Shakespeare

The entire play in fact provides a significant insight into the range and nature of Elizabethan comedy, consisting of fast repartee, complicated wordplay, extravagant conceits, endless sexual innuendo and what can only be described as a form of reckless melancholy. The Elizabethan age seems always to be on the edge of despair or dissolution, with the prospect of everything crashing down in flames; hence all the bravura and defiance of its major players.

The title of the play itself is indicative of its plot, in which the protagonists are led forward by a series of false reports and mistaken impressions. It has also a predictably bawdy significance since “nothing” was a slang word for the female genitals. It is a play of improbabilities and coincidences lovingly embraced by Shakespeare, who seems to have countenanced everything for the sake of theatrical effect. It resembles one of those light dances often mentioned in the text, the cinque pace or the Scotch jig, where the swiftness and the delicacy of the pattern are paramount. We may recall here the Elizabethan love of artifice for its own sake.

As You Like It was certainly performed at the Globe, not at the Curtain; Jaques’s speech, beginning “All the world’s a stage,” makes reference to the motto of the Globe on the world as a player. Perhaps more importantly, the character of Touchstone was played by a relatively new recruit to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The part was written for Robert Armin, comedian and musician, who was the replacement for Will Kempe. Kempe left the company at a point in 1599 with some ill-humour. It may have been suggested that his own brand of foolery would seem somewhat old-fashioned in the changed circumstances of the Globe, or he may have become disenchanted with the range of parts created for him. From various veiled references and allusions it seems that Shakespeare did not instinctively appreciate the type of humour in which Kempe himself was the star performer (and even, on occasions, writer). Kempe was too obstreperous and unpredictable; he insisted on making his personality central to his role. In turn Kempe may not have recognised the subtleties of Shakespeare’s art, being more used to an earlier generation of the theatre where writers were mere hired hacks. They represented a clash of two cultures. In any case, in Kempe’s own words, he “danced out of the world” or globe.

Whatever the circumstances of Kempe’s departure, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men decided to replace him with a new kind of comic player. Armin had begun the world as apprentice to a goldsmith in Lombard Street, but very quickly earned some kind of reputation as a dramatist and ballad writer. He wrote such popular plays as The History of the Two Maids of More-clacke and A Nest of Ninnies. Even if his principal career was as comic actor, he never gave up his profession as a writer; so he manifested some instinctive sympathy with Shakespeare that Kempe had lacked. He has even been described by one theatrical historian as an “intellectual.” ² Certainly he knew Latin and Italian. He became a member of Lord Chandos’s Men, and must then have gained his reputation as a comic player or a natural wit. One of his publications was credited to “Clonnico de Curtanio Snuffe,” which intimates that he was Snuff the clown at the Curtain, followed by a later edition in which he is described as “Clonnico del Mondo Snuffe”³ or Snuff at the Globe itself. He was also known as Pink. There are two possibilities. He was already in the employment of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and simply took over from Will Kempe. He certainly assumed the role of Dogberry at a later date, since he is described in one source as “his Constableship.” ⁴ Or it may be that Armin was performing with Lord Chandos’s Men at the Curtain, and replaced Kempe on his departure at the end of 1599.

It is worth remarking that Shakespeare started writing parts for “fools” only after Armin had joined the company. Since Armin was also known for his singing voice, Shakespeare wrote many songs for him. From Touchstone forward emerge the fools who break into song. It is a moot point whether Shakespeare fashioned his new “fools” in the image of Armin, or whether Armin’s persona was fashioned by Shakespeare. No doubt both elements were at work in the creation of Touchstone and Feste, the Fool in King Lear and the gravedigger in Hamlet. With their mixture of melancholy and whimsicality, song and learning, mimicry and word-play, wit and proverb, satire and philosophy, they are of a distinctive and instantly recognisable type. Their costumes are motley, and their language is motley.