As You Like It

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this play. There are so many clever moments in the dialogue, and it's just nice to read a comedy after reading King Lear. (I love King Lear, I promise). In terms of my paper, I think that if I focus on the settings theme I've got a great source on my hands. The court is a deadly and dangerous place to be while the pastoral scenes are lively and fun. This is similar to King Lear, with the forest/storm scene and the ensuing chaos, The Winter's Tale, with the literal passing of time and location change that made for a polarized play, and Midsummer Night's Dream with the fairies and their dark side in the woods. I especially think that one is perfect because the further away from the court you go the more juxtaposed it is. This actually makes me think of my reading for my American Literary History class. We read a piece by Crevecouer, who talks about the three different places in the burgeoning American landscape. The city folk, the more working class, and the backwoodsmen. It fits into this mindset very well. Perfect for my assertions. If I go with language however, I think I would be better-suited to looking into the more oft-read plays, because those are the ones that younger readers are more exposed to. I have a feeling I'll go with setting just because we've gone over it so much already. 

Anybody looking for anything in regards to gender roles might like this play. Rosalind has quite a bit of power, yet she is also dressed as a man while she gains that power. So is this female power, or male power? And her power is specifically over a man, so that is even more interesting. 

Back to my topic, after my experiences working on A Midsummer Night's Dream, I find that these setting changes have a great effect on the audience. In particular, the younger set. They most definitely notice the difference. 

I looked up information on the settings in Shakespeare, and in the blogisphere I didn't dig deep enough to find anything about rural settings, but I did find something interesting about the settings in general. The author delved quite deeply into the fact that Shakespeare lived in England but often set his plays elsewhere. This makes me wonder if perhaps he was using the rural/city contrast to amp up his knowledge of other places, because that's an aspect of culture that can be seen everywhere. 

http://calshakes.org/blog/2014/06/shakespeares-settings/