The arden shakespeare co.., p.62
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, page 62
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woman, but something given to lie, as a woman should
not do but in the way of honesty – how she died of the
biting of it, what pain she felt. Truly, she makes a very
good report o’th’ worm; but he that will believe all
that they say shall never be saved by half that they do.
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But this is most falliable, the worm’s an odd worm.
CLEOPATRA Get thee hence. Farewell.
CLOWN I wish you all joy of the worm.
[Sets down his basket.]
CLEOPATRA Farewell.
CLOWN You must think this, look you, that the worm
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will do his kind.
CLEOPATRA Ay, ay. Farewell.
CLOWN Look you, the worm is not to be trusted but in
the keeping of wise people; for, indeed, there is no
goodness in the worm.
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CLEOPATRA Take thou no care; it shall be heeded.
CLOWN Very good. Give it nothing, I pray you, for it is
not worth the feeding.
CLEOPATRA Will it eat me?
CLOWN You must not think I am so simple but I know
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the devil himself will not eat a woman. I know that a
woman is a dish for the gods if the devil dress her not.
But truly, these same whoreson devils do the gods
great harm in their women, for in every ten that they
make, the devils mar five.
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CLEOPATRA Well, get thee gone. Farewell.
CLOWN Yes, forsooth. I wish you joy o’th’ worm. Exit.
Enter IRAS with a robe, crown and other jewels.
CLEOPATRA
Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have
Immortal longings in me. Now no more
The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip.
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[The women dress her.]
Yare, yare, good Iras! Quick! Methinks I hear
Antony call. I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act. I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath. Husband, I come!
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Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. So, have you done?
Come, then, and take the last warmth of my lips.
Farewell, kind Charmian. Iras, long farewell.
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[Kisses them. Iras falls and dies.]
Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?
If thou and nature can so gently part,
The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch
Which hurts and is desired. Dost thou lie still?
If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world
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It is not worth leave-taking.
CHARMIAN
Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain, that I may say
The gods themselves do weep!
CLEOPATRA This proves me base.
If she first meet the curled Antony,
He’ll make demand of her, and spend that kiss
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Which is my heaven to have.
[to the asp; applying it to her breast]
Come, thou mortal wretch,
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie. Poor venomous fool,
Be angry and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak,
That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass
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Unpolicied!
CHARMIAN O eastern star!
CLEOPATRA Peace, peace!
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast
That sucks the nurse asleep?
CHARMIAN O break! O break!
CLEOPATRA As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle –
O Antony! – Nay, I will take thee too.
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[Applies another asp to her arm.]
What should I stay – [Dies.]
CHARMIAN In this vile world? So fare thee well.
Now boast thee, Death, in thy possession lies
A lass unparalleled. Downy windows, close,
And golden Phoebus, never be beheld
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Of eyes again so royal! Your crown’s awry;
I’ll mend it, and then play.
Enter the Guard, rustling in.
1 GUARD Where’s the Queen?
CHARMIAN Speak softly. Wake her not.
1 GUARD Caesar hath sent –
CHARMIAN Too slow a messenger.
[Applies an asp.]
O come apace! Dispatch! I partly feel thee.
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1 GUARD
Approach ho! All’s not well. Caesar’s beguiled.
2 GUARD
There’s Dolabella sent from Caesar. Call him.
Exit a Guardsman.
1 GUARD
What work is here, Charmian? Is this well done?
CHARMIAN It is well done, and fitting for a princess
Descended of so many royal kings.
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Ah, soldier! [Charmian dies.]
Enter DOLABELLA.
DOLABELLA How goes it here?
2 GUARD All dead.
DOLABELLA Caesar, thy thoughts
Touch their effects in this. Thyself art coming
To see performed the dreaded act which thou
So sought’st to hinder.
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Enter CAESAR and all his train, marching.
ALL BUT CAESAR A way there! A way for Caesar!
DOLABELLA O sir, you are too sure an augurer:
That you did fear is done.
CAESAR Bravest at the last,
She levelled at our purposes and, being royal,
Took her own way. The manner of their deaths?
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I do not see them bleed.
DOLABELLA Who was last with them?
1 GUARD
A simple countryman that brought her figs.
This was his basket.
CAESAR Poisoned, then.
1 GUARD O Caesar,
This Charmian lived but now; she stood and spake.
I found her trimming up the diadem
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On her dead mistress. Tremblingly she stood,
And on the sudden dropped.
CAESAR O noble weakness!
If they had swallowed poison, ’twould appear
By external swelling; but she looks like sleep,
As she would catch another Antony
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In her strong toil of grace.
DOLABELLA Here on her breast
There is a vent of blood, and something blown;
The like is on her arm.
1 GUARD This is an aspic’s trail, and these fig leaves
Have slime upon them such as th’aspic leaves
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Upon the caves of Nile.
CAESAR Most probable
That so she died, for her physician tells me
She hath pursued conclusions infinite
Of easy ways to die. Take up her bed,
And bear her women from the monument.
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She shall be buried by her Antony.
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous. High events as these
Strike those that make them, and their story is
No less in pity than his glory which
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Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall
In solemn show attend this funeral,
And then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see
High order in this great solemnity.
Exeunt omnes, the soldiers bearing the dead bodies.
As You Like It
As You Like It seems to have been written about 1599, though it was first published in the Folio of 1623, where it is the tenth of the comedies. The list of Shakespeare’s comedies in Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia, published in 1598, omits this play, but it was listed in the Stationers’ Register on 4 August 1600 as one of four of ‘My lord chamberlain’s men’s plays’ that were ordered ‘to be stayed’ from publication. It is, therefore, roughly contemporaneous with Much Ado About Nothing. The play is based on Thomas Lodge’s popular prose romance, Rosalynde: Euphues’ Golden Legacy (1590), and indeed Lodge’s breezy presentation of his tale ‘to the Gentleman readers’ – ‘if you like it, so’ – may well have suggested the title of Shakespeare’s play. Lodge’s story of Rosader and Rosalynde, itself based on the fourteenth-century Tale of Gamelyn, provides virtually all the elements of the plot of Shakespeare’s play.
Lodge’s novel is one of many late Elizabethan examples of pastoral, a literary mode with classical precedents reaching back to the Greek writer Theocritus, but which in Elizabethan England became a fashionable form seemingly celebrating the virtues of simplicity but doing so in an extravagantly artificial manner. Lodge never criticizes the artificiality of his pastoral tale, but Shakespeare, in giving prominence to the love affair of Rosalind and Orlando (Lodge’s Rosader), lessening the sensationalism of Lodge’s plot and adding to his cast of characters, provides alternative views of Lodge’s idealized story, exposing its artificiality to ironies and revealing the realities that conventions, both literary and social, obscure and, in some cases, ameliorate.
The most important of the play’s counter-voices are Touchstone and Jaques, each similarly sceptical of the idealizing imagination. For the clown, Touchstone, the absurdities he encounters are occasions genially to expose the inconsistencies of the human heart, while for Jaques they become hard evidence for his own cynicism and melancholy. Touchstone indeed marries, joining, with Audrey, the parade of couples marching two by two at the end, but Jaques insistently remains outside the magic circle, going off to join the penitent Duke Frederick, though not before offering the couples his own surprisingly benevolent wishes.
The similarity of Jaques’s blessings to Hymen’s suggests the play’s complex focus. Characters are redeemed and reunited in the Forest of Arden, but there is no magic in the forest. The natural is no more held up as an ideal than is the artificial, the country no more free from criticism than the court. The happy end that the play provides is made possible not by qualities inhering in a locale but by an enduring quality of human goodness, most apparent perhaps in Rosalind’s resilience and creativity, but also evident in Celia, Orlando, Old Adam, Duke Senior and all who come to recognize the natural bonds of humankind.
As You Like It may well have been an early play performed in the Globe Theatre in 1599. Jaques’s ‘All the world’s a stage’ would have resonated wittily in the new theatre, which allegedly bore a motto from Petronius: totus mundus agit histrionem. Indeed, such self-consciousness is marked throughout; Jaques’ fears that characters will speak in ‘blank verse’ call attention to the theatre poetry, just as Rosalind’s male disguise and subsequent female ‘pretence’ (to say nothing of her line in the epilogue, ‘If I were a woman …’) foreground the theatre’s convention of boys acting female parts.
For all the play’s awareness of itself as theatre, there is no record of an early performance (only a later tradition that it was performed by the King’s Men at Wilton in December 1603), and it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that the play became popular on stage, its attractive roles for women certainly part of its new appeal. On the modern stage it has been regularly played, its paradoxical combination of innocence and cynicism, of romanticism and realism, making it a popular comedy able to speak both to our knowledge and to our dreams.
The Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.
LIST OF ROLES
* * *
DUKE SENIOR
living in exile
DUKE FREDERICK
his brother and usurper of his dominions
LE BEAU
a courtier attending on Frederick
CHARLES
Duke Frederick’s wrestler
TOUCHSTONE
a fool at the Duke’s court
WILLIAM
a country fellow
SIR OLIVER Martext
vicar of a country parish
ROSALIND
daughter to Duke Senior
CELIA
daughter to Duke Frederick
PHEBE
a shepherdess
AUDREY
a goat-herd
HYMEN
Lords attending on the Dukes, with Pages and other Attendants
As You Like It
1.1 Enter ORLANDO and ADAM.
ORLANDO As I remember, Adam, it was upon this
fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand
crowns, and, as thou sayst, charged my brother on his
blessing to breed me well; and there begins my
sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and
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report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my part, he
keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more
properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you
that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs
not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred
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better; for besides that they are 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, for the which his animals on his
dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this
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nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something
