AS YOU LIKE IT

                                  James Smith

Similarities in Shakespeare’s character:

                                    James Smith, a formalistic critic analyses Shakespeare’s play AS YOU LIKE IT, a romantic comedy applying the tools of formalistic criticism. The play is generally called as a romantic comedy, but he calls as unromantic. He starts with Jaques’s melancholy, it is not innate in nature. It is assumed, he compares Jaques with Macbeth and Hamlet. The melancholy of both Macbeth and Hamlet seems to be genuine while Jaques is unreal and artificial. 

                                   During the course of play, Jaques doesn’t engage in travel, he frequently changes not his surrounding but his interlocutor. He indulges the habit of gossip, which is a traveller immobilized. Time hangs heavy on Hamlet’s, it is the most obvious point of resemblance between him and Jaques. In another tragedy, time hangs on Macbeth’s hand. He finds himself incapable of believing in the reality even of his wife’s death. Macbeth is rudely shaken when he is informed that Lady Macbeth is dead. He loses interest in the worldly life. He says,

“Life is a tale

 told by an idiot

full of sound and fury

signifying nothing”.

                                        The pathetic cry of the villainous character elevates him to the level of a tragic hero. Hamlet is too young to commit the murder. He, therefore procrastinates, which snowballs into a great problem and results in his melancholy. He cries thus “To be or not to be…” the melancholy of Jaques is forced to him through his “wide travel”. Even Rosalind finds out the nature of his grief. She, therefore, prefers a clown like Jaques.

     

                                     Skepticism of a kind is also similar it is obvious that Hamlet speaks with a disgust or an impatience, Macbeth with a weariness, which Jaques are unknown. Anticipating a little, it might be said that Macbeth and Hamlet lead a fuller, a more complete life than Jaques.     

                                      One consequence is that they cannot easily be betrayed into action. Whereas Jaques looks back without regret, even with complacency, on his travel, it is only with reluctance that Macbeth lapses into the habit of fighting for fighting sake.

                                      Hamlet’s melancholy is caused by the sin of others and Macbeth’s by the sin of his own, so Jaques -if the Duke is to be trusted -has not only travelled but been

                               ….. a libertine,

                             As sensual as the brutish sting itself.

                                    The cure for all three is very much same. Fortinbras( his friend) reproaches Hamlet, and Hamlet reproaches himself, with lacking a “hue of resolution,” which, as it is “native” is a defect he should not possess; Macbeth contrasts  the division of counsels within him, suspending activity, with the strong monarchy or “single state” enjoyed in the healthy man by the reason.

                            Silvius, Touchstone, Orlando, the Duke, each has melancholy of their own; and so too has Rosalind, in so far as she is in love with Orlando.

                                       Touchstone is unromantic. Although he falls in love with Audrey the Shepherdess, his love for Audrey is nor sincere, neither genuine. He wants to marry her with the help of the priest and dessert her later. His division of human life into seven stages is also unromantic. He seems to be more pessimistic than romantic. Rosalind the protagonist of the play also seems to be unromantic in nature. It is true that she falls in love with Orlando. But the fact remains that she has not fallen headlong in love with him. She tries to cure the melody of her lover with wolves howling at the moon during the night.  Thus the characters are unromantic and full of melancholy. Thus, James Smith, one of the great exponents of formalistic criticism finds the similarities in Shakespeare’s characters in both his comedy and tragedy.

                                   Submitted by, 

Marina Delfin