The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey

Director's Notes
On Shakespeare's As You Like It
by director Bonnie J. Monte

TOTUS MUNDUS AGIT HISTRIONEM - "All the world's a stage."
William Shakespeare
As You Like It 1599

"I cannot remember enjoying a production so much. Even when I was depressed, after a few scenes the depression would lift."
John Bowes
(Orlando in the 1980 RSC production of As You Like It)

I told my cast on the first day of rehearsal that As You Like It had taken visual shape in my mind as a most delicious confection — one that features a delectable but almost weightless white cake center divided by a thin layer of rich, dark, bittersweet frosting, all covered in an elegant marbleized sweep of pale buttercream and chocolate icing. In my mind's eye, it sits next to my Twelfth Night cake, which appears from the outside to be identical, but within, it is as night to day to my As You Like It cake. It is a heavy dark chocolate cake, infused with layers of marshmallow fluff.

Oh, how I underestimated the weight and flavors of As You Like It! I know now, after actually working on the play, that its richness is inexpressible. To be sure, much of it is light, airy, whimsical, improbable, silly, giddy, bawdy, romantic, and sublimely delightful, but it also contains a multitude of deep and complex layers that emerge with startling force and emotional impact when one starts to savor the play more deeply. The brilliance of its thematic strains, its gorgeous language, its witty and sage pronouncements on human behavior, its wonderful affirmation of all that is good, its assertion that the world is full of possibility, and its most affectionate but pragmatic embrace of humanity and human existence, raise it far above the level of mere froth and frolic.

Each and every rehearsal of this play was sheer bliss. In addition to the magnificent words of Mr. Shakespeare, I had the great fortune to have a most intelligent, talented, lively and lovely cry of players, wonderful collaborators, and the inspirations of the season. I hope "this play may please," as Rosalind says, for it is our holiday gift to you — our audience. I think As You Like It is one of William Shakespeare's love letters to humankind. This year it serves as our love letter to you. Without you, we are, as Jacques says, "sans everything."

"We know that Shakespeare himself played the role of old Adam, Orlando's faithful retainer, an old Adam free of all sin and invested with original virtue. Of all Shakespeare's plays, the accurately titled As You Like It is as much set in an earthly realm of possible good as King Lear and Macbeth are set in earthly hells. And of all Shakespeare's comic heroines, Rosalind is the most gifted, as remarkable in her mode as Falstaff and Hamlet are in theirs. Shakespeare has been so subtle and so care in writing Rosalind's role that we never quite awaken to her uniqueness among his (or all literature's) heroic wits. A normative consciousness, harmoniously balanced and beautifully sane, she is the indubitable ancestress of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, though she has a social freedom beyond Jane Austen's careful limitations."

"If Rosalind cannot please us, then no one in Shakespeare or elsewhere in literature ever will."

"Shakespeare's invention of the human, already triumphant through his creation of Falstaff, acquired a new dimension with Rosalind, his second great personality to date…"

"Rosalind again…with Falstaff and Hamlet, also figures for Shakespeare himself. 'Play out the play!' Falstaff cries to Hal; 'I have much to say in the behalf of that Falstaff.' 'Suit the action to the word, the word to the action,' Hamlet admonishes the Player King. 'I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women,' Rosalind adroitly pleads, 'that between you and the women the play may please.' The voice in all three, at just that moment, is as close as Shakespeare will ever come to letting us hear the voice of William Shakespeare himself."

—Harold Bloom,
Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me,
and tune his merry note
unto the sweet bird’s throat,
come hither, come hither, come hither,
here shall he see
no enemy,
but winter and rough weather

Who doth ambition shun,
Who loves to live i’the sun,
seeking the food he eats,
and pleas’d with what he gets,
come hither, come hither, come hither,
here shall he see
no enemy,
but winter and rough weather.

As You Like It: Act II, Scene V