(no subject)

[skygiants]

I don't know that Angela Thirlwell's Rosalind: A Biography of Shakespeare's Immortal Heroine was particularly mind-blowing for me as a text in terms of new knowledge or insights on As You Like It. However, it certainly was satisfying for me to read, in the way it is always satisfying to read a book with someone who passionately agrees with you about a mildly contrarian fannish opinion, like:

Angela Thirlwell: I simply think Rosalind is the absolute top-tier Shakespeare heroine
Me [nodding vigorously]: How true!
Angela Thirlwell: she is so witty and clever and in absolute total narrative control of her text and also doing gender like nobody else in Shakespeare
Me [nodding vigorously]: I think everyone who puts on an As You Like It should read your book!
Angela Thirwell: and As You Like It is a brilliant work that hangs together brilliantly in its entirety
Me [nodding en--pausing]: well I'm not sure I agree entirely with that
Angela Thirlwell: and here's my chapter on Rosalind's Daughters which includes every literary heroine I've ever loved. Elizabeth Bennet is kind of a Rosalind when you think about it.
Me [nodding politely]: I see, I see. Do you have any evidence for that?
Angela Thirlwell: Well, no. But! I believe it in my heart. Because Rosalind is the best!
Me [nodding vigorously]: She's the best!

The part that was probably most interesting for me in terms of actual new thoughts about Rosalind and As You Like It was the contextualization of the play in in terms of when, exactly, it was written, and what other plays it sits alongside in its canonical period, including some that are relatively unfamiliar to me -- I don't actually have a great constant sense in my head of Shakespeare's timeline (other than the obvious TEMPEST IS THE LAST) and the Great Chronological DWJ Project has made me much more interested in tracing the way a train of thought evolves over the course of somebody's work. It's interesting to see Rosalind and Viola as different ways of working out a concept that begins all the way back in Two Gentlemen of Verona; Thirlwell makes much of the fact that Viola is stressed and and serious and poetic whereas Rosalind is almost always speaking in comic prose, and takes charge of her own epilogue. Indeed she never forgets to remind us that Rosalind has the epilogue. You can tell what Thirlwell's favorite bits of the play are because she will quote them at least times in the text in order to prove five different points, blissfully unconcerned with repetition. I personally did not need to return quite so many times to the Bay of Portugal but I guess even the fact that Rosalind speaks the greatest percentage of her play of any Shakespeare heroine [good for her!] does not provide that many Rosalind lines to quote from.

Anyway. Do I think you ought to read this book if not for the pleasure of nodding vigorously along with various enthusiastic statements about Rosalind? Like, do I think it will transform you into a person who nods vigorously along with enthusiastic statements about Rosalind, if you were not one previously? Who could say! Report back if you find out!

Comments

[larryhammer]

It took me more sentences than I like to admit to realize the author was not in fact Angela Thirkell, even though I was pretty darn sure she never wrote Shakespearean scholarship.

Also, a wonderful As You Like It might be, it has heavy competition in the form of Twelfth Night, the closest thing to a perfect romcom that can be created by mortals.

[kore]

LOL, SOME of us were like "Oh hey, I didn't know Angela Thirkell wrote Shakespearean scholarship! Neat!"

....yeah.

[skygiants]

I love Twelfth Night very much, and I feel like I've seen many more excellent Twelfth Nights than As You Like Its and people have a better sense of how to make the text sing on stage, but I firmly believe that the perfect staging of As You Like It that exists in my head and so far nowhere else could give any Twelfth Night a run for its money. (The one that really in my heart I believe gives As You Like It the heaviest competition is Much Ado.)

[larryhammer]

Much Ado does indeed belong up there in the trinity.* But I'd argue that there are more excellent Twelfth Nights than As You Like Its is evidence of its superiority.


* Alas, poor Midsummer ...

[likeadeuce]

I haven't revisited this play for a while but I remember being impressed with the way Rosalind says 'What think you of falling in love' and then...does. I don't think there are many iconic heroines who get to do that.

[skygiants]

Rosalind really does get to do a number of things that many iconic heroines don't get to do. She tells the play how to go and it goes!

[kore]

...brb looking this up immediately

[skygiants]

It was immediately available for me in Libby! not that much competition around here it seems for the Nodding Enthusiastically About Rosalind society

[kore]

MWAHA it is MINE

....of course I did recently snag a bunch of old VI Warshawski paperbacks for like fifty cents each! With yellowed pages, lolsob

[rmc28]

One of my best friends, since we met at university nearly 30 years ago, was named for Rosalind, and every so often we go to see As You Like It together, on principle.

(The Cambridge Shakespeare Festival has it in reliable rotation, although not apparently this year.)

[skygiants]

I'm jealous, I feel like it gets performed pretty rarely around here! I get a reliable stream of Twelfth Nights and Much Ados but rarely any Rosalind.

[hilarita]

You have reminded me to get a season ticket!

I am very pro-Rosalind.

[antisoppist]

I am reading Emma Smith's This is Shakespeare How to read the world's greatest playwright (because Val McDermid chose it on an episode of Good Reads that was repeated on BBC radio 4 extra) and although the book is great, and puts its selected plays in their chronological context as well as talking about what different productions have done with them since, I was outraged that it did not include As You Like It.

I love As You Like It. I did it for A-level and we went to Stratford and I saw Fiona Shaw as Celia, which did make 17 year-old me view it as the story of self-sacrificing Celia going into exile to live with her Best Friend in a shepherd's hut and embracing the experience. But I am also willing to read about Rosalind's greatness as well.

[skygiants]

This does sound like a compelling read but I would be similarly outraged!

I think a fantastic Celia can absolutely make you feel like it's Celia's play, I haev to imagine Fiona Shaw would knock it out of the park. (Years ago a friend of mine posited that you could do a lot by casting Oliver as a woman whose resentment towards her brother stems from the Experience of Misogyny and I yearn to see that staging sell me on a Celia/Oliver lesbian romance.)

[larryhammer]

I'd totally be down for that.

[antisoppist]

I would definitely watch that!

Here is 1980s Fiona Shaw. And Juliet Stevenson as Rosalind, Alan Rickman as a very gloomy Jaques and Lesley Manville as Phoebe.
https://www.photostage.co.uk/shakespeare/as-you-like-it/1985-rsc.html

[selki]

Oh golly, I bet that was a joy to watch.

[antisoppist]

It was a school trip. I was very lucky. None of them were that well-known at the time. But it's my story that doesn't quite equal my grandma happening to see a young Judi Dench as Juliet, which I am really jealous of although I wasn't born.

[sovay]

(Years ago a friend of mine posited that you could do a lot by casting Oliver as a woman whose resentment towards her brother stems from the Experience of Misogyny and I yearn to see that staging sell me on a Celia/Oliver lesbian romance.)

TWIST MY ARM, FINE.

[troisoiseaux]

My copy has been sitting on a table since I picked it up at that library book sale... I have to actually get around to reading it, now!

[elsane]

I had a copy of "Tales from Shakespeare" as as a child and As You Like It was hands-down my favorite, to the extent that my mother told me gently that if I wanted to write stories maybe I should not just retell As You Like It every time. In hindsight this was quite clearly in large part because Rosalind was obviously enormously cool and got to do all the best things.

I saw it done in Stratford-on-Avon lo these many years ago and remember it being a really excellent performance, but no longer remember any particulars as to why. I agree it is strangely under-performed!