Rosalind in As you like it play
The Character Of Life In As You Like It
Consciousness Approach to Shakespeare by Garry Jacobs
Through comedy and tragedy Shakespeare reveals the vast expanses and profound depths of the character of life. For him they are not separate worlds of drama and romance, but poles of a continuum. Helene Gardner writes, ‘Generalization about the essential distinction between tragedy and comedy is called in question, when we turn to Shakespeare, by the inclusiveness of his vision of life.’1 Though the characters differ in stature and power, and the events vary in weight and significance, the movements of life in all Shakespeare’s plays are governed by the same universal principles which move events in our own lives. Through myriad images Shakespeare portrays not only the character of man and society but the character of life itself. A.C. Bradley observes that ‘Shakespeare almost alone among the poets seems to create in somewhat the same manner as Nature.’2 His portrayal of the minutest details of human character and life is true to life ‘and it is just because he is truthful in these smaller things that in greater things we trust him absolutely never to pervert the truth for the sake of some doctrine or purpose of his own.’3
Sri Aurobindo confirms this view in his description of Shakespeare’s creative process.
"Life itself takes hold of him in order to recreate itself in his image, and he sits within himself at its heart and pours out from its impulse a throng of beings as real in the world he creates as men are in this other world... It is this sheer creative Ananda of the life-spirit which is Shakespeare... He is not primarily an artist, a poetical thinker or anything else of the kind, but a great vital creator and intensely, though within marked limits, a seer of life." 4
The difference between comedy and tragedy, success and failure, good fortune and catastrophe often seems to turn on a seemingly chance event. The fall of Desdemona’s handkerchief is the seal
Consciousness Approach to Shakespeare by Garry Jacobs
Through comedy and tragedy Shakespeare reveals the vast expanses and profound depths of the character of life. For him they are not separate worlds of drama and romance, but poles of a continuum. Helene Gardner writes, ‘Generalization about the essential distinction between tragedy and comedy is called in question, when we turn to Shakespeare, by the inclusiveness of his vision of life.’1 Though the characters differ in stature and power, and the events vary in weight and significance, the movements of life in all Shakespeare’s plays are governed by the same universal principles which move events in our own lives. Through myriad images Shakespeare portrays not only the character of man and society but the character of life itself. A.C. Bradley observes that ‘Shakespeare almost alone among the poets seems to create in somewhat the same manner as Nature.’2 His portrayal of the minutest details of human character and life is true to life ‘and it is just because he is truthful in these smaller things that in greater things we trust him absolutely never to pervert the truth for the sake of some doctrine or purpose of his own.’3
Sri Aurobindo confirms this view in his description of Shakespeare’s creative process.
"Life itself takes hold of him in order to recreate itself in his image, and he sits within himself at its heart and pours out from its impulse a throng of beings as real in the world he creates as men are in this other world... It is this sheer creative Ananda of the life-spirit which is Shakespeare... He is not primarily an artist, a poetical thinker or anything else of the kind, but a great vital creator and intensely, though within marked limits, a seer of life." 4
The difference between comedy and tragedy, success and failure, good fortune and catastrophe often seems to turn on a seemingly chance event. The fall of Desdemona’s handkerchief is the seal