In 2008 the Dark Lady Players did two different productions of As You Like It to reveal the play's underlying religious allegory. This video, which is in two parts, combines extracts from both productions in order to show how the Dark Lady Players evolved their treatment of some of the passages. The play ends in the warning of a flood coming, begins with an allusion to Hercules flushing out the manure in the Augean stables, has 2 characters called Jakes (the Elizabethan for toilet), begins with references to dung, foul smells, and excrement, and has an odd character Touchstone. He quotes from Harrington?s book on the invention of the flush toilet, and like him carries a pocket-watch. So there is a surface allegory, in which the play is a big toilet joke, in which everything onstage will get flushed away at the end, except for the characters who escape to the ark, Audrey (whose name comes from St Ethelreda who was saved from a flood) and Touchstone. But there is also a deeper Biblical allegory, from Paradise to the Flood. This underlying allegory answers many unresolved questions. Why does Orlando start out an uneducated strong man who can defeat Charles the Duke?s wrestler, and turn into a weakling who writes poems and quotes from Thomas a Kempis The Imitation of Christ? Why is the forest described as a temple, surrounded with a circle, why are people starving, why are slaughtered deer compared to human beings, why are people being hung on trees? If this is Arden, what is a Roman conqueror doing in this forest? Why is Rosalind?s verse body hung on a tree and why does it have lame feet and why does it span from East to West? Why is she a god to shepherd turned? Why do she and Celia ascend to heaven? Why do they both return from heaven just at the moment that Touchstone has completed his rhetorical exercise in partitio or counting? Who is Jane Smile? Why does the center of the passage about her contain a rhetorical chiasmus or cross? Why does Celia conquer Oliver in the way that Julius Caesar conquered Gaul? Why at the end of the play are Touchstone and Audrey going off to the Ark, as if another flood is coming? Why at the start of the play is Orlando equated to Hercules, and confronted with a situation of a stable and a horse and a dunghill?In these productions the rhetorical figures Staircase and Partitio are meta-theatrically shown on stage in order to convey their meanings. Staircase is used to give prominence to the way that Celia conquers the Olive(r) like a Caesar, which together with her identity as the classical companion of Ganymede ie Tithonus, indicates her allegorical identity as Titus Caesar---since the olive tree is a symbol of the Jews. Touchstone's use of the rhetorical structure partitio is a metaphor for the partition that exists between Earth and Heaven and which comes down on the last day when Jesus returns from heaven, indicating Celia has yet another allegorical identity. This double allegory illustrates findings that are only just beginning to emerge in some of the latest developments in NT scholarship.Look for articles by John Hudson on Scribd.com especiallyhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/15486494/As-You-Like-It-a-Religious-AllegorySee also the 30 minute TV interview on Manhattan Entertainment Spotlight Special at http://blip.tv/file/1254195/ Email Darkladyplayers@aol.com to find our more about the work of one of the world's most experimental Shakespeare companies.
