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Shakespeare wrote As You Like It to represent a very popular pastoral novel of his time, Rosalynde. Nature is a dominant theme in any pastoral literary work because one of the ideas the genre presents is that pastoral life, or country life, is a form of utopia, while city life, or courtly life, is corrupt. Shakespeare uses the Forest of Arden to represent the nature setting needed in a pastoral work. More importantly, the Forest of Arden is portrayed as having healing attributes, which helps to represent the forest as a form of utopia, or at least as being less corrupt than life at court.

We see one example of the forest being portrayed as having healing attributes with respect to Oliver's transformation as a character. In the beginning of the play, Oliver is shown as being exceedingly jealous of his younger brother Orlando's qualities. Specifically, Oliver jealously describes Orlando as being gentle, intelligent despite lack of education, noble, and so loved by all that Oliver himself is hated, as we see in Oliver's lines:

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 ... that I am altogether mispris'd [despised]. (I.i.166-71; Shakespeare Navigators)

Oliver is so jealous of Orlando at the beginning of the play that he denies Orlando the inheritance left for him in their late father's will. He even tries to kill Orlando twice. It is when Oliver pursues Orlando into the woods to try and kill him once and for all that Oliver experiences a very sudden and complete change of heart. Orlando sees Oliver sleeping and about to be attacked by a lioness; Orlando nearly walks away, but decides to rescue his brother instead and wrestles the lioness to death. Oliver is so moved by this act of self-sacrifice that he is filled with love for his brother, which gives him a total transformation in character. Hence, since Oliver is so transformed once in the forest, we see that the forest is being represented as having healing qualities.

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What role does nature play in the first act of As You Like It?

In the opening act, for the most part, individuals act contrary to nature, giving rise to a great deal of grief as well as the play's central conflicts. We learn in the very first act that Duke Frederick has usurped his older brother by taking over his dukedom and driving him into exile. Since Duke Senior is the eldest brother, by nature, or by natural rights, the dukedom belongs to him and not to Duke Frederick. Duke Senior claims to be content in the forest, but of course being in exile creates hardships, particularly the hardship of having to survive during harsh weather conditions. This conflict between the two brothers is not resolved until Frederick also travels into the forest and discovers religion, transforming him into a changed man who relinquishes the dukedom back to Duke Senior. Hence we see that nature drives the plot forward when characters try to act contrary to nature.

Also in Act 1, Duke Frederick soon exiles Duke Senior's daughter Rosalind, and Frederick's own daughter Celia decides to go with Rosalind. In order to survive traveling to the Forest of Arden, Rosalind devises a plan to disguise herself as a boy, which would also be contrary to nature. Rosalind's own act of defiance of nature drives the plot forward by not only getting her, Celia, and Touchstone to the forest but also later creating conflict between Rosalind and Orlando. Orlando must also hide in the forest because his brother is trying to kill him, which also contradicts nature, and while in the forest, proclaims his love for Rosalind by attaching love poems addressed to her on trees. Rosalind responds by addressing him still in disguise as Ganymede, thinking that disguised as a boy, she can have the chance to test the strength of his love. This creates a conflict because Orlando wants to win Rosalind, but Rosalind is denying him this chance until she is more certain.

The best place to see in Act 1 exactly how acting contrary to nature is serving to drive the plot forward, creating a central theme, is in Orlando's opening speech. Oliver's treatment of Orlando certainly is cruel, unloving, and thus unnatural. Oliver is even treating the estate animals better than Orlando, which best characterizes the unnaturalness of Oliver's actions, as we see in Orlando's lines:

His horses are bred better; for, besides that they aer fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly hired: but i, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth. (I.i.10-14)

Hence we see that nature plays a role in Act 1 to develop the plot because many characters act contrary to nature, which creates the play's central conflicts.

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