INTRODUCTION
ROSALYND
For centuries, trade and marriage have been the engines of social mobility in Britain. The story of the Lodge family in the age of the first Queen Elizabeth is typical. A boy called Thomas Lodge was born in Shropshire, deep in the countryside. His family sent him to the big city and he was apprenticed to a grocer. He made a good marriage and rose to become Lord Mayor of London. He was bankrupted when there was a business downturn, but he still managed to get his son Thomas educated as a “poor scholar” at the Merchant Taylors’ School. From there Thomas Lodge junior went to Oxford. Education was the route from trade to the professions: after graduating, Lodge enrolled at the Inns of Court to train as a lawyer.
But then he hit a barrier. Young Lodge had converted to Roman Catholicism. This immediately made him an outsider, a member of an oppressed minority. His father angrily excluded him from his will and it proved impossible to pursue a career in the law. So Lodge turned to writing and became a prolific author of plays, poems, pamphlets, and short novels. The most successful of these—one of the bestselling literary works of the Elizabethan age—was
Rosalynd
, a story of exile from the court to the forest. Like a modern screenwriter turning a successful novel into a movie, Shakespeare dramatized the story for the London stage.
By rights, the play should have been named after its heroine. It is the Elizabethan equivalent of an “adapted” as opposed to an “original” screenplay. Shakespeare selects and compresses his material, but retains its essential spirit as a series of debates on the nature of love played out against a romantic woodland backdrop. The flavor of Lodge’s story, its language studded with allusions to classical mythology, may be tasted from the climactic moment when Rosalynd reverts to her female identity: “In went
Ganimede
and dressed herself in woman’s attire, having on a gown of green, with kirtle of rich sandal, so quaint that she seemed
Diana
triumphing in the forest; upon her head she wore a chaplet of roses, which gave her such a grace that she looked like
Flora
perked in the pride of all her flowers.”
There are striking parallels between Shakespeare’s background and Lodge’s. Shakespeare’s father, too, was upwardly mobile thanks to his success in trade. John Shakespeare’s glove-making business secured him a position on the Stratford-upon-Avon town council. He eventually became town bailiff, the equivalent of mayor. But he, too, ran into financial trouble. It is also possible that the Shakespeares faced difficulties because of family associations with Catholicism. Like Thomas Lodge junior, Will Shakespeare sought his fortune in London. Not having a university degree, he could not enter a profession such as the law, so he drifted into the theater.
The plot of
As You Like It
reflects aspects of the experience of both Lodge and Shakespeare. How can a young man improve himself if he is not given educational opportunities? In the first scene, we learn that whereas an older brother has gone off to college, young Orlando is forced to hang around at home. He sets off for the court and proves his mettle in the entertainment arena—not as a dramatist, but as a sportsman, the amateur upstart who bravely goes into the ring and unexpectedly defeats the professional court wrestler, Charles.
But he is then exiled from the center of power. In a neat reversal of Shakespeare’s own journey from the Forest of Arden in Warwickshire to the bustling world of London, with its commerce, its court, and its theaters, Orlando goes into the forest and discovers his destiny there. Because the wicked Duke Frederick has taken power from his elder brother, the other major characters—the good duke and his courtiers, the disguised Rosalind and Celia, the wandering philosopher-gentleman Jaques—are also exiles in the forest.
Lodge’s setting for his story was France, but he
ROSALYND
For centuries, trade and marriage have been the engines of social mobility in Britain. The story of the Lodge family in the age of the first Queen Elizabeth is typical. A boy called Thomas Lodge was born in Shropshire, deep in the countryside. His family sent him to the big city and he was apprenticed to a grocer. He made a good marriage and rose to become Lord Mayor of London. He was bankrupted when there was a business downturn, but he still managed to get his son Thomas educated as a “poor scholar” at the Merchant Taylors’ School. From there Thomas Lodge junior went to Oxford. Education was the route from trade to the professions: after graduating, Lodge enrolled at the Inns of Court to train as a lawyer.
But then he hit a barrier. Young Lodge had converted to Roman Catholicism. This immediately made him an outsider, a member of an oppressed minority. His father angrily excluded him from his will and it proved impossible to pursue a career in the law. So Lodge turned to writing and became a prolific author of plays, poems, pamphlets, and short novels. The most successful of these—one of the bestselling literary works of the Elizabethan age—was
Rosalynd
, a story of exile from the court to the forest. Like a modern screenwriter turning a successful novel into a movie, Shakespeare dramatized the story for the London stage.
By rights, the play should have been named after its heroine. It is the Elizabethan equivalent of an “adapted” as opposed to an “original” screenplay. Shakespeare selects and compresses his material, but retains its essential spirit as a series of debates on the nature of love played out against a romantic woodland backdrop. The flavor of Lodge’s story, its language studded with allusions to classical mythology, may be tasted from the climactic moment when Rosalynd reverts to her female identity: “In went
Ganimede
and dressed herself in woman’s attire, having on a gown of green, with kirtle of rich sandal, so quaint that she seemed
Diana
triumphing in the forest; upon her head she wore a chaplet of roses, which gave her such a grace that she looked like
Flora
perked in the pride of all her flowers.”
There are striking parallels between Shakespeare’s background and Lodge’s. Shakespeare’s father, too, was upwardly mobile thanks to his success in trade. John Shakespeare’s glove-making business secured him a position on the Stratford-upon-Avon town council. He eventually became town bailiff, the equivalent of mayor. But he, too, ran into financial trouble. It is also possible that the Shakespeares faced difficulties because of family associations with Catholicism. Like Thomas Lodge junior, Will Shakespeare sought his fortune in London. Not having a university degree, he could not enter a profession such as the law, so he drifted into the theater.
The plot of
As You Like It
reflects aspects of the experience of both Lodge and Shakespeare. How can a young man improve himself if he is not given educational opportunities? In the first scene, we learn that whereas an older brother has gone off to college, young Orlando is forced to hang around at home. He sets off for the court and proves his mettle in the entertainment arena—not as a dramatist, but as a sportsman, the amateur upstart who bravely goes into the ring and unexpectedly defeats the professional court wrestler, Charles.
But he is then exiled from the center of power. In a neat reversal of Shakespeare’s own journey from the Forest of Arden in Warwickshire to the bustling world of London, with its commerce, its court, and its theaters, Orlando goes into the forest and discovers his destiny there. Because the wicked Duke Frederick has taken power from his elder brother, the other major characters—the good duke and his courtiers, the disguised Rosalind and Celia, the wandering philosopher-gentleman Jaques—are also exiles in the forest.
Lodge’s setting for his story was France, but he
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