“And shining morning face….”: The Sun figure,

the secret cosmic Mummer’s play and Giordano

Bruno’s philosophy in As You Like It

:

Curio: Will you go hunt, my lord?

Orsino: What Curio?

Curio: The hart, my lord.

Orsino: Why, so I do, the noblest that I have.

O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,

Methought she purg’d the air of pestilence!

That instant was I turn’d into a hart,

And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,

E’er since pursue me. (I.i.16-22)

The reference to Actaeon and Diana is clear in the opening passage from Twelfth Night. What has not

been clear, however, is the importance of this passage as a signal of the presence of Giordano Bruno’s

philosophy from Gli Eroici Furori, where Actaeon’s fate is used as a metaphor for the heroic intellect

approaching the Divine:

…But yet, to no one does it seem possible to see the sun, the universal

Apollo, the absolute light through supreme and most excellent species; but

only its shadow, its Diana, the world, the universe, nature, which is in things,

light which is in the opacity of matter, that is to say, so far as it shines in the

darkness.

Many of them wander amongst the aforesaid paths of this deserted wood,

very few are those who find the fountain of Diana. Many are content to hunt

for wild beasts and things less elevated, and the greater number do not

understand why, having spread their nets to the wind, they find their hands

full of flies. Rare, I say, are the Actaeons to whom fate has granted the power

of contemplating the nude Diana and who, entranced with the beautiful

disposition of the body of nature, and led by those two lights, the twin

splendor of Divine goodness and beauty become transformed into stags; for

they are no longer hunters but become that which is hunted. For the ultimate

and final end of this sport, is to arrive at the acquisition of that fugitive and

wild body, so that the thief becomes the thing stolen, the hunter becomes the

thing hunted; in all other kinds of sport, for special things, the hunter

possesses himself of those things, absorbing them with the mouth of his own

intelligence; but in that Divine and universal pne, he comes to understand to

such an extent that he becomes of necessity included, absorbed, united.

Whence from common, ordinary, civil, and popular, he becomes wild, like a

stag, an inhabitant of the woods; he lives god-like under that grandeur of the

forest; he lives in the simple chambers of the cavernous mountains, whence

he beholds the great rivers; he vegetates intact and pure from ordinary greed,

where the speech of the Divine converses more freely, to which so many men

have aspired who longed to taste the Divine life while upon earth, and who

with one voice have said: Ecce elongavi fugiens, et mansi in solitudine. Thus

the dogs---thoughts of Divine things---devour Actaeon, making him dead to

the vulgar and the crowd, loosened from the knots of perturbation from the

senses, free from the fleshly prison of matter, whence they no longer see their

Diana as through a hole or window, but having thrown down the walls to the

earth, the eye opens to a view of the whole horizon. So that he sees all as

one…..(Bruno, The Heroic Enthusiasts, 66-68)

Orsino, who secretly personifies Shakespeare’s own wishes, eventually does achieve a family union

with Olivia (the secret sun figure), when he marries Viola, who is the twin of Sebastian, who has married

Olivia. And (in another paper1) I have addressed how Malvolio’s treatment in his prison intentionally

1 “’Hang him, foul collier’: the fossil fuel endgame and Giordano Bruno’s trial expressed Hermetically in Twelfth Night” (unpublished)

echoes the treatment of Giordano Bruno at the hands of the Inquistition, but makes what was heretical in

Rome now the correct answer.

It is not surprising that can we see Diana and Giordano Bruno again in another festive comedy of

Shakespeare’s, Much Ado About Nothing, where a lady, Hero, will feign death so that:

When (Claudio) will hear she died upon his words,

The idea of her life shall sweetly creep

Into his study of imagination,

And every lovely organ of her life

Shall come apparell’d in more precious habit,

More moving, delicate, and full of life,

Into the eye and prospect of his soul…(IV.i.223-229)

Hero’s body and “life” is here the earth, the planet, nature, like Diana, the Divine nature in Eroici Furori.

Bruno, as I have shown in another paper2 is also allegorized in Hero, unjustly slandered, left for dead,

then mourned bitterly, then (one day) resurrected.

If Bruno’s heliocentricism, other aspects of his philosophy and his treatment at the hands of the

Inquisition appear so prominently though secretly in Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing, then

should Bruno not also appear in another Shakespearean festive comedy, namely As You Like It? In fact, he

is very much present in this comedy, a play whose forest setting also recalls the wilderness scene in Eroici

2 “’I will die in it at the stake’—‘Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic’: Giordano Bruno’s fiery execution inscribed secretly in Much Ado About Nothing” (unpublished)

Furori I quote above as well as the line (which Bruno quotes from Psalms 55,8): ‘Ecce elongavi fugiens,

et mansi in solitudine’, or ‘Lo, I have gone far off flying away and I abode in the wilderness’). All three

of Shakespeare’s major festive comedies are inspired, passionate and personal celebrations and defenses

of Bruno’s work and life.

The wounded stag appears, again

Given the immense importance of the Actaeon-Diana passage in Gli Eroici Furori for Shakespeare,

it is no coincidence that as in Twelfth Night, the image of a hunted stag appears in As You Like It, and it

appears at the same time that one prominent character, Jaques, is first introduced and then described in

relation to it, for it is Jaques who talks to it and spends time with it, and therefore becomes associated

with it

Duke Senior: Come, shall we go and kill us venison?

And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,

Being native burghers of this desert city,

Should in their own confines with forked heads

Have their round haunches gor’d.

First Lord: Indeed my Lord.

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,

And in that kind swears you do more usurp

Than doth your brother that hath banished you.

To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself

Did steal behind him as he lay along

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out

Upon the brook that brawls along this wood,

To the which place a poor sequest’red stag,

That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en hurt,

Did come to languish; and indeed, my lord,

The wretched animal heav’d forth such groans

That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat

Almost to bursting, and the big round tears

Cours’d one another down his innocent nose

In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,

Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,

Augmenting it with tears. (II.i.21-43)

Duke Senior: But what said Jaques? Did he not moralize the spectacle?

First Lord: O yes, into a thousand similes,

First, for his weeping into the needless stream:

“Poor deer”, quoth he,”thou mak’st a testament

As worldlings do, giving your sum of more

To that which had too much.” Then being there

Alone,

Left and abandoned of his velvet friends:

“’Tis right”, quoth he, “thus misery doth part

The flux of company”. Anon a careless herd,

Full of the pasture, jumps along by him

And never stays to greet him. “Ay”, quoth Jaques,

“Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens,

‘Tis just the fashion. Wherefore do you look

Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?”

Thus most invectively he pierceth through

The body of the country, city, court,

Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we

Are mere usurpers, tyrants and what’s worse,

To fright the animals and to kill them up

In their assign’d and native dwelling place. (II.1.21-64)

Many allusions to both Bruno’s situation and his ideas are inscribed in the passage. The wounded

deer is suffering and on the verge of death, as Bruno was before his execution: “sequest’red” refers to

Bruno’s imprisonment, while the word “innocent” stands as Shakespeare’s own private verdict on the

accused man. The sad “groans” and “tears” of the deer recall the sufferings of Bruno, burned at the stake.

Brunian philosophy, “whose antique root peeps out” like that of the oak, in that Bruno used classical

thinkers, is also alluded to in the passage. “Flux” and the repeated references to streams and movement of

water recalls the important Brunian concept of vicissitudes, while “he pierceth through the body of the

country, city, court, Yea, of this our life” Hermetically broadcasts Shakespeare’s own warm, whole-

hearted endorsement of Bruno’s philosophy. In fact, with this lengthy passage about a wounded deer, a

secret allusion to the wounded deer in the Actaeon myth, Shakespeare has managed to associate Jaques

secretly with Bruno, who had probably been executed by the time As You Like It was written. (As You Like

It first shows up in the records on August 4, 1600 (when it was one of four plays which the Lord

Chamberlain’s Men asked to be “staied” from publication.))

The Sun Figure

A modern, sweeping cosmology with an essentially correct though nascent thermodynamic basis

was not Giordano Bruno’s only gift. Also, Bruno’s art of memory seems to have suggested to

Shakespeare an inventive technique for constructing cosmic allegories, where each major character would

have a hidden cosmic identity, which would be playfully or Hermetically revealed ( ‘Juliet is the sun’)

through esoteric but logical imagery.

In the earlier Romeo and Juliet, the word “sun” appears 16 times; it is one of the key words in the

play. But clearly, as a conveyor of the presence of a secret sun figure in a more subtle, later play, it is just

too overt to function well. That is why the word “sun”, though important in As You Like It, is found only

three times. On the other hand, the word “fool” is found 35 times in this play. That is the third most times

for any of Shakespeare’s plays, behind Twelfth Night (62) and King Lear (60). But why should we be

concerned about the word “fool” in As You Like It? That is another strange example of how obscure and

opaque portraying the sun figure has become by now for Shakespeare. The fool or clown character is an

old one, closer to the sun because this character dates back to the festive occasions and rituals that started

as seasonal rites and festivals. In Shakespeare, fools are important because they generally signal the

presence of a sun figure by being (in some way) close to the sun figure: Lear’s fool “hath much pin’d

away” (I.iv.74) for Cordelia, and the Nurse is Juliet’s closest confidante. However, fools/clown figures

are not usually the sun figure him/herself, and so with As You Like It, the sun figure is indeed not

Touchstone (who is an actual court fool), but Jacques, whose hidden identity is given away in two very

important speeches of his, and whose identity is so closely linked with Bruno (though secretly) when

Jaques is first mentioned in the long passage above about the hunted deer.

It is characteristic of speeches which hint strongly at the true nature of the sun figure not to have any

real plot value, since their purpose is to establish allegorical associations and background ideas. Also, the

speeches may feature the sun figure posing as someone else, emoting, declaiming or otherwise

‘performing’ (a kind of dramatic ‘shining’ through reflection and re-reflection since the performer is

already engaged in a performance). Thus the emotional and dramatic value of the speeches is high, while

the informational value is low. Juliet’s “Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds”(III.ii.1) speech is one

example; Bottom’s impression of the tyrant Ercles: “And Phibbus’ car/Shall shine from far” (I.ii.35) is

another. The main (but not the only) speech that gives away Jacques’ identity as the cosmic sun figure is

his own speech:

A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ the forest

A motley fool. A miserable world!

As I do live by food, I met a fool,

Who laid him down, and basked him in the sun,

And rail’d on Lady Fortune in good terms,

In good set terms, and yet a motley fool.

“Good morrow, fool”, quoth I. “No, sir” quoth he,

“Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.”

And then he drew a dial from his poke,

And looking on it, with lack-lustre eye,

Says very wisely, “It is ten o’clock.

Thus may we see,” quoth he, “how the world wags.

‘Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,

And after one hour more ‘twill be eleven,

And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,

And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot;

And thereby hangs a tale.” When I did hear

The motley fool thus moral on the time,

My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,

That fools should be so deep contemplative;

And I did laugh sans intermission

An hour by his dial. O noble fool!

A worthy fool! Motley’s the only wear. (I.vii.12-34)

The directly sun-related words or phrases (sun, morrow, heaven, hour, dial, o’clock, crow like

chanticleer, time) accumulate emblematically, and because they are spoken by Jacques, it is to

Jacques that they become linked subconsciously. (Even the words “ripe and ripe” and “rot and rot”

indirectly bring to mind the workings of the sun on a fruit tree.) Jacques’ enchantment with this

clown figure therefore is a clue to his role as a sun figure. In addition, the speech and the one that

shortly follows it, also spoken by Jacques, together have 14 occasions of the word “fool” out of a

total of 35 for the whole play---40% of the total, in other words! The abundance and high

concentration of this important word so suddenly in a scene which essentially belongs to Jacques is a

clear tip-off that something odd or disrupting is happening. The word “fool” as it occurs here is a sort

of mechanistic device used to penetrate the conscious and create a mental map of “Jacques=Sun”

through triangulating the solar or solar-connected images that surround him. Shakespeare could have

picked up on this technique through his work in the theater, where he had access to audiences and

could watch their reactions on a repeated basis.

The above speech leaves some room for ambiguity (i.e. the sun figure might after all be

Touchstone) which Shakespeare soon (in the very same scene) puts to rest with another speech of

Jacques’, perhaps the most famous one in the play: the “all the world’s a stage” set-piece, which

delineates the ‘seven ages of man’. The speech seems to situate Jacques at a distance and aloof from

his fellow man, and critics have looked only at the subject matter where they have agreed, “(the)

melancholy certainties which Jacques so admires are platitudes of the most obvious

kind…..moreover it is generalized and demonstrably untrue”. (Evans 367). But this critique falls

directly into the trap of examining Shakespeare’s works through a literary lens, not one that is

informed by dramatic concerns. Therefore it misses the way in which the subject matter is once again

used to generate solar imagery in the minds of the audience. The subject matter, the progression of

human life from birth to death, would be noted as an indication of a set piece meant to highlight the

sophistication of Jaques. But this also means that it would subsequently escape notice on another

level, where startling imagery flashes into the unconsciousness and gets subtly registered. For

example, the phrase “then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel/ And shining morning face…”

(II.vii.145-6) (my emphasis) briefly flashes an image of the sun. Through diverting the attention,

Shakespeare delivers a sun image straight to the unconscious without arousing any alarms.

Shakespeare wants and needs a sun figure in this play, as in all his comedies and tragedies; but, in the

interest of ‘magical effects’ he also needs the sun figure to go unrecognized by the conscious minds

of the audience. A delicate balance had to be struck. (Yet probably the very fame of this very

attractive speech in our culture subtly points to its secret power and the care and attention

Shakespeare took to compose it.)

The fool in seasonal festivals, processions and such often wore ass’s ears or animal masks. And

the word “ass” appears in relation to Jaques, or spoken by him. “If it do come to pass/That any man

turn ass” (II.v.50-1). 30 lines later Duke Senior says of Jacques, “I think he be transform’d into a

beast” (II.vii.1). This line also recalls the title of Giordano Bruno’s book Lo Spaccio della besta

trionfante (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast).

Later, during the ‘cure’ scene, it will be clear why Jaques’ power as the sun is necessary.

The Secret Mummer’s Play

The real action of the secret play (because it is a Mummer’s Play) is a “cure”. (This Mummer’s

play template seems to be the case for A Midsummer Nights Dream and Twelfth Night also.)

Rosalind, you will note, tells Orlando, “I will not cast away my physic but on those that are sick”,

and with these lines the outer play moves into a strange and experimental Mummer’s Play. There has

been no hint that she is a doctor or clinician of any sort until now. And what sort of sickness will she

treat? Love is hardly a sickness or debility (or deadly disease or wound) such as were in traditional

Mummer’s Plays. (In fact, in the next scene, Rosalind says, “men have died from time to time, and

worms have eaten them, but not for love” (IV.i.106-7)). Orlando seems perfectly all right. Yet he

plays along, inquiring, “I pray you tell me your remedy” (III.ii.367). Then the words “cur’d” or

“cure” appear five times in a short spate of witty dialogue that ends scene ii of Act III, ending with

the plan of Rosalind’s, “ I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosaline, and come every day to

my cote and woo me.” (III.ii.427)

Shakespeare has drastically modified the Mummer’s Play at the core of the action. The original

Mummer’s Plays had ritual origins “in the fertility rites and agrarian festivals of pre-feudal and pre-

Christian village communities” (Weimann 17). Weimann describes the interior structure of the

Mummer’s Play as follows:

The basic four-part structure of the play begins with an introduction in

which one of the actors addresses the surrounding audience asking for

room to play and requesting, sometimes, their attention as well. This is

followed by the hero-combat, in which two protagonists (often St.

George and the Turkish Knight) appear to boast of their strength and

engage in battle; the defeated player is subsequently wounded or killed.

A doctor, usually assisted by an impudent young servant, is then

summoned to heal the fighter’s wounds or resurrect him from the dead.

A number of comic characters appear in the last part of the play, which

ends finally with a collection and another address to the audience.

(Weimann 15-6)

The basic structure of the Mummer’s play (and its older ritual purpose) remains. Now, in As You

Like It, the central and most important piece of action is the “cure” of the out-of-order cosmic crisis

situation (represented through the allegorical character that Orlando’s character allegorizes, of which

more later: the “love” cure is only an outward sign of the allegorical real cosmic cure). In addition, all

four of the parts of a Mummer’s play that Weimann identifies are strictly and formally retained in As

You Like It: Shakespeare adapts them smoothly for his sophisticated Elizabethan audience, but they

remain at heart what they were originally.

The request for the audience’s attention occurs in an odd but utterly charming manner that could

very well go unnoticed for what it is because it has been so imaginatively transformed. In Act II, scene

v, the men who attend Duke Senior are singing in the forest. The song they sing has a few different

verses, but always with the same refrain, “come hither, come hither, come hither”. It is worth noting,

too, that this song participates in solar imagery: “who doth ambition shun/And loves to live i’ the sun”

(II.v.39) (my emphasis); and in one verse (sung of course by Jacques) there is the previously

mentioned line: “If it do come to pass/That any man turn ass” (II.v.50-1) The old cultural pathway

back to village festivals and seasonal rites (where folk music was sung in a rural setting) is being

subtly opened here, subtly cleared, and the urbane Elizabethan audience would have found itself,

dramatically at least, invited down along this path, and also no doubt captivated by the difference

between its own “workaday world” of Elizabethan London (which Rosalind subtly alludes to by

complaining of her own situation at court) and the old things, the songs, festivals and life of the

countryside, which were now for the city people just a distant memory, impossible to return to.

The last part of the Mummer’s Play format (the collection and another address to the audience) is

quite modified in the epilogue where Rosalind explains, “I am not furnish’d like a beggar, therefore to

beg will not become me” and then adds playful commands (“I charge you, O women…I charge you, O

men…… (V.iv.12-14)), which are a kind of direct address. And the epilogue ends with the line “I am

sure, as many as have good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths, will for my kind offer, when I

make curtsy, bid me farewell”, which is another kind of collection (because it is a request for action on

the part of the audience). Shakespeare was utterly faithful to the conventions and shape of the

Mummer’s Play, another clue that its traditional ritual significance in welcoming the return of the sun

(through performance at the solstice) may have also been an idea that found resonance with his own

cosmic concerns.

The “hero-combat” part of the secret Mummer’s Play (where the hero is wounded or killed) takes

place before the “come hither come hither come hither” song is sung, so in this way, also, Shakespeare

transformed the original Mummer’s Play pattern by changing around the usual progression of its parts.

The hero-combat part of the secret Mummer’s Play has, as I have said, a cosmic dimension, which

parallels the cosmic action taking place secretly in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Orlando: another cosmic character in the secret play

Who is Orlando in the secret play? One clue to his identity may lie in the word “land” inside

Orlando’s name. Shakespeare’s main source for the subject matter of As You Like It is Thomas

Lodge’s prose work Rosalynde, where the persecuted younger brother character is not named Orlando,

but “Rosader”. Orlando’s description of his troubles are the opening lines of the play; therefore this

speech is very important:

As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeath’d to me by will

but poor a thousand crowns and, as thou say’st, charg’d my brother, on his

blessing, to breed me well; and there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he

keeps at school, and 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 better, for besides they are fair

with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and to that end, riders dearly

hir’d; but I (his brother) gain nothing under him but growth, for the which his

animals on the dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this nothing

that he so plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me, his

countenance seems to take from me. He lets me feed with his hinds, bars me

the place of brother, and as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my

education. This is it, Adam, that grieves me, and the spirit of my father, which I

think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude. I will no longer

endure it, though yet I know no wise remedy how to avoid it. (I.i.1-25)

The word “mines” is an interesting word that Hermetically references “coal”. But, more than just

containing a direct reference to fossil fuels, these important opening lines contain a secret indictment

of what was happening to the rural economy as it became secondary to the powerful cities as coal

altered everything. Words or phrases like “a thousand crowns”, “profit”, “dearly hir’d” and “growth”,

along with “mines”, Hermetically critique the socioeconomic changes happening as coal became the

primary fuel for England: The Elizabethan chronicler William Harrison noted that “the ground of the

parish is gotten up into a few mens hands, yea, sometimes into the tenure of (one) two or three,

whereby the rest are compelled wither to be hired servants unto the other, or else to beg their bread in

miserie from doore to doore” (Harrison qtd in Weimann 162).

Orlando is rural England, bent toward capitalism and profit under the new fossil fuel regime. In a

climate of economic growth, increasing energy use and increasing complexity, cities attract people,

especially the most talented, naturally drawn to compete, and also worried about being left behind

(“mines my gentility and my education”). In a sense, rural voices are no longer heard. Orlando’s

phrase “the spirit of my father” recalls the idea that the old order (the old sun economy) has died,

giving way to a new order (allegorized in the figure of Orlando’s brother Oliver).

Once again, the technique of using a name like “Orlando” to allegorize, in practice, the rural and

green land of Elizabethan England is dependent on the process of theatrical performance. The audience

would hear, again and again “Orlando” and catch (but not consciously---of course the words are very

different!) the word “land”. It is notable that in Scene I, attention is subtly called to Orlando’s name

when Duke Frederick asks him, “What is thy name, young man?” (I.ii.221). Shortly before that, yet

again underscoring Orlando’s allegorical role, Charles calls out to Orlando, “where is this young

gallant that is so desirous to lie with his mother earth” (I.ii.200-1) (my emphasis). At the end of hiss

opening speech, Orlando admits that he knows “no wise remedy how to avoid” this situation where he

is constantly treated as an inferior. But, later, through the cure scene, the play enacts the answer.

The heart of the cosmic ritual: the “cure” scene

The cure includes contact between the natural world and the sun figure---in fact, the cure is contact

with the sun figure. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the contact between Titania and Bottom includes

(perhaps) a physical (i.e. sexual) union; in any case, it includes overwhelming adoration and emotional

captivation. The radiant sun figure “shines” on the natural world and the natural world responds with joy

and passion, putting an end to all cosmic and systemic troubles. The same basic ritualistic and cosmic event

(a meeting between the sun figure and the natural world figure) happens in As You Like It but in an entirely

more subtle and camouflaged way. Thus it is not at all true that there is a “baffling…..absence of any clear

or logical pattern of artistic development” in “Shakespeare’s whole career, and particularly about its first

decade” (Greenblatt 297). To see the artist develop, we have to examine how he presented and obscured his

secret plays.

I have noted how in the tragedies after Romeo and Juliet, the secret morality plays went underground

and became even more subtle and secret. The same holds true for the comedies after A Midsummer

Night’s Dream. To conceal the main dramatic ritual action is why the contact between Jacques (the sun)

and Orlando (the land) is so very brief, so mysterious, and seems almost perfunctory and indeed almost

unnecessary.

Without understanding the sun-nature cosmic play at the center of the drama therefore, critics, utterly

missing the point, have tended to describe the action in As You Like It like this: “As the days go by in

Arden, two or more characters meet, converse and part, to be succeeded on the stage by another group of

people concerned to explore a different, but related, point of view….Shakespeare refuses to legislate or

even to take sides in the various rivalries the comedy sets up” (Evans 365-6). Shakespeare constructed the

outer play so well that his hidden ideological idea at the center has remained a perfect secret. He did

indeed “take sides” (he was on the side of seeing everything as one huge interconnected cosmic system,

the idea that Giordano Bruno puts forth, where changes in one aspect might have profound and

unintended effects everywhere), but he hid that point of view.

The “cure” scene between Jacques and Orlando seems very different from that which takes place

between Titania and Bottom. First of all, the former pair of characters are antagonistic toward each other.

Jacques says, “let’s meet as little as we can,” (III.ii. 257) and Orlando retorts, “I do desire that we may be

better strangers” (III.ii.258). They bicker and argue and insult each other. No hint of any miraculous

“cure” seems to occur, in other words. But examine the dialogue again: Jacques has noted and read the

trees which Orlando has carved. Jacques says, “I pray you mar no more trees with writing love-songs in

the barks” (III.ii.259) and then asks, “Rosalind is your love’s name?” (III.ii.262), implying that he has

read the verses, that Orlando can express himself here in the forest, (he finds his voice in a place that does

not, obviously, run on coal) and the cosmic sun figure has read them, connecting them on some level.

(Rosalind, the doctor figure is mentioned, also, including her in the secret ritual). Then Jacques, rather

exasperated with Orlando’s quick and witty replies, says, “you are full of pretty answers; have you not

been acquainted with goldsmith’s wives and conn’d them out of rings?” (III.ii.270-3) (my emphasis).

Orlando, who could not talk to Rosalind in the first scene (“What passion hangs these weights upon my

tongue?” (I.ii.257) is instead now “full of pretty answers”. In addition, “goldsmith’s wives” contains the

word “gold” in it, and gold has always been the metal traditionally and mythically associated with the sun

(Cohen 353). And when Jacques adds, “and conn’d them out of rings” he also makes reference to a circle

shape, like the sun. The “pretty answers” that Orlando is now capable of voicing are metaphorically

linked to this solar/gold ring image because they have (in Jacques’ rhetorical wordplay) been read from

(that is originated from) the golden rings. A shining, glimmering verbal event---the briefest flash of a

golden circle ---disguised as a humble piece of ordinary conversation is the ritual solar magic that releases

the hero from his state of disorder. The rural land has its voice again (because a solar-based economy,

resulting, obviously from the depletion of fossil fuels, ensures it).

Coal had produced the booming metropolis, the “painted pomp” (II.i.3) of the court that Duke Senior

refers to, and this idea of an effete, vitiated, unwholesome locus of the court, the stand-in for the capital

city of London of the time, permeates the whole play. The artificiality and competitiveness of the city

environment seems in the play to give rise to a strangely underhanded, empty, and devious social code.

Touchstone’s claim, “I have flatter’d a lady, I have been politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy,

I have undone three tailors, I have had four quarrels, and like to have fought one” (V.iv.44-48), gives the

theme its most amusing expression.

But to return to the cure scene once more, the most fascinating and illustrative element of all has yet

to be unveiled. Perceptive readers will notice that Rosalind (the doctor) first mentions a cure for Orlando

(“I will not cast away my physic…”) in III.ii.358. However, Orlando and Jacques enter the scene together

and have the important “goldsmith’s wives” conversation earlier than this ----the stage direction “Enter

Orlando and Jacques” occurs in III.ii.251---- placing the real “golden rings” cure (the encounter between

the sun figure and the natural world) even before Rosalind and Orlando discuss the cure. How can this

be?

Shakespeare’s dramatic creativity managed to satisfy the conventional needs of the form while he

also totally innovated the form to satisfy his own creative needs. Thus it will be noted that while Jacques

and Orlando conduct their important “goldsmiths’ wives” conversation, Rosalind and Celia (the doctor in

the Mummer’s play always had an assistanti) are in fact present. They do not exit the scene (in which they

have already been carrying on a long conversation) when Jacques and Orlando enter. Instead, Rosalind

and Celia merely stop conversing and Rosalind tells Celia, interestingly, “slink by, and note him”

(III.ii.253). Rosalind and Celia are simply not noted by Jacques and Orlando, implying that they are

hidden. Thus Rosalind, the doctor, and Celia, the assistant, are dramatically present at the cure scene, and

in some unseen way, simply by being there, can ontologically carry out the cure. The organization of the

whole episode is a chance to confuse the apprehending intellect of the audience. The subconscious mind

might note the subtle, silent, semi-hidden presence of someone (Rosalind) soon thereafter affirmed as

some sort of doctor; the flash of gold (in a significant circle “ring” shape, like the sun); the sun figure

entering and exiting without interacting with the doctor or the assistant, underlining his distant and

mythical status as a sun (after all!) in the cosmos. An important ritual has been conducted, all undercover,

almost completely through gestures, exits, entrances, rather than words: it is amazing actually, to think of

this hidden archaic piece of work, a 16th century artist’s conception of a certain cosmic system in action,

but secreted from direct view, hidden in plain sight all these years.

Prefiguring Jacques’ Cosmic Powers: a microcosmic anecdote

Returning to the important image of the wounded stag, which connects Jaques to Giordano Bruno,

through the myth of Actaeon, we can also see that the stag episode echoes the “cure” scene that will take

place later between Jaques and Orlando. The first lord describes the action:

i The Greek physician Asclepius had an assistant too: “Statues of Asklepios are often accompanied by the dwarfish figure of Telesphoros (“bringer of the goal”) a hooded boy who is associated with mystery cults like the one at Eleusius” (page 465, Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade. New York, NY: Macmillan. 1986).

Thus most invectively (Jacques) pierceth through

The body of the country, city, court,

Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we

Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what’s worse,

To fright the animals and to kill them up

In their assigned and native dwelling place. (II.i.58-63)

By grieving over the wounded deer, Jacques gives voice to the perspective of the creatures of the

forest. In that sense, as a sun figure, his power to later help restore the voice of the “wounded” natural

world, Orlando, is prefigured by this early scene with the deer. Duke Senior finds the whole story

highly amusing; the scene is treated as a funny and juicy anecdote that reveals Jacques’ “melancholy”

nature. But the reactions of the other characters are only another inventive way to camouflage the first

stirring intimations of a cosmic natural power in this play: this story is where we first hear the name

Jacques and learn anything about him at all. The image, initial and introductory as it is, crystallizes an

image of personality in sympathy with a huge cosmic nature, and this is Giordano Bruno. The “tongues

on trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything” (II.i.16-7) are a

poetical characterization of Giordano Bruno’s heroic efforts to capture nature in his writings and ideas,

in a sense, to give the whole cosmos a voice.

The Magician

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon was a real fairy with supernatural powers. He was also

the doctor figure in the secret Mummer’s Play. With real supernatural powers, he could accomplish

magic, and he does so. However, in As You Like It, Rosalind is just an ordinary mortal woman. She

does not have any supernatural powers, although she is (perhaps unbeknownst to herself) the doctor in

the secret Mummer’s Play. But she does refer to “an old religious uncle” (III.ii.344), and later she says

(it is not clear that she is referring to the same person), “I have, since I was three years old, convers’d

with a magician, most profound in his art, and yet not damnable” (V.ii.60-62). Orlando also refers to

this magician:

this boy (i.e.: Ganymede, who is really Rosaline) is forest-born,

And hath been tutor’d in the rudiments

Of many desperate studies by his uncle,

Whom he reports to be a great magician,

Obscured in the circle of this forest. (V.iv.30-4)

The obvious “magic” that Rosaline performs (and she also refers to herself as a magician once (“I

say I am a magician” (V.i.71)) is, of course, to reconcile the conflicts brought about by the Silvius-

Phebe-Rosalind-Orlando lovers’ tangle. She uses the magician as a sort of excuse for her having

powers that make her able to clear up the problems, when the audience knows that she needs no

magician or magic at all. All she really needs to do is to change her clothes, in other words. Examining

the process of untying the knot of conflict more closely, her magic to produce harmony does rely on

verbal acumen: she questions the lovers and extracts promises from them to come back the next day:

(to Phebe)---I will marry you if ever marry woman and I’ll be married

tomorrow. (to Orlando)—I will satisfy you, if ever I satisfied man, and

you shall be married to-morrow. (to Silvius)---I will content you, if what

pleases you contents you, and you shall be married tomorrow….(to

Orlando)---as you love Rosalind, meet. (To Silvius)---As you love

Phebe, meet. (V.ii.113-118)

The real invisible magic of the cure, the meeting between the sun-figure and the land, the flash of

the images of gold and rings, Orlando finding his voice again as a result, is also accomplished verbally,

so therefore Rosalind’s performance of (a more obvious) magic to unite the correct pairs through the

magic of wordplay is a kind of sympathetic and open representation of the hidden magic that occurs in

the important Act III, scene ii encounter between Jacques and Orlando.

There is no doubt that the hidden or “obscured” magician that Rosalind and Orlando refer to is on

one level Shakespeare himself. In a sense, the Oberon character (who was a stand-in for Shakespeare,

along with Theseus and Peter Quince) has been split into two: a mortal woman, Rosalind (the doctor)

and her unseen magician uncle. The emblematic use of words such as “gold” or “ring” that cause an

image similar to the sun to flash in the mind is a kind of “magic”, a use of the “forces concealed in the

womb of matter” (Michel 115) which Bruno outlined as the basis of a natural magic.

Who is the ‘You’ in As You Like It?

At the end of the play, Duke Senior asks Jaques to “stay, Jaques, stay” (V.iv.194), but Jaques

refuses and says he will go to “your abandon’d cave” (V.iv.196). These lines are very likely a rendering

of a ‘farewell’ to Bruno on Shakespeare’s part. Shakespeare wants him to still be alive (”stay”), but, of

course, Bruno has already been executed. Visualizing the best, most ideal place for Bruno’s spirit,

Shakespeare returns to Gli Eroici Furori and places ‘Jaques’ (really Bruno) in a “cave”, echoing

Bruno’s own description of the state of the “one who comes to understand to such an extent”, one who

is sitting in “simple chambers of the cavernous mountains, whence he beholds the great rivers; he

vegetates intact and pure from ordinary greed, where the speech of the Divine converses more freely”.

(Bruno 67) Shakespeare’s idea is probably just as Bruno would have liked it.

Works Cited:

Bruno, Giordano. The Heroic Enthusiasts, (Gli Eroici Furori) An Ethical Poem, Part the Second. London: Bernard Quartitch, 1889 (translated by L. Williams)

Greenblatt, Steven. Will in the World. New York, NY: W.W. Norton&Co., 2004. Print.

Michel, Paul. The Cosmology of Giordano Bruno. Ithaca, NY: Cornell U. Press, 1962. (translated by Dr. R.E.W. Maddisson.) First English translation in 1973.

Shakespeare, William. As You Like It in The Riverside Shakespeare. Eds. Levin, Blakemore et al. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974. Print.

Weimann, Robert. Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1978. Print.

Bibliographical Notes