Transcript:

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:01:42
Good afternoon and welcome. Good afternoon and welcome to one and all. We are just delighted. To welcome so many of our friends and supporters.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:01:54
The first of what we expect will be a long series of talking about Shakespeare with our friends and colleagues.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:02:02
I’m Dan Rabinowitz, the host of today’s program. I’m 1 of the board members at Shakespeare at San Francisco.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:02:12
Shakespeare Festival and I am delighted to have with me our 2 discussants Carla Pantoa who is our wonderful theistic director.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:02:23
And Dr. Willtosh. Who is the head of research at Shakespeare’s Globe in London and one of the leading young international Shakespeare scholars.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:02:34
And one of the true experts on Elizabethan performance. So Carla and Will, welcome and we welcome all of you.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:02:45
We are just delighted that you can join us. This is an innovation for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and it’s 1 that we plan to continue into the future.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:02:55
As each one of our productions goes up both this year and in seasons to come. So we are just delighted to have you here.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:03:03
Today we’ve gathered. To talk a little bit about as you like it. As all of you know, as you like it is our touring performance this year.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:03:13
The show is already up and later on we will be posting a link for all of you. So that you can see all of the times and venues where you can go to see this production.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:03:26
It is a really wonderful, exciting and interesting production. And I know that those of you who can get there.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:03:34
Will truly enjoy, enjoy the experience and enjoy this wonderful, remarkable Amazing. Arcadian social comedy.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:03:47
Of Shakespeare’s great feminist play. And among the many things that we’re going to talk about today are how the play came into being, what its place is in the broader arc of Shakespeare’s work.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:04:04
Some of the issues that. Obviously arose in Shakespeare’s mind as he moved from the original very boring Rosalind.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:04:16
To as you like it. That’s a window for all of us. Into what the playwright was actually thinking.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:04:25
And I know Will has some very interesting thoughts about that. We’re going to talk about the ways in which this play highlights and indeed turns on.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:04:35
Gender fluidity in a way that is extraordinarily relevant to a contemporary audience. And then we’re going to talk a little bit about.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:04:45
Some of the idea, some of the social ideas and commentary that are embedded in this. Dichotomy that the place sets up between court life and Arcadian life in the forest of Arden.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:04:58
And then we’ve got a couple of surprise things that we want to talk about later on. And I’m gonna hold those until I’m gonna hold those until we get there.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:05:09
But will with with your permission, let’s start with you and can you help us a little bit by helping to put this play into the context of Shakespeare’s broader canon.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:05:22
Where and when does it come into being? How is it first performed? Help us out, put, take us back to 1599 or 1,600.

[Will Tosh] 12:05:30
With great pleasure, Dan. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for having me.

[Will Tosh] 12:05:34
It’s a real. And it’s a real joy to be with you and to imagine that it’s noon rather than a kind of slightly glowing 7 o’clock because it is in London.

[Will Tosh] 12:05:44
I’m so getting over the shock of Dan saying I was young, so I’m just going to kind of sit with that for a second.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:05:47
Yeah.

[Jessica Powell] 12:05:48
Yeah.

[Will Tosh] 12:05:50
So, so as you like it is it’s It comes at a really interesting point in Shakespeare’s writing career.

[Will Tosh] 12:05:58
So Unlike quite a lot of his plays, we can. PIN down a date of composition for this play relatively accurately.

[Will Tosh] 12:06:07
So we, you know, 99% certain it’s not written in 1,598 when a list of Shakespeare’s plays, is published by, a writer called Francis Mears and he kind of checks off a dozen.

[Will Tosh] 12:06:21
Shakespeare’s place as well as some of his published poetry to say they’re really, really good.

[Will Tosh] 12:06:24
And he includes most of the place that we know true have been written by that point. So he’s a pretty accurate.

[Will Tosh] 12:06:32
And chronic and in 1,600 there is a sort of scrap of archival documentation that suggests that Shakespeare’s company are taking action to prevent unauthorized printing of some of their assets, of which one of them is as you like it.

[Jessica Powell] 12:06:46
Hmm.

[Will Tosh] 12:06:48
So between 15 and 8 and 1,600 fits as you like it in probably 1599. I’m 59 is a key year because that’s the year that the Globe Theatre opened summer 1599 late summer 1599.

[Will Tosh] 12:07:04
And so almost certainly as you like it is one of the what Is it is either written for the sort of opening globe or it receives lots of its early performances in the brand new Blade Theatre which is built by Shakespeare’s company on on bank side in London.

[Will Tosh] 12:07:22
Famously using some of the materials from their former playhouse, the theater, which they, they torn down the previous year.

[Will Tosh] 12:07:29
So, it sort of marks a kind of sort of point of transition for Shakespeare. He’s becoming.

[Will Tosh] 12:07:36
A much more established business person. He’s tied up in a much more kind of meaningful way with I was going to say the bricks and mortar obviously it’s not Brooks and it’s like wood and plaster and batch but in the in the sort of physical reality of his Playhouse.

[Will Tosh] 12:07:53
And he’s offering a much more sort of substantial comic. Unlike, I’m sure we’ll talk about this, but you know, there are lots of overlaps and similarities.

[Will Tosh] 12:08:06
Between us, you like it and some of his earlier comedies, but also quite a lot of differences as well.

[Will Tosh] 12:08:11
And one of those differences is Len, it’s a very long. Right. Another is the substantialness of the, of the, of the leading role.

[Will Tosh] 12:08:18
Rosalind is a really substantial big role. The the most substantial female role in terms of lines Shakespeare writes one of them one of the most substantial in his canon.

[Will Tosh] 12:08:30
And and he’s taking a kind of new approach as well in terms of and Call them, I want to say more about the sort of the company’s approach to this play and I know the touring production is, it’s a wonderful fleet cut and I entirely support that because not a huge amount happens as you like it and Shakespeare is really kind of exploring a kind of dramaturgy of

[Will Tosh] 12:08:55
place and tone and wit. Perhaps more than he was exploring a dramatage. And incessant blocked in some of his earlier comments.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:09:03
So with that as background, Carla, can I ask you to come and I know you and Sydney Swint, the great director of this play, have been working hard on sort of how are you to comment, I know you and Sydney Swint, the great director of this play, have been working hard on sort of how are you conceptualizing this production.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:09:21
And can you share with us some of the thoughts that you and Sydney have been working with in terms of what your what we are approaching in the San Francisco Shakespeare production of as you like it and then we’ll swing back to Will with a bunch of follow-ups on some of the very interesting comments he’s just made.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:09:35
Yeah.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:09:39
Can do. Hello, good afternoon. Good evening for folks joining us from all over, including Will.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:09:46
It’s at 7 o’clock at night. Thank you so much for joining us. I’m zooming in.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:09:51
From the land of the Shasta to Kelma and Lodgawa people, otherwise known as Ashland, Oregon, I am in the conference room of the rehearsal hall at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where I’m working.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:10:04
Some folks have. Called this the. The unofficial satellite office of SF Shakes.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:10:12
Yes.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:10:14
So hence, hence the stuff behind behind me. Yeah, I have to say I give all credit to Sidney Swint and Assistant Director Katya Rivera.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:10:25
Sydney had this great idea of building on what you were talking about, well, was The juxtaposition of the country life versus the city life.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:10:37
What is what are the structure of city life? And how they are able to. To let that go when they go into the country and what is Rosalind’s true self.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:10:49
We have a lot of great questions that came in, and some, some of those questions are about Rosalind.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:10:57
As what I love this question. What is the real Rosalind? Is it the Roslin from the city or is it the Rosalind who is in the country portrayed as Ganymede?

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:11:02
Yeah.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:11:09
And so that’s, that’s something that Sydney was exploring is. When folks leave the oppressiveness and the structure of the city and go out to the country.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:11:21
Are they able to be their true selves? Are they able to breathe? Is there? Is there an expansiveness there?

[Carla Pantoja] 12:11:30
Those were the things that Sydney was exploring in in this particular show. And yes, our tour is is about 50 min.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:11:39
And it is. Short and sweet. 5 actors playing all the roles, all the roles people.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:11:48
Touring in a van, setting up the set, performing, doing a question and answer. Sometimes. Teaching a play shop.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:11:57
The this band of mighty players are doing incredible work. Sharing sharing out to schools libraries community centers senior centers and we have public performances there so you all can catch it as well.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:12:13
Wonderful. So, Will, you know, Carla, that’s it. You know, your, your comment about the, the sort of dichotomy.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:12:20
Between court society. And the supposed or at least the nominal freedom. Engendered by wandering through the far of Arden.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:12:34
Often with ones wants apparently miraculously provided for as you as you as you stand there.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:12:43
You know that that takes me to a question I really wanted to ask. Will. Which is like many of Shakespeare’s plays, this play original has its origins in.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:12:55
Thomas Lodge is very boring book, Rosalind, long and boring and tedious. But with some with a lot of similar plot elements to as you like it.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:13:07
But what’s always interesting to me is to look at the things that Shakespeare either adds or subtracts.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:13:15
From his source material when he’s doing this. And I’m, I’m, I’m always struck when I think about as you like it.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:13:24
By the realization that the 2 things that we, you know, of the 3 things. That we as modern Otters associate with as you like this magnificent Produ feminist character Rosalind who really carries the play intellectually and morally.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:13:45
And who instructs the men at every stage and the men are really laggards in this. But there’s Rosalind.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:13:53
And then there’s Touchstone. The court cynic. And the gesture whose perceptions are cynically accurate.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:14:04
About court life. And then there’s Jques. In the great 7 ages speech. And what’s interesting to me is that the 2 characters that Shakespeare adds when this play comes into being, the things that his mind as dramaturge and writer brought to this play.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:14:25
Our touchstone and Jques. I think that’s really an interesting thing. Well, I’d love to hear your thoughts about that, about the ways in which he uses these 2 remarkable, completely new characters.

[Will Tosh] 12:14:36
Hmm.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:14:37
There’s no way that a lodge could have conceived of, completely new characters. There’s no way that a lodge could have conceived of either a touchstone or a

[Will Tosh] 12:14:44
And I’m first going to say I’m really sad not to be able to see, the SF Shakes as you like.

[Will Tosh] 12:14:50
It sounds absolutely amazing and I’m getting I’m getting very envious just looking at the list of places in the chat that it’s visiting.

[Will Tosh] 12:14:56
Yes, that’s such a good point, and I feel a bit bad just before I’ve joined the cat.

[Will Tosh] 12:15:01
I said to Stan, oh god, please don’t ask about. Logitech, so long and boring, I haven’t read it for years.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:15:05
Yeah.

[Will Tosh] 12:15:06
And that sort of like, and that sort of like, I think, and that sort of like, I think, fed to his desire to make it sound really kind of dull and not worth looking at.

[Will Tosh] 12:15:12
And I sort of feel I need to now defend lot and say, no, no, it’s very interesting.

[Will Tosh] 12:15:15
But it is indeed quite a long, sort of prose and such a fiction, kind of, kind of protein novel.

[Will Tosh] 12:15:23
And he’s a writer on, in, in many ways, very interesting, right? He’s right.

[Will Tosh] 12:15:28
He publishes this, Novela, Nobel, Rosalind, and in, 1,500, and, 90, and, the novel subtitle gives a clue as to the kind of world that lodges writing in and the subtitle of Rosalind is Yes, Huiz’s Golden Legacy.

[Will Tosh] 12:15:46
And Yethuese, really hard name today. Yethuese is a character in an earlier prose fiction by a writer called John Lilly who is known for great verbal articulacy and being terribly Hmm, sort of witty, not in a kind of quick witted funny way, but in a sort of intellectual and kind of.

[Will Tosh] 12:16:10
Such a dazzling way. So you if you were stick wit or language. But also to discourse was seen as a kind of highly elaborate intellectually advanced way to discourse on the issues of light.

[Will Tosh] 12:16:26
And that feeds into into into Lodges Rosalind. It’s just full of people exchanging very long speeches on a lot of different topics.

[Will Tosh] 12:16:34
And his Rosalind is very much the Rosalind that Shakespeare evolves and and and and develops from the structure of the story is more or less identical.

[Will Tosh] 12:16:48
Rosalind, please with her friend Celia into the, he’s not good serious, or something else, into the forest.

[Will Tosh] 12:16:54
Devarding dresses as a boy, the name Ganymede is used and we’ve gotten the significance of that I’m sure thoughtly.

[Will Tosh] 12:16:58
And GAN and ME, DAS, RUSLIN does the same thing with the Orlando character.

[Will Tosh] 12:17:04
It’s called Rosado in, in, in Lodges. Novel. So sort of like woo him in the guise of a boy.

[Will Tosh] 12:17:10
And so, and so the sort of structure of Rosalind being this sort of engine for the plot is very much there in the source material.

[Will Tosh] 12:17:19
What he doesn’t have is down rightly points out, the sort of, Exiled court cynic bigger who is Jques who is this and associate of the exiled.

[Will Tosh] 12:17:31
And he doesn’t include the character of Touchstone who is a confidant of Rosalind and Celia who accompanies them on their flight.

[Will Tosh] 12:17:41
From courts. And because he doesn’t, and Lodge doesn’t, it, touch stain as well as inventing touchstone Shakespeare also has to invent Hubstains love interest, Audrey, and the kind of competitor for Audrey’s affection who is probably not coincidentally old William.

[Will Tosh] 12:17:59
So there’s a sort of whole other kind of. But the subproblem gets on gets on with that.

[Will Tosh] 12:18:04
Now touchdown is interesting. He’s, he’s, you know, he’s, he’s in the sort of mode or the mole of the Shakespearean or the early modern clown.

[Will Tosh] 12:18:11
And he is in fact a clown he’s a court gesture that is a sort of job as well as his dramatic function But he’s he is different in certain quite important ways.

[Will Tosh] 12:18:24
From the kind of raucously comic characters who have come before and something like sort of. And Lancelot in or Lance and in Merchant and in and, the gentleman of Verona.

[Will Tosh] 12:18:37
He’s a much more We touch stone is a much more.

[Will Tosh] 12:18:43
But not to use the phrase wordy or the word word, I don’t really mean that, but he’s a much more intellectual clown and his jokes, although often funny and can be made to be very funny theatrically lodged themselves in a sort of quick wittedness and we might see some sort of strains of the if you stick on a line coming out in touchstone.

[Will Tosh] 12:19:06
But I think primarily the thing that’s motivating the creation of touchstone for Shakespeare.

[Will Tosh] 12:19:10
The arrival into his theater company of a new comic actor who takes the clown roles. It was called Robert and we don’t know precisely when he gets taken on as a, as a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s men, but it’s around then.

[Will Tosh] 12:19:26
And he’s the figure who kind of originates if that’s the word that we should use for the emergence of character at this time, but he originates touchstone, he originates best day in twelfth night.

[Will Tosh] 12:19:41
He originates the fool in King Lear. So these sorts of figures that are not just disruptive and funny, but also kind of like weirdly oracular and sort of like, I mean, to perhaps let’s say for touch chain, but the moat, his the arm in full becomes a much more sort of knowing, comic bigger.

[Will Tosh] 12:20:02
And I think we see that emerging. Definitely in touch stone. Jane Cleese is so it’s really interesting because it’s, he’s not strictly speaking, But you can absolutely see Shakespeare laying and being interested in the structural parallelism between Jake and Touchstone.

[Will Tosh] 12:20:22
And the points at which they rub up against each other never very happily. So he’s doing something in terms of experimenting with that.

[Will Tosh] 12:20:31
Wordy, intellectually ambitious. One might say quietly, too clever by half, kind of.

[Will Tosh] 12:20:38
Approach to a funny a funny guy. So I think that’s what’s happening with with touchstone.

[Will Tosh] 12:20:43
It’s that it’s his first pass. At the at a comedic type that he’s going to get much.

[Will Tosh] 12:20:49
Not so much better, but he’s going to get more sophisticated putting into a play in in later works.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:20:56
You know, it’s so interesting that you mentioned this, Will, because I was, I was gonna, I was gonna ask.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:21:02
Whether we knew, knew when Will Kemp left the company to do his to do his jig and to ask whether Arman had arrived for the role as I sort of.

[Will Tosh] 12:21:12
Yeah.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:21:14
I like you, I see Arm in. In touchstone, I see him infestate totally.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:21:22
And in and in the and in the darker greater fool and near.

[Will Tosh] 12:21:25
So it’s a slightly chicken and egg situation. No, but there isn’t no one really knows.

[Will Tosh] 12:21:31
And they know that it’s around this time, sort of by 1,600. Definitely the almond is around.

[Will Tosh] 12:21:39
And it’s slightly, yeah, it’s a Okay, people sort of get to the conclusion they want by looking at plays in whatever way they they choose to look at them.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:21:50
Yes.

[Will Tosh] 12:21:50
So I mean, I certainly agree with you. But I would definitely retouch Stone as the pro as the as as the as the aluminum type book.

[Will Tosh] 12:21:57
You could probably find a Shakespearean who’ll go, no, you see this is, this is, this, this is why, this is why Kemp left because he didn’t want to play that kind of part.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:21:57
Yes.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:22:02
Yeah.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:22:06
Yeah.

[Will Tosh] 12:22:08
So, I mean, so you could you could probably cut it either way. I think it makes more sense creatively to see it as the first pass.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:22:13
Will, will, can I ask you just from the heart? There is, I’m sure you’re aware and Carla certainly knows this as both a director and a player.

[Will Tosh] 12:22:13
Edit type.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:22:24
There is this wonderful traditional vision. That of the roles in as you like it. Shakespeare would have played old Adam.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:22:34
As the, you know, the servant of golden antique times. Is there any scholarly support for this idea or is this simply a conceit that makes us all feel better about Shakespeare as as well as.

[Will Tosh] 12:22:50
There isn’t there isn’t really the the reason people say it is that there is a not particularly robust or trustworthy second hand account later in the seventeenth century about someone who alleged claims to know checks they’re off to ought to have seen him on stage and what they report was that they remember and seeing him be carried on someone’s back.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:23:16
Hmm. That’s not, that’s not bad. That’s not bad.

[Will Tosh] 12:23:18
So, and, and that, It’s not, it’s not bad, but they don’t, they don’t mention as you like it.

[Will Tosh] 12:23:25
And there are other, you know, so there’s a famous, classical example of, someone being, so, anchacy is from the ruins of draw, it carries his father on it.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:23:32
Yes, bye.

[Will Tosh] 12:23:35
So there’s a sort of, there’s a kind of, It’s like a sort of dramatic mean, you know, like there there are other plays where that where that happens and also it’s not a very true.

[Will Tosh] 12:23:43
It’s not a very trustworthy person. And it’s possible. It’s sort of perhaps seems more likely that he played William.

[Will Tosh] 12:23:50
Which does actually rule out him also playing at him because Adam’s dead or kind of gone by that point.

[Will Tosh] 12:23:56
And it’s possible. I would point out that he is 35. When as you like it.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:23:57
Yes.

[Will Tosh] 12:24:05
Appears so if he is playing Adam it’s not because he’s like naturally given to playing very elderly parts.

[Will Tosh] 12:24:13
If he is, he’s doing it as Even younger than me as a young actor, taking on taking on these, roles.

[Will Tosh] 12:24:22
So, you know, he, He acts in his own work. It is it is it is perfectly possible that he plays Adam but other than that one and not massively persuasive reference.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:24:34
So will one of the things that Carla and Will and I were talking about when we were when we when we were brainstorming about this.

[Will Tosh] 12:24:34
We don’t really

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:24:45
What some of the things we wanted to share with. With our friends on the online. One of the things that we were talking about was The question of dress.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:24:57
And this kind of interaction between. What to us feels like a profound oddity. Which is that in and Elizabethan performance in the performance of this we have a boy playing a girl playing a boy.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:25:17
In this, and that the differentiators. As you move forward in this. Have to be in some measure.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:25:27
Costuming and dress. I mean, it is. The invitation. To the audience’s willed suspension of disbelief.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:25:35
That Orlando can’t recognize Rosalind because she’s dressed up as a boy, Ganymede, and calls herself Ganymede.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:25:45
An obvious suspension of disbelief even for an Elizabethan audience even with that costume change. But, you know, It does get to this whole question of.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:25:59
The roll of dress. The sanctuary laws which made in Elizabethan times criminal penalties for for inappropriate dress, including cross dressing.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:26:13
And there are plenty of instances in the magistrates court and in Bow Street. Of women in particular being prosecuted for cross dressing under various circumstances.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:26:24
But let’s talk a little bit, Will, if you can about this question of dress and the way in which it’s kind of an emblem for us of the gender fluidity that seems baked into this production.

[Will Tosh] 12:26:30
Hmm. Hmm.

[Will Tosh] 12:26:37
And I’m glad to ask this question. So it’s a topic that I’ve been, working on for some time and I have a book coming out in the in the US in September.

[Will Tosh] 12:26:49
That looks certainly for quite a lot of it. A lot of it is thinking about the boy acting you mentioned it’s called straight acting the many queer lives of William Shakespeare and it’s no it’s not in America it’s called straight acting the hidden way lives of William Shakespeare.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:26:49
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:27:02
Excellent.

[Will Tosh] 12:27:03
I got my own title. And, and it, and it thinks about the way that the culture takes they lived in.

[Will Tosh] 12:27:09
Gotcha, he was educated in the culture he worked in.

[Will Tosh] 12:27:14
Finds interest in and expression of way desire. It’s definitely queer male desire, but it as you’d like to educate that was also very interested in great female desire and indeed we’re non-binary desire.

[Will Tosh] 12:27:26
And what’s interesting about, about what’s going on on, stage and Dan sort of really hopefully picked up by thinking, about the idea of suspension of disbelief that, you know, a noble and a person who breasts something other than they are.

[Will Tosh] 12:27:42
Russell interested it’s Ganymede and and Celia addresses as a sort of all woman called Aliana of instantly invisible.

[Will Tosh] 12:27:50
So that the people who know them well. As to that 3 selves, which obviously takes a little bit of a kind of need.

[Will Tosh] 12:27:56
Again, with Rolls and it’s interesting because in the context of early modern theatrical performance and the, in, 50, 99, Rosalind dressing in Ganymede isn’t really adopting a disguise, or also undressing as Ganymede is taking up a layer of performed costume.

[Will Tosh] 12:28:10
Because Rosalind is played by a boy. So it’s a really open question. What the kind of aesthetics of that hands position.

[Will Tosh] 12:28:21
Whether whether there’s such a name with the young boys age, come between 13 and 22.

[Will Tosh] 12:28:28
Playing female roles and for a role as substantial as Rosalind want to see in that it was someone at the older end of that spectrum.

[Will Tosh] 12:28:36
So a, 1718, 1920 year old young man. What the aesthetics of that.

[Will Tosh] 12:28:43
Transformation from Rosalind to Ganymede were and whether there’s a kind of real conscious effort to retain indications of femininity or femaleness in the frame of a young boy, young man playing the male character, I don’t know is the answer I think anyone really does.

[Will Tosh] 12:29:03
But you see with what Shakespeare does and with his sort of cross trust. And we like that phrase very much, but I’m going to kind of use it just because it’s the moment that I’ve stuck with.

[Will Tosh] 12:29:12
But his cross-dressed female characters in previous plays and subsequent plays and indeed the same the same kind of a dramatic choice by other dramatists and there are Oh, well over 70 instances in in the early modern dramatic canon of female characters dressing as boys or men on stage so it’s a thing the parameters and audience is really clipped with.

[Will Tosh] 12:29:35
What Shakespeare is doing and I think what other playwrights are doing as well.

[Will Tosh] 12:29:39
It really sort of pressing on and engaging with the idea that audiences see both layers or all the layers.

[Will Tosh] 12:29:48
So that when an audience is watching an early modern play where the female characters don’t cross dress. There is still some awareness and lots of plays exhibit some awareness that there is a male body or a young male body underneath that female character.

[Will Tosh] 12:30:04
Things like that. When the for us as a boy. The audience is being asked to see several things.

[Will Tosh] 12:30:14
They’re being asked to see and acknowledge that the actor is male. They’re being asked to see and acknowledge that the character is female.

[Will Tosh] 12:30:21
But also assuming a male guise. So already you’ve got really quite a sophisticated understanding of gender and performance and the layering that might and the sort of layers of erotic meaning as well but might come when that takes place on a stage surrounded by several 1,000 people.

[Will Tosh] 12:30:39
And as you like it, Shakespeare really sort of. A sentence to a kind of mastery and how he handles all of those multiple layers.

[Will Tosh] 12:30:48
And he does that partly through, Rosalind’s behavior on in the play and, and the way she and co-opts the world around her to her will.

[Will Tosh] 12:30:59
The way she, she takes the, the kind of lead in introducing Orlando. Effects and facilitates the most astonishing kind of queer wedding.

[Will Tosh] 12:31:08
Where Rosalind has the enemy, grabs Orlando’s hands as I write. Say the words, you are marrying me right now.

[Will Tosh] 12:31:17
And we know that this scene is regarded as sort of striking and certainly something that is out of the ordinary.

[Will Tosh] 12:31:24
Because after wasn’t just done that Rosalind Ask Anim is marrying, Hi.

[Will Tosh] 12:31:31
What did you just do? That was insane! She’s really thrown by it and has a real problem with it.

[Will Tosh] 12:31:39
There is all, it’s all kind of going on and I’m sure we can unpack some more about what happens in terms of the box.

[Will Tosh] 12:31:45
But I would, and I suspect this is bit of the play that has not survived and the tour cut and I don’t blame you for a second.

[Will Tosh] 12:31:49
But I, I would encourage you to look at. And Rosalind’s epilogue. To.

[Will Tosh] 12:31:55
As you like it. It’s unusual, but given that the very few epilogues in any kind of drama, spoken about female character.

[Will Tosh] 12:32:01
But it’s also the only point really in Shakespeare’s writing live. But he is really upfront about those multiple layers in operation within the female character paid by a boy.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:32:09
Yes. Yes. Yes.

[Will Tosh] 12:32:12
Because Rosalind’s own invitation to the audience in her epilogue is to regard her or perhaps regard them as a better way to describe Rosalind at this point.

[Will Tosh] 12:32:20
As a character who is flexibly male and female. Flexibly kind of erodically available to anyone in the house.

[Will Tosh] 12:32:28
Because the character at that point is reaching out to the audience and saying, oh, I’m I can see that you know you love her and she loves you and all I’m interested in that and I can kind of be involved and it’s all and offers to sort of.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:32:28
Yes.

[Will Tosh] 12:32:42
I mean, it’s just, it’s sort of both kind of compelling, but also quite kind of CD because the character is, is sort of saying, you know, I I’m kind of available to any of you.

[Will Tosh] 12:32:51
And it’s an odd moment, and one that Shakespeare actually doesn’t really pursue in elsewhere, not, not quite so overtly, but he is definitely interested in those.

[Will Tosh] 12:33:02
Kind of multiply arousing possibilities I think offered by the character of Rosalind breathed by a boy presenting as a boy going back to a woman and then appearing on today to sort of absolutely omni-flexible in the in the closing moments of the play.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:33:17
And you know there is this, I mean, there’s this interesting duality. I mean, just the, even the choice of the name, as being the youth so beautiful that Zeus stole him away for his own sexual use.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:33:33
Is is is in this Shakespeare of course knew that and in choosing that name. But it’s also, it’s a, it’s.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:33:42
I agree with you, Will very much that the, you know, the fact that this is the only epilogue in Shakespeare, which is spoken by a woman, of that is to say, a boy playing who has just played a man and a woman and is now playing a woman again in the in the epilogue.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:34:03
Harold Bloom, you know, with whom I often disagree, but with whom I sometimes agree, was a deep critic of this.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:34:10
Has often made the observation that that epilogue is the most direct moment in all of the canon.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:34:19
Of Shakespeare speaking directly to us. Of the dramaturge. Shedding all of the veils and speaking directly to us.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:34:30
And I love your idea of the sort of multiplicity of erotic. That’s embedded in, in the epilogue.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:34:42
I’ve always believed that the epilogue is the way that teaches us. That as you like it The U means women.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:34:53
And that that is in fact the way this play. Can be can be deeply understood this extraordinary character of Rosalind.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:35:05
So. I wanna ask a couple of, you know, we do very much want to. Allow time for questions and comments and brick bats as well from all of our friends and colleagues on the screen.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:35:19
But there is one, there’s a question that I want to put to Will because it is really one that I find deeply striking.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:35:28
Okay. And all of you will remember the great. Christopher Marlowe who star was ascendant far earlier than Shakespeare who was the shining star in many ways of the early Elizabethan theatre.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:35:46
Who was an exact contemporary of Shakespeare both born in 1564 both born in provincial towns both born to families in trade.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:35:56
Marlowe’s father was a cobbler. Shakespeare’s was a lover and widower.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:36:04
Marlo because his town was a bishop see winds up with ecclesiastical sponsorship to Cambridge.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:36:13
Shakespeare never did attend university. Marlo clearly becomes involved in Walsingham’s Secret Service.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:36:22
At a very early age, in fact only graduates from Cambridge. Because the privy council issued a direction to the fellows of his college to award his degree because of unspecified to the crown and no questions to be asked.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:36:39
And they did. And he left but Marlo Barlow is murdered. 7 years before he’s murdered in 1593 and in the back room of Mrs. Bull’s house in in Deptford, what was probably what we would call a safe house for Walsingham’s intelligence.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:37:01
And there are 2 direct references to Marlowe, which somehow parachute into this.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:37:09
Arcadian social comedy and feminist play which Shakespeare has given us. One is where

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:37:19
A shepherdess. Speaks where Phoebe speaks and she says Dead Shepherd now I find thy saw of might whoever loved but love not at first sight, which is quotation from hero in Leander, Marlowe’s great bomb.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:37:36
And then there’s a very darker one. Which is put into touchstone’s mouth. In which touchstone is talking about.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:37:46
A great reckoning in a little room. Which is almost a direct lift from the Crown Coroner’s report exonerating Ingram Freiser who had murdered Marlo by stabbing him through the eye with a dagger.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:38:01
From the charge of murder. And has come down to us as the description of Marlowe’s killing.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:38:10
So Marlowe’s been dead since 1593. How is it that in all of the corpus all of a sudden these 2 references to Marlow parachute into this Arcadian.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:38:25
Matt comedy of manners. Well, what do you help us understand this? What Why is Marlowe on Shakespeare’s mind like this?

[Will Tosh] 12:38:31
So it’s.

[Will Tosh] 12:38:34
It’s interesting to that second quote you mentioned and great record and a great reckoning in in a little room is also a paraphrase of a line from the Malta and Molly is also in my life.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:38:42
Yes.

[Will Tosh] 12:38:46
So it’s it’s there’s that in a sense that’s those are the sort of hinges of it and Oh, it’s a really good question and it’s and it’s puzzled people for a long time I think because as you say you know Marlow is is is not play with the month in 1599 and Having said that, it it is the year that and sees for the

[Will Tosh] 12:39:05
first time and the publication of his translation of it, the Roman, Okay. A collection of his and what are called elegies that is a love poems which appear in a in fact this sort of compilation in a publication in 1599 and also run into trouble.

[Will Tosh] 12:39:22
They’re recalled and they’re and they’re burnt in a kind of countdown on erotic literature by the stationers company in the summer at 1599.

[Will Tosh] 12:39:30
So it’s possible that sort of Marlowe Although dead has had a kind of, sort of posthumous, kind of moment in, in, in the public eye because his poems, which have been settling in manuscript and it’s very possible Shakespeare had seen them in earlier forms, had kind of had a kind of gust of

[Will Tosh] 12:39:51
publicity from both publication and pump down. So that that that might account for Marlowe sort of being on Shakespeare’s brain just at that point in someone 1599.

[Will Tosh] 12:40:01
There’s a sort of bigger question behind. Then your question about this particular play which is Marlowe’s impact on Shakespeare.

[Will Tosh] 12:40:09
Across the piece. As a, as you say, someone who is in so many ways a kind of interesting edgy twin of Shakespeare that more or less the same age matter of weeks really separate them.

[Will Tosh] 12:40:22
But Marlowe very much appears as the senior partner in the partnership before his his death. He’s very much He’s very much doing better if that’s if you can use that that that turn for this for this period.

[Will Tosh] 12:40:33
Lots of you will have seen, the now quite vulnerable film Shakespeare in Love, which does a very clever thing, I think, with presenting Marlowe as this sort of rock star bigger who Shakespeare is sort of and kind of overawed by and distraught but also kind of released when when Marlowe was killed and I think probably there is there is some truth in that in the sense that

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:40:47
Yeah.

[Will Tosh] 12:40:56
Marlowe is definitely the more successful, the more dynamic. They write acing really a whole load of different forms.

[Will Tosh] 12:41:03
At the point where Shakespeare still is very much confining himself to histories and comedies.

[Will Tosh] 12:41:08
Good by the time Marlowe dies in 1593. Shakespeare really hasn’t.

[Will Tosh] 12:41:14
This is sort of pretty a lot of the kind of, mature comedies and tragedies that make his name.

[Will Tosh] 12:41:20
He’s, he’s done the, he’s done the Henry plays, he’s probably done Richard the third, he’s probably done.

[Will Tosh] 12:41:26
The early comedy is he’s done Titus Sandronica so he’s kind of done a tragedy but it’s you know not the sort of thoughtful kind that we really associate with him.

[Will Tosh] 12:41:35
Where is Marlow? It’s done. Massive historical epic in the shape of exotic historical epic in the shape of its tambling plays.

[Will Tosh] 12:41:46
He’s done English history play really brilliantly in the shape of bed at the second. He’s done ambitious intellectual tragedy in the form of Dr.

[Will Tosh] 12:41:56
He’s done kind of classical sort of sex drama. In Dido Green of Carthage.

[Will Tosh] 12:42:06
He said all of this sort of like really cool stuff as well as a whole bunch of poetry And I think slightly putting Shakespeare in the shades.

[Will Tosh] 12:42:16
How Shakespeare then kind of takes that. Body of work, not all of which is published by the time of Mahler’s death, but a lot of it is.

[Will Tosh] 12:42:24
And feeds it into his own artistic evolution from 1593 onwards. It’s a big question and there’s been lots of work in terms of tracing specific, Malavian echoes, in Shakespeare’s plays and his drama.

[Will Tosh] 12:42:42
And I think all of that is there and he’s clearly doing that. How’d you like it specifically?

[Will Tosh] 12:42:48
It doesn’t have a sort of obvious kind of Marlowe predecessor in the shape of a whole play.

[Will Tosh] 12:42:52
But it very much has a kind of Marlowe flavor in its conscious appeal. To a classical Roman model of pastoral comedy.

[Will Tosh] 12:43:05
And they made reference to that a little bit earlier. Please do, Car, yeah.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:43:07
I would like to jump in. Sorry, Will. I know you’re on. Oh, more, more, more.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:43:12
Yeah.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:43:13
I just dig talk. I just dig here in. Where you’re going well. I just, this is so cool.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:43:20
Okay.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:43:20
I do want to interrupt and say that we have about 15 min left and I know that we have a bunch of questions, some that were sent in.

[Will Tosh] 12:43:27
Hmm.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:43:31
Thank you folks who sent in your questions. Some of the things we’ve already covered. At this time, If you have a question, Please put it in the chat.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:43:41
I will uplift it and share so that Will can answer some of these questions. One that, has struck me and I know it’s, You know, we’ve talked about the the world of the play at the time when it was written, where it was.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:44:03
We all know that there was bear baiting in the area during during certain parts of shows obviously you know we have that that connection to the winner’s tail, which there’s a.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:44:15
No, here it is. Exited pursued by bear. One of the questions while folks are asking questions in the chat, I’m gonna ask questions that came in.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:44:17
There it is. There it is. You got it.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:44:28
In advance. One of the questions was what about that wrestling scene with Charles the Wrestler?

[Carla Pantoja] 12:44:37
Like, did we have a, you know, was it staged? Was it a side act that because like, like the bears, What, what is that?

[Will Tosh] 12:44:49
Hello, I need to ask you what wrestling is not staged if you think WWF It’s a real sport.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:44:52
As a fight director, I’m gonna I’m gonna have to agree with you, Will. Absolutely.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:44:52
Yeah.

[Will Tosh] 12:44:57
Oh yeah. It’s really interesting, isn’t it? So, so.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:44:59
Come on.

[Will Tosh] 12:45:02
Look, as far as we know, things that Things get a bit different a bit later on in the period we’re talking about, but in 50 99, when Chase this company opened the globe.

[Will Tosh] 12:45:12
It’s not unique to Shakespeare’s company or the globe, but they are very much positioning themselves as a sort of single form.

[Will Tosh] 12:45:21
Multiplex if that’s the right turn. It’s theater. So it’s although the area that the grave is, it’s a kind of entertainment district.

[Will Tosh] 12:45:30
The globe isn’t used for animal baiting and roughing matches and fencing matches and stuff like that.

[Will Tosh] 12:45:35
There are other theaters and where they are occasionally multi-use and previously and suddenly earlier phases in data history, you definitely get a lot of that.

[Will Tosh] 12:45:44
So I’ve known the globe doesn’t have that kind of multi purpose. And a functionality.

[Will Tosh] 12:45:48
But what you do get obviously is, a real recognition of the, of combat, dance, acrobatics of tumbling and all of it, so, worked into Shakespeare’s place and most commonly you see that in the form of and battle scenes of fighting in histories and casualties whether that’s sword and buckler or knife or brawl or whatever.

[Will Tosh] 12:46:16
The rustling is interesting. It’s, it’s a particular kind of, It’s a sport that has this sort of interesting kind of courtly but also not caught the quality.

[Will Tosh] 12:46:30
So it’s it’s actually regarded as quite kind of populist and quite low class. But with occasional very elites.

[Will Tosh] 12:46:36
Practitioners of the art. So for example, Henry VIII, the Queen Elizabeth father.

[Will Tosh] 12:46:42
As a youth is this sort of champion wrestler and loves and challenging kind of random portiers to wrestling matches which he always wins.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:46:51
Okay.

[Will Tosh] 12:46:51
And, so there’s a sense of what of wrestling being a slightly kind of, Kind of edgy thing for posh people to like.

[Will Tosh] 12:47:01
It’s definitely there at the start of as you like it. There’s an excitement to the wrestling.

[Will Tosh] 12:47:06
It’s unusual. It Charles the wrestler, it’s kind of personally, gets people excited.

[Will Tosh] 12:47:11
Rosalind and Celia rush off as quickly as they possibly can to go and see the wrestling and see the wrestlers.

[Will Tosh] 12:47:17
And there’s a great deal this sort of excitement about the sort of what happens in it and in fact in in the much maligned Rosalind by Thomas Lodge that whole match is sort of much bigger and then he describes and you know 3 courtiers being killed in the in the wrestling matches this sort of very kind of violent thing which Shakespeare really sort of dials, dials back And but it’s you know i think it’s it’s

[Will Tosh] 12:47:41
a recognition from jakespeare from lots of his contemporaries and colleagues that there is great pleasure in active physical virtuosity and interest and fun in in charting the storytelling of combat of a fights which as a state combat director will absolutely know.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:47:56
You’re speaking, you’re speaking my language well, you’re speaking my language. I have 2 questions, 2 more questions for you.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:48:00
Yeah.

[Will Tosh] 12:48:00
Yeah.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:48:05
One is, from, from the chat. This is the the sophistication of the gender fluidity in the play makes me think of what the demographics of the audience were to understand how they would have appreciated this.

[Will Tosh] 12:48:12
Mmm.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:48:20
Can you recommend a good book source for a discussion other than your own? Of course, that should be included, of Shakespeare’s audience demographics because gender

[Carla Pantoja] 12:48:33
Was not as may not have been as structured as we have at least in our our contemporary lives.

[Will Tosh] 12:48:42
Yeah, yeah, I’ve just popped in the chat there a book that hopefully responds to and to bend this question about audience demographics and there’s some very there’s a whole sort of long scholarly history of argumentation about who went to the theater in Jakespeare’s time and in in general it’s very in general it’s very boring it’s a sort of long discussion about

[Carla Pantoja] 12:48:42
See it as.

[Will Tosh] 12:49:04
was it posh people was it poor people was it could it be both you know like it and and it’s it’s a lot of people you know it’s sort of it’s a very popular form and one of the reasons that the biggest in authority dislike theater and playgoing is that lots of people do it.

[Will Tosh] 12:49:19
Lots of people go to place. So we sort of know that it’s it’s a very It’s a very popular form.

[Will Tosh] 12:49:25
We know that it’s also quite mixed. It’s quite mixed socially and it’s quite mixed in gender terms.

[Will Tosh] 12:49:30
And foreign visitors often remark that it’s unusual that London women go to the theater without. And that doesn’t mean they go completely by themselves, but it means that groups of women going as friends or women going within only a male servant is their company.

[Will Tosh] 12:49:44
It’s their company is it’s not uncommon and not regarded as sort of outrageous or weird so you definitely have a very mixed audience.

[Will Tosh] 12:49:54
As the years go on and Sorry, call the current.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:49:54
Which is. No, no, no, I was gonna say which is very similar to now. I propose a,

[Will Tosh] 12:50:00
Yeah.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:50:07
Maybe a revolutionary idea, but many folks who are in the producing of theater. Sometimes they, they hear it, sometimes they understand it, but the bulk of ticket buyers.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:50:21
Are women. And middle-aged women at that who are the bulk of the ticket buyers. Seriously, no, as you like it, ladies, as you like it.

[Will Tosh] 12:50:22
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

[Will Tosh] 12:50:33
Yeah. As you like, yeah. But I, but. Hmm.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:50:35
Hey.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:50:38
Was going to ask you another thing. Well, sorry, so many, huh, so much. Bringing it to today.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:50:47
What seems seem more, that seem more relevant today? In as you like it when we were talking in a meeting.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:50:58
Weeks ago, something that you had said I was like so struck by. Was pursuing the The court. Pretty much just goes on vacation to the country but then imposes.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:51:16
Their thoughts. In the country. That I just, I would love to pull the threat on that will.

[Will Tosh] 12:51:25
I think, yeah, that’s a great question. And I am. Yeah, saying early, you know, talking about the way in which the forest kind of allows a process of self-actualization, but some characters in in the play and and one might think of Rosalind.

[Will Tosh] 12:51:42
And lots of debates about. Where the plate places rather than at the end and Celia and those people who’ve enjoyed that kind of sense of freedom.

[Will Tosh] 12:51:49
At the sense that it gets closed in again at the end. So perhaps. The process of discovering self food isn’t isn’t isn’t 1 way.

[Will Tosh] 12:51:57
But I have to say I’ve always I’ve always found it quite difficult to take the the message of the players being straightforwardly, you go into the forest and you take what’s great from the forest and then just kind of go.

[Will Tosh] 12:52:10
Or leave because the plane is quite careful to show us that the forest is a bit grim for people who actually live there and have to kind of make their living in the forest.

[Will Tosh] 12:52:19
It’s not just the courtiers who have exiled themselves from the court and have established a very courtly way of life in the forest.

[Will Tosh] 12:52:29
They haven’t gone. They haven’t they haven’t sort of adopted the manners of their new neighbors.

[Will Tosh] 12:52:34
They hope the exile duke and his courtiers maintain courtly habits, they dine at a certain time, they require attendance, they go hunting, which is a courtly activity and Jake Louise is given a kind of speech where he sort of reflects on how unkind it is to nature.

[Will Tosh] 12:52:50
Go and kill it. And I think we’re, to hear that. And that’s the Excel duke has that wonderful first speech which I really love wearing his books about how in this exile they well you can actually read the line in a number of ways but most most editions printer is that him saying we feel not the penalty of Adam the seasons difference.

[Will Tosh] 12:53:14
He’s in the words and he’s like, I can’t even feel the cold. It’s amazing.

[Will Tosh] 12:53:16
And I always slightly feel that because he’s the sort of 2 courtiers rolling their eyes next to him going, that’s because we bank up your fire.

[Will Tosh] 12:53:24
That’s because we’re the ones putting the fur on your shoulder and making sure that you’re not cold.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:53:24
Yes.

[Will Tosh] 12:53:29
And, and I think the play is is asking us to hear that, particularly because when Rosalind and Celia first entered the woods.

[Will Tosh] 12:53:35
The first thing they do is meet a farmer, a shepherd who says, it’s really crap.

[Will Tosh] 12:53:42
I’m really short of money. Someone else ends my land. I have to hand over what I earn.

[Will Tosh] 12:53:46
It’s really hard to make a living and I’m really not that happy about it. And Rosalind and Celia come in and it’s a sort of DSX macna kind of patrons go, it’s fine, we’ll buy your house, don’t worry about it.

[Will Tosh] 12:53:58
It’s like that bit in open, you know, it’s like, you get a car, you get a car, you know, they’re that kind of going, yes, you can all have.

[Will Tosh] 12:54:04
You can all have what you need like that to make your lives better. Which is obviously Such a not just frictional but kind of fraudulent.

[Will Tosh] 12:54:14
That doesn’t happen. And again, I think Shakespeare, man of the countryside, you know, he understands.

[Will Tosh] 12:54:19
It’s he’s certainly understands. How the countryside sustains life. Is raising an eyebrow a little bit.

[Will Tosh] 12:54:29
I think the notion of the countryside simply being a context for intellectual and artistic self-realization.

[Will Tosh] 12:54:37
When it is also a place that has to sustain life.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:54:41
You know, Will, it’s interesting. You’re bringing to mind. One of the project that we do at San Francisco Shakes in one of our community outreach projects is an engagement with unhoused people.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:54:58
Through a very good organization. Which works in downtown San Francisco. And this year, one of the low sigh of that engagement is a reenactment.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:55:14
With individual contributions from the unhoused people in the program. Of a scene from As You Like It.

[mikel clifford] 12:55:22
Hmm.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:55:24
And the scene which is the focus of this work and it’s it’s a brilliant piece of work.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:55:31
At every level. It’s 1 of the great things that the organization is doing. The scene is or Lando’s first entry having left Adam blind on the ground at his first entry.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:55:47
At a time when he and Adam are both famished. Into the circle of the courts exiles. And he draws his sword.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:55:58
He thinks he’s going to have to fight for food. And they reassure him and there is a kind of, you know, the sort of a fairly obvious sort of moral lesson about how He’s mistaken and in fact this is this in Ardent can be a better world even than that in the court.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:56:20
By that scene. But that seem And that question of the entry of the stranger. Into a circle of those with food.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:56:34
Had such profound resonance. For the unhoused people who were in this program. It will allowed them.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:56:43
To visualize. Core elements of their own fears and uncertainties in life. And their own angers in life.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:56:52
In a way that was just extraordinary. And it is, it’s fascinating to think of this. This multiplicity of vision that Shakespeare brings to this.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:57:05
You’re absolutely right, Will, I, you know, the sense of how hard rural life really is for those who live there.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:57:14
Grew up in rural life. He knew that. He knew that in his bones.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:57:21
And this sense of.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:57:26
Courtly largesse. And courtly noblesse oblique.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:57:33
But also this sense of the possibility of moral development outside the rigid constraints of the court and the rigid social conventions of the court.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:57:43
It’s a It’s a fascinating moment in the play. Which really speaks to exactly what you and Carla were discussing.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:57:51
And I just wanted to share because I don’t many of the people on the on the Zoom probably will not have the opportunity to see.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:58:00
These little performance lets. Which we do with the when our in our engagement with this with his agency helping the unhoused.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:58:10
How powerful a moment. That really is and how Deep the tension. Between different moral perspectives really is in this one little in this one little scene.

[mikel clifford] 12:58:19
Okay.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:58:25
Yeah, I think it’s speaks to the the humanity that. Really for me personally. Uplts the universality of the themes of Shakespeare.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:58:42
That, he has in this place. The humanity is. When folks are hungry and with Without, there’s a need.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:58:52
And how are folks connecting. with characters and with each other and going to see the theater, lovely thing.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:59:06
I do want to bring up it is 1259. Here in the West Coast, I should say, because I’m not in California at this moment.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:59:08
Yes.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:59:15
Well, it has been such a great pleasure to have you here. I’m so grateful for you to be able to.

[Carla Pantoja] 12:59:24
Have this wonderful conversation and Dan, thank you so much for hosting this. And having these great questions.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:59:28
Okay. Let’s have a round of applause for Will and Carla, Internet applause. Thank all of you for coming.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:59:39
We’re just delighted and stay tuned. There are more to come. We’re going to bring in day.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 12:59:50
We’re going to keep this show on the road and this year and in years to come. Thank you very much.

[Will Tosh] 12:59:53
Thanks, everyone.

[mikel clifford] 12:59:54
Okay.

[Carla Pantoja] 13:00:01
Thanks, y’all.

[Daniel Rabinowitz] 13:00:02
Right.

[Pratiksha Shah PM (She/her)] 13:00:06
A heavy estate You’re on the bitterest night Still I will love Still our love

[Pratiksha Shah PM (She/her)] 13:00:17
Angry we’re in a fight Still our love So, the change and we go as we Still love

[Pratiksha Shah PM (She/her)] 13:00:34
Love when Turns out quite a way

[Carla Pantoja] 13:00:39
Well, I really appreciate you taking your evening to have a conversation with us.

[Will Tosh] 13:00:42
Not at all. It was a It was a real project, thank you for having me. And thanks everyone for joining.