” (I.iii.79-81). For Frederick, as for Oliver, selves are seen as ontologically competitive with each other, and the enhancement of one self means the diminution of another's being.

The actions of the villains of the play can thus be seen to arise from a vision of identity as exclusive. In contrast, the actions of the hero and heroines of the play seem to derive from an opposite perspective, which experiences identity as a matter of inclusion and relatedness—a notion which is expressed first by Celia, in direct contradiction of her father. While for Duke Frederick, Rosalind's presence means a diminution of Celia's being, for Celia it means the exact opposite: an enhancement of her existence. “I cannot live out of her company,” she says (I.iii.85), indicating that her very being includes that of Rosalind. “Thou and I am one,” she says to Rosalind. “Shall we be sund'red, shall we part sweet girl? / No, let my father seek another heir” (I.iii.97-98). In rejecting her father for Rosalind, Celia is showing that her identity, her true self, is not a product of her lineage but is rather constituted by her relatedness to and inclusion of another self. Celia's attitude embodies the realization that, to alter Touchstone's dictum, filling the one doth fill the other also.

The view of self embraced by Celia and Rosalind, then, is directly opposed to that of Oliver and Duke Frederick. Shakespeare has pointed up this contrast by juxtaposing the two attitudes in the first two scenes of the play: immediately following Oliver's soliloquy on his hatred of Orlando, the scene changes and Rosalind and Celia appear and speak of their love for each other. While Oliver is envious of Orlando's status, Rosalind tells Celia, “I will forget the condition of my estate to rejoice in yours” (I.ii.14-15). Celia replies, “What [my father] hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee again in affection” (I.ii.18-20), thus contrasting her own attitude of love and inclusion with her father's action of envy and exclusion (usurpation).

The two perspectives on identity are contrasted again later in the scene, when Duke Frederick is speaking to Orlando. Frederick's lines—“The world esteemed thy father honorable, / But I did find him still mine enemy”—are echoed by Rosalind's declaration eight lines later of the exactly opposite attitude: “My father loved Sir Roland as his soul, / And all the world was of my father's mind” (I.ii.231-32, my emphasis). While Frederick sets himself in opposition to the world and in enmity with Roland, Duke Senior is presented as virtually consubstantial with Roland, and with “the world.” His identity, like that of Rosalind and Celia, is constituted by relationship with and participation in the being of another, as he himself later implies when he defines his identity in terms of relationship, declaring to Orlando: “I am the Duke / That loved your father” (I.vii.194-95).

The most important juxtaposition of these opposing attitudes is found in the wrestling match. A number of the play's commentators have realized the symbolic importance of this event as a prefiguration to the rest of the play.¹⁸ Charles, as Thomas Kelly notes,¹⁹ is an agent of Oliver and is also aligned with the court of Duke Frederick; he thus functions as the champion of the exclusive, monadic self which Oliver and Frederick have embraced. Indeed, Charles's own words reveal that he, too, has this perspective on the self. When he tells Oliver, “I wrestle for my credit” (I.i.124), he indicates, as Kelly observes, that “he regards his footing atop Fortune's wheel as a precarious station … which cannot be shared.”²⁰ His being is enhanced, in his view, only by diminution of other selves.

Orlando seems to embody the contrary view, and Shakespeare points to this contrast by having both Charles and Orlando refer to the wrestler as a “foil” to the youth. Charles says to Oliver, “For your love, I would be loath to foil him, as I must for my own honor if he come in” (I.i.127-28). “Foil” here, of course, means to defeat or stymie, but the other meaning is present to the audience as well. Orlando uses the word in the same way as Charles, when he says to Rosalind and Celia, “Let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go with me to my trial; wherein if I be foil'd, there is but one sham'd that was never gracious” (I.ii.180-83). But unlike Charles, and indeed unlike Lodge's Rosader at the identical moment, Orlando appears relatively unconcerned about self—about either losing “honor” or gaining “shame.” For Charles, in contrast, fights for honor and station, and so does Rosader, whose victory is immediately preceded by his “calling to minde … the fame of his Fathers honours, and the disgrace that should fall to his house by his misfortune.”²¹ Again Shakespeare's alteration serves to focus attention on apparent lack of motivation and thus to direct our view toward the nature of the self—here toward Orlando's relative lack of self-interest.

Orlando's attitude is further revealed by the fact that Celia's appeal to his self-interest—“We pray you for your own sake to embrace your own safety and give over this attempt” (I.ii.173-74)—falls on deaf ears. Orlando's lack of egoism and self-interest even in the act of fighting—that action which we might normally consider to epitomize egoistic self-assertion—contrasts sharply with the heroic self-assertion of Charles, who indulges in the typical boasting of the martial champion. Orlando's victory over Charles thus represents the triumph of unself-centeredness, or openness and inclusiveness.

That Orlando's victory is a triumph of the forces of love, or inclusion, over those of self-love, or exclusion, is further emphasized²² by the events immediately following the match. Here we see that Orlando's overthrow of the exclusive, heroic ego²³ embodied by Charles also overthrows what there is of his own heroic ego and that of Rosalind, and makes love victorious: Orlando's conduct has evoked Rosalind's love, and her ensuing gift to him (the chain from her neck) elicits his love. The thematic equivalence of their love with the defeat of the heroic ego, or exclusive self, is indicated by the fact that their love is referred to in terms of Charles's (the heroic ego's) defeat. “My better parts / Are all thrown down,” Orlando says after receiving Rosalind's gift. Rosalind responds, “Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown / More than your enemies” (I.ii.245-46, 250-51; my emphasis), and a few lines later Orlando exclaims to himself: “O poor Orlando, thou art overthrown! / Or Charles or something weaker masters thee” (I.ii.255-56, my emphasis). Thus the literal battle constitutes a conflict between the exclusive and inclusive notions of identity, and serves as a figure for what happens within the souls of Orlando and Rosalind, and, as we shall see, the rest of the characters as well.

II

The two perspectives on identity which Shakespeare contrasts in the opening scenes may be seen to correspond, as we noted earlier, to two types of comedy: the romantic and the satiric. As Nevill Coghill has pointed out, while Jonson's satiric comedy preaches “a morality that fundamentally presupposes … a world of discordant self-interest,” Shakespeare's romantic comedy is based on the view that life is a union in love, not a battle of self-interest.”²⁴ The conflict between the two notions of identity thus also manifests itself as a debate between romantic and satiric comedy. A primary means by which Shakespeare prosecutes this debate in As You Like It is to transform the various exclusive elements typical of satiric comedy into agents or ancillaries of inclusiveness.

One of the most obvious satiric elements is Touchstone. His wit is typical of satiric comedy, and most importantly, “he has a natural tendency,” as Alexander Leggatt notes, “to react against the person he is speaking with,”²⁵ manifesting that fundamental contentiousness which is the prevalent mode of being in satiric comedy. In Shakespeare's hands, however, the wit and opposition of Touchstone function not as ends in themselves but as means to a greater relatedness among selves. For as a self of relatedness, the inclusive self necessarily embraces, as we noted earlier, a certain pluralism and incohesiveness: if the self is fundamentally an openness, a relatedness to what is other, it will necessarily exist in a plurality of modes, for in its relation to one thing, it will be significantly different than it is in relation to another thing. The inclusive self, that is, alters itself to accommodate the uniqueness of everything it encounters, while the exclusive self, in contrast, attempts to assimilate or subordinate everything to one single mode of a monistic ego. And since a truly inclusive self necessarily embraces a plurality of perspectives, it also necessarily embodies a fundamental incohesion.

But if inclusive selves are thus by nature incohesive in a certain sense, then it follows that a major means of promoting an inclusive, loving self would be to draw it out of a limited mode of being or a single perspective and into the inclusiveness and plurality of incohesion. Leading other characters, and also the audience, into such incohesion is a primary function of the fool Touchstone, a “motley minded gentleman” (to use Jaques's words, V.iv.41), whose motley coat serves as an apt emblem of the fundamental incohesion, or plurality of perspectives, which is a prerequisite for an inclusive self.

The fool functions in several ways to produce plurality in those he encounters. The most obvious way is through direct contradiction of whatever view he meets. We have already noted Touchstone's tendency to oppose his interlocutors, and critics have long realized that the fool's use of wit, irony, and satire serves to pave the way to love by producing humility. But although humility is necessary for love, it is not totally sufficient, for in order to love, one must not only reduce one's own self-interest, but must actually embrace the self-interest of the other. In love, one adopts the perspective of the other: when the other is injured, one hurts; when the other is happy, one is joyful. Thus, in addition to engendering humility through verbal abuse, Shakespeare's fool elicits an alteration of perspective by employing particular types of verbal structures: it is significant, after all, that the fool is not merely insulting, but also witty.²⁶

Hence the fool's use of paradoxes and puns, which, in order to be comprehended, must be perceived simultaneously from two mutually exclusive perspectives. When Corin asks, “And how like you this shepherd's life, Master Touchstone?” the fool replies, “Truly shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught” (III.ii.11-15). Touchstone is apparently saying that his life is a good life, but that it is also worth nothing—an assertion which seems self-contradictory. In order to understand Touchstone's statement, we must see him simultaneously as a shepherd and not a shepherd: insofar as he is playing the role of shepherd in Arden, he has the good life of a shepherd, but inasmuch as he is not really a shepherd at all, but a fool, his life as a shepherd is nothing.

Puns elicit a similar plurality of perspectives. When Celia declares to Rosalind, “I pray you, bear with me; I cannot go no further,” Touchstone announces, “For my part I had rather bear with you than bear you. Yet I should bear no cross if I did bear you, for I think you have no money in your purse” (II.iv.9-13). This complex pun causes us to see “bear” in a plurality of contexts, meaning simultaneously to put up with, to endure, to carry, and perhaps to give birth to. In addition, we are forced out of our original perspective on “cross” as engine of execution to a view of “cross” as coin.

The function of the wit in Shakespeare is thus not simply to exhibit in the verbal sphere the pervasive will to dominate others characteristic of exclusive selves, but, rather, to break up the absolutist perspective of the exclusive self, creating that incohesion which is a prerequisite for inclusiveness and love. Wit is used to open and enlighten others—to create a “new tolerance” and a “more inclusive consciousness”²⁷ in other characters and in the audience—and not to consolidate one's own position by injuring or destroying the other. The fool should be a Touchstone who causes the true self to appear, not a Jaques who rails against imperfection. Jaques's statement—“I will through and through / Cleanse the foul body of th' infected world, / If they wil patiently receive my medicine” (II.vii.59-61)—sounds like the manifesto of a satiric playwright and issues from the very self of exclusion which it is the fool's role in Shakespeare to open: Jaques the satirist is able to view human action only from the single perspective of absolute righteousness, and Duke Senior speaks for the Shakespearean vision, and against the satiric perspective, when he chastises Jaques: “Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin” (II.vii.64). Relativism, or the achievement of a plurality of perspectives, leads, in the Shakespearean vision, not to skepticism and cynicism, but to love.

The satiric vision is thus contrary to Shakespeare's not only in that it denies the ultimate value of love,²⁸ but also because it encourages and reinforces the attitude of the exclusive self, which is always attempting a put-down or expulsion of the other, be it physical, social, or verbal. In satiric comedy, the breaking apart of an exclusive self is done in order to destroy that self and thus increase the cohesion and power of another exclusive self. This is the ultimate goal not only of the antagonists but also of the protagonists, and even of the playwright himself, a fact which is manifested by the observation that the triumph of the protagonist is embodied as an overthrow rather than a conversion and inclusion of the antagonist. In Shakespearean comedy, on the other hand, the main purpose in attacking an exclusive self is to open it up and allow it to achieve the fullness of its being in relatedness with other selves, a goal which finds expression in a denouement of conversion and inclusion rather than dominance.

The greater inclusiveness promoted by As You Like It is enhanced not only by the jarring of the fool but also by the disguise or role-playing the characters engage in. Like puns and wit, disguise in Shakespeare's comedy fosters greater inclusiveness in the audience as well as in the characters. While in satiric comedy we the audience gain pleasure primarily at the expense of the victim of disguise or as a result of the abandonment of the disguise—both of which play to the self of exclusion—in Shakespearean comedy a greater measure of our delight in disguise derives from the energy produced by the plurality of perspectives which disguise inaugurates. A consummate instance of such an experience occurs when Rosalind disguised as Ganymede plays Rosalind, while Orlando plays himself. The multiple perspectives constellated by this encounter force us to see every word uttered by the characters in several ways at once, and as a result, we are unable to rest for long in the inertia of any single attitude or emotion.

This experience of greater inclusiveness which disguise inaugurates in the audience is mirrored and reinforced by the greater inclusiveness which the characters themselves achieve through disguise. In satiric comedy disguise is used to deceive and triumph over someone. Although this motive is not altogether absent in Shakespeare, the end result of disguise is here not the intensified exclusiveness of self but rather a greater inclusiveness. This result is apparent when Rosalind appears in disguise with Celia and Touchstone. She complains of weariness and would like to cry, but because of the role she is playing, she is able to take another perspective on her situation and resist the inertia of her immediate emotion: “I could find in my heart to disgrace my man's apparel and to cry like a woman,” she declares, “but I must comfort the weaker vessel, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat. Therefore, courage, good Aliena!” (II.iv.4-8). By embracing her role as Ganymede, Rosalind is thus able to get outside her monistic, habitual self and achieve a more inclusive, incohesive self that realizes the folly of romantic ideals even while loving Orlando. As a result, her love becomes more authentic, for in the end she self-consciously and deliberately gives herself to love instead of being overthrown by it as she was at first.

Orlando goes through a similar exercise in achieving a more inclusive self. It might appear that in his encounters with Ganymede's Rosalind, Orlando is simply being himself. In actuality, however, he is playing Orlando, and there is an important difference in the two perspectives. In playing himself, Orlando, at the same time that he is himself, is forced to step outside himself and view this self as a mere role he is playing rather than as his absolute identity. His role-playing, like Rosalind's, thus works to lead him to new perspectives and hence creates of him a self of greater inclusiveness, a self more willing to accommodate the other. Orlando must move beyond that self which, in the words of Kent Talbot van den Berg, “first desires his beloved as a physical object, and subsequently … re-creates her as a mental image.”²⁹ He must attain that inclusiveness which views the other “as another subject who transcends both the object and the image …, [so that] the beloved's existence as a person independent of the lover's will is no longer threatened by the unmastered importunity of desire or ignored in the solipsism of fancy, but is cherished by a respectful love.”³⁰ A truly inclusive self, a self of love, is a self of multiple perspectives that recognizes the profound truth beneath Orlando's conceit that “Rosalind of many parts / By heavenly synod was devised; / Of many faces, eyes, and hearts” (III.ii.149-51). That the multiplicity of the self “by heavenly synod was devised” would indicate that the essence, the ultimate nature of the self, is a plurality and not a monistic unity. If a self exists as a closed monadic unit, it lives in perversion of its true nature, for such a mode of being is not what heaven has devised.³¹ Here once again Shakespeare has taken a common motif of satiric comedy—disguise—and transformed it so that it supports a vision of human being that is contradictory to that of satiric comedy.

III

In addition to appropriating elements of satiric comedy and transforming them into ancillaries of inclusiveness, As You Like It also promotes the self of inclusion by portraying its victory over the self of exclusion. The greatest triumph of the inclusive self occurs at the end of Act IV, with the rescue and conversion of Oliver. Knowles observes that “Orlando's deed symbolizes his victory over the savage egotism and jealousy that his brother embodies in the play and with which he himself is tempted.”³² Knowles also sees this action as “a victory over Satan” for both men,³³ and René Fortin declares that in his rescue of Oliver, Orlando is like Christ.³⁴ Whether or not one reads the rescue scene symbolically (or allegorically)—and there are justifications for such a reading³⁵—the religious dimensions of the event are significant, and serve to connect the inclusive self with the self of Christian love. The utterly selfless act of Orlando shatters the closed self of Oliver and transforms him into an inclusive self, a transformation of identity indicated by Oliver's declaration, “'Twas I. But 'tis not I” (IV.iii.136). Oliver is no longer the same person he was when, as an exclusive self, he declared, “I never loved my brother in my life” (III.i.14). This exclusive self of envy and hatred has been converted into an inclusive self of love and fellowship, which, Oliver now realizes, constitutes the true, natural identity of a person: his former self of envy and hatred he now sees as “unnatural” (line 123), a perversion of his true being.

By having Oliver, the primary exponent of self-interest, transformed into a proponent of love, Shakespeare undercuts the satiric view of human being. However, in the spirit of inclusiveness, Shakespeare does not simply dismiss the cynical satiric view as error. Rather, he presents incontrovertible evidence that this view of the self has a certain validity. In the confrontation of Touchstone and William in the opening scene of Act V, we are shown that from a certain perspective, the self is indeed constituted through exclusion of and opposition to other selves. The enhancement of one self often does, in fact, entail the diminution of another: Touchstone gets Audrey by taking her away from William. Thus, as Touchstone tells William, “To have is to have; for it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured of a cup into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other. For all your writers do consent that ipse is he. Now, you are not ipse, for I am he” (V.i.43-47). Ipseity, or personal identity, is by definition the consequence of difference or distinction from others: “ipse is he,” and as Touchstone rightly notes, you cannot be ipse if I am he. For Touchstone, moreover, the being which one identity contains is like drink (ipse, the Latin pronoun meaning himself, is also a slang name for a kind of ale³⁶): it cannot be included in another identity. The ensuing action demonstrates this exclusiveness of identity, for Touchstone gets Audrey, while William loses her: Touchstone the glass (to adopt the fool's “figure in rhetoric”) is filled through emptying William the cup.

But the fact that persons often—or even usually—exist in exclusion of and opposition to one another does not prove that such opposition constitutes the self, as the satiric view tacitly assumes. Hence the triumph of the closed, exclusive self is not ultimate in the play. In the final scene the fool's wit is seen to be an ancillary to love, and the satiric vision, in the figures of Jaques and Touchstone, is partially dismissed and partially absorbed into the Shakespearean comedy of love.

In this scene the fool Touchstone assumes an inclusive identity, pressing in “amongst the rest of the country copulatives” (V.iv.56-57) and giving the assembly instructions (V.iv.69-103) on how to live as an inclusive self. All disagreements, Touchstone counsels, should be pursued with tentative, conditional assertions, never with a direct attack against another person. Such relativism allows differing opinions, multiple perspectives, to exist side by side. Thus if, as Touchstone says, he disliked the cut of a certain courtier's beard and said so, the courtier would reply not with the Lie Direct but with the Retort Courteous, merely stating that he was of the opinion that his beard was well cut. Such a response avoids the absolutist stance of the heroic ego, which views any difference of opinion as a threat to the self. The Retort Courteous is not cowardly; it rather embodies a respect for the other and a recognition of the other's intrinsic right to be other than oneself. Thus the courtier will accommodate all degrees of opposing points of view, right up to the Lie Direct. And even the Lie Direct need not result in a quarrel, if both parties realize that all opinions are ultimately relative, and allow themselves to differ, permitting each other to remain other. Differences need not be resolved. Arguments can end in a manner other than the victory of one party and the defeat of the other: they can end with both parties acknowledging that they disagree. Even Jaques shares this realization at the end, when, instead of railing at the dancers, he simply declares, “I am for other than for dancing measures” (V.iv.193) and withdraws. The final word should not be: I say this, and you are wrong to say that; but rather, as one of the adversaries realizes: If you say that, then I say this, and that's how we stand. Let's shake hands and be brothers (lines 96-102).

Touchstone here modifies his earlier dictum on the nature of the self. He does not retract his assertion that “ipse is he: [and] you are not ipse, for I am he”—that individual selves are inherently distinct and thus in certain ways opposed. But he does deny that this opposition must of necessity dominate human existence. Mutuality and friendship can supersede opposition and difference if individuals will but acknowledge and accept that very opposition and difference. The recognition that every perspective is relative, and the willingness to admit the conditionality of one's own position, is the basis of peace, as Touchstone realizes: “Your If is the only peacemaker. Much virtue in If” (V.iv.102-103).³⁷

The significance of Touchstone's disquisition is immediately attested to by Duke Senior, who remarks, “He uses his folly like a stalking horse and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit” (V.iv.106-107). The value of Touchstone's insight and its relation to the theme of love is further indicated by Hymen, who appears and sanctifies—almost in response to Touchstone, it seems—the notion of inclusiveness: “Then is there mirth in heaven / When earthly things made even / Atone together” (V.iv.108-110). Inclusiveness, or atonement, is seen to accord with the ultimate nature of things: it produces mirth in heaven. And the simple juxtaposition of Touchstone's speech with the appearance of Hymen indicates once again that a fundamental relativism is a prerequisite to love. Before one can love, one must be open to the loved one's otherness and allow the loved one to be different.

The company seem to have realized this fact and have taken Touchstone's words to heart, for they respond to Hymen's song with a litany of If's (V.iv.118-24). Having renounced the absolute in favor of the relative, the exclusive self in favor of the inclusive, the lovers are prepared for marriage, the ultimate instance of the inclusiveness of identities. Hymen pairs off the couples and sings a paean to “High Wedlock” (V.iv.146) which reminds us that “'Tis Hymen peoples every town”—that without the “blessed bond of board and bed” (V.iv.142-143), this union of inclusive selves (united also at the biological level), we would not exist. The play's final scene thus argues for the necessary priority of the inclusive self, without which there would be no society, and ultimately, no continuation of life. This argument is recapitulated at the end by the final dispensation of the antagonists, which reiterates—and, moreover, embodies—the inclusiveness of the play's guiding spirit.

As the play ends, the news arrives that Duke Frederick, the play's highest ranking embodiment of the closed self of hatred, has been converted (rather than killed, as in Lodge), and Jaques, the play's chief exponent of the satiric vision of human being, realizes that “out of these convertites / There is much matter to be heard and learned” (V.iv.184-85) and gracefully retires. Thus in Touchstone's speech and marriage, Frederick's conversion, and Jaques's humble withdrawal, as well as in Oliver's conversion, the play's exclusive and satiric elements submit to the more inclusive and magnanimous agents of Shakespeare's romantic comedy; and we the audience participate in a perspective from which life—our very being—is experienced as a process which, although in certain ways exclusive, is fundamentally a matter of openness and inclusion.

Notes

1. Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), p. 348.

2. Ibid., p. 331.

3. Ibid., p. 348.

4. Ibid., p. 331.

5. Ibid., p. 350.

6. Ibid., p. 328.

7. Langer notes that this triumph can occur in various different ways—“by wit, luck, personal power, or even humorous, or ironical, or philosophical acceptance of mischance” (p. 331), but she does not connect these different modes of triumph in comedy with the two basic modes by which life itself triumphs.

8. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), p. 177.

9. Ibid., pp. 166-67.

10. The fact that the inclusive self is a self of multiple perspectives provides the connection which critics have been unable to find between the two main themes of the play: multiple perspectives and love. Concerning the plurality of perspectives, C. L. Barber, for example, in Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1959), p. 234, speaks of “the constant shifting of attitude and point of view” in the play, while Harold Jenkins, in “As You Like It,” ShS [Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespearean Study and Production] 8 (1955):49, 45, notes “the play's principle of countering one view with another.” Other critics speak of the “gap between awarenesses” in the play (Bertrand Evans, Shakespeare's Comedies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), p. 87), the play's “multiple planes of reality” (S. L. Bethell, Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1944), p. 38), and the “several modes of experience” embodied in the play (Thomas Kelly, “Shakespeare's Romantic Heroes: Orlando Reconsidered,” SQ [Shakespeare Quarterly] 24 (Winter 1973):22.

    Regarding the centrality of love in the play, see Barber, p. 233; John Russell Brown, Shakespeare and His Comedies (London: Methuen, 1957), p. 141; and Robert B. Bennett, “The Reform of a Malcontent: Jaques and the Meaning of As You Like It,” ShStud. [Shakespeare Studies] 9(1976):188. Several other critics have also noted the larger, religious dimension of the love portrayed in the play. See, for example, Michael Taylor, “As You Like it: the Penalty of Adam,” CritQ [Critical Quarterly] 15 (Spring 1973):79; René E. Fortin, “‘Tongues in Trees’: Symbolic Patterns in As You Like It,” TSLL [Texas Studies in Literature and Language] 14 (Winter 1973):577; and Richard Knowles, “Myth and Type in As You Like It,” ELH 33 (March 1966):1-22, passim.

    Regarding the connection of the two themes, it is recognized, of course, that the multiplicity of perspectives produces a clearer vision of love, and that the role-playing and disguise somehow seem to bring the lovers together—partly by revealing their folly to them—but an understanding of the precise manner in which these devices promote love is lacking. Some critics even marvel that the ideal of love remains at all after the parody and irony. This failure to integrate the two primary thematic concerns of the play has kept us from appreciating their full significance. Thus Knowles, for example, is forced to conclude that despite the play's numerous religious references and Christian patterns, it cannot sustain an interpretation based upon this aspect, because the religious element is “entirely unrelated to several of the story lines or subplots” (p. 19).

11. All references are to The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare, general ed. Sylvan Barnet (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972).

12. Sylvan Barnet, “‘Strange Events’: Improbability in As You Like It,” ShStud 4 (1969):122.

13. Alexander Leggatt, in Shakespeare's Comedy of Love (London: Methuen, 1974), p. 187, observes that the “arbitrary actions [of Oliver and Frederick] spring from irrational, insecure personalities.”

14. Ralph Berry, in Shakespeare's Comedies: Explorations in Form (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1972), p. 178, 185, declares that “Oliver hates Orlando because he seems an inferior version of his golden brother … ; the other parallels self, and therefore subtly threatens self.”

15. Shakespeare invites parallels between the two relationships by making the two dukes brothers: Lodge's Gerismond and Torismond are unrelated.

16. Thomas Lodge, Rosalynde, in Geoffrey Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 8 vols., 2: The Comedies, 1597-1603 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1958), p. 172.

17. See Barnet, p. 124.

18. See, for example, Thomas Kelly, p. 15. John Doebler, in “Orlando: Athlete of Virtue,” ShS 26 (1972):115, believes that “we should at least consider the possibility of Shakespeare wanting to place a special emphasis upon the wrestling match, making it a thematic introduction to the role he had outlined for Orlando.”

19. Kelly, p. 15.

20. Ibid. My emphasis.

21. Bullough, p. 171.

22. The symbolic significance of the event is also emphasized by parallels with Hercules' fight with Anteus. Shakespeare deliberately evokes a parallel between Orlando and Hercules, it seems, by having Rosalind say to Orlando, “Now Hercules be thy speed, young man!” (I.ii.205). In Lodge the parallel is between Charles and Hercules. Knowles notes several additional allusions to the Hercules myth and observes that “Renaissance mythographers … moralized the wrestling match [between Hercules and Anteus] as the victory of the rational soul over earthly or sensual appetite” (p. 4)—of the true self over the perverted self. In Shakespeare's treatment of the match, the opposition of true self and perverted self is expressed not in terms of rationality versus appetite, but rather as inclusiveness and love versus exclusiveness and envy.

23. The term “heroic ego,” as I am using it here, is taken from James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), who sees the true self as a multiplicity of personalities rather than a monistic “heroic ego,” as he terms it.

24. Nevill Coghill, “The Basis of Shakespearean Comedy: A Study in Medieval Affinities,” E&S [Essays and Studies] 3 (1950):27, 13. My emphasis.

25. P. 196.

26. Leggatt notes that in As You Like It “wit is not simply an aggressive weapon … but a liberation of the mind,” p. 195.

27. The phrases are from David Young, The Heart's Forest: A Study of Shakespeare's Pastoral Plays (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1976), p. 71, and Barber, p. 239.

28. See Peter G. Phialas. “Comic Truth in Shakespeare and Jonson,” SAQ [South Atlantic Quarterly] 62 (Winter 1963):78-91, for a discussion of Jonson's treatment of love.

29. Kent Talbot van den Berg, “Theatrical Fiction and the Reality of Love in As You Like It,” PMLA [Publications of the Modern Language Association] 90 (October 1975):891.

30. Ibid.

31. This plurality of the inclusive self, which is a means of accommodating the other, is to be sharply distinguished from that opportunistic self which adopts a multitude of facades simply in order to prey on other selves.

32. Knowles, p. 6.

33. Ibid., p. 13.

34. Fortin, p. 580.

35. See Fortin, pp. 572-79, and Knowles. pp. 5-6.

36. OED, Compact edn., 2 vols., 1:1482.

37. Maura Slattery Kuhn, in “Much Virtue in ‘If,’” SQ 28 (Winter 1977):40-50, points to another indication of the play's relativism with her observation that “an untypically large number of If's appear in this play, more than in any other play by Shakespeare, both in absolute frequency and in relative frequency,” p. 44.