Pastoral Comedy Analysis

William Shakespeare’s As You Like It is very often characterized as a Pastoral Comedy, and I cannot disagree with it. But why is that? First of all, what is a Pastoral comedy? A pastoral comedy comes from the pastoral genre which refers to rustic folk or shepherds and their ways of living, manners and customs, and a pastoral comedy is, of course, is a comedy related to that life or taking it as a sanctuary from the courtly life’s issues. Characters in pastoral do not need to work hard.

In traditionally pastoral tones the Forest of Arden, remorse of Oliver, the brothers’ reconciliation, the refuse of Frederick from the authority, and the story of the shepherd love of Corin, Silvius, Phoebe, Audrey and Touchstone were perceived. It was creating

A pastoral claims that the happiness of the social uppers does not lay on the pains of the underprivileged ones. It does not notice folk grief. Pastoral is meant to praise the simplicities of the country life. It would not be so right to think that in this way it expresses a protest against luxurious life. However, this is at some point what W. Shakespeare demonstrates in the play. The ordinary and honest shepherds are satisfied by their humble appendage and capable of noble feelings. A protest against typical for that era, debauchery and shameless cunning can be seen in the play.

In reality it is not a call for a searching for more active and fair life but a leaving from the reality in the world of the abstract ideal dream. The people in the forest have little common with the reality. Creating poems, exquisitely polite and constantly sighing they are actually not much different from the high class. “The courtly mode of the pastoral allowed its practitioners a covert language of jokes and innuendoes which W. Shakespeare exploits in his pastoral play” (Dusinberre

W. Shakespeare makes it less though by adding Touchstone’s darling Audrey in whose words there are so much of the good sense and candour. A pastoral idea coming by parodying Silvius plus Phoebe; Corin’s speech with his dirty hands complaining about his master’s temper. By all this W. Shakespeare makes realistic features in his idyllic dreaming image of the life with nature background. And the pastoral overcomes in the demonstrations of the exiles in the forest as something compelled and attractive until they can come back to the real and active life. Only the peevish dreamer Jaques stays in the forest preferring loneliness in the nature to the incorrigibly silly and vulgar human