SHAKESPEARE!
At first I was lukewarm about working on As You Like It - I had seen a lukewarm production of it years ago and everyone else seemed to feel similarly - but reading it convinced me otherwise. I'm a big devotee of Harold Bloom, and his "The Invention of the Human" is my go-to book for Shakespeare's plays. I agree with his assessment of Rosalind as stunningly central to this play, even untouched by dramatic irony in that she really seems to know as much as we do - probably more. She deserves better than Orlando - he is hardly her equal - but she wants him and she gets him. She is more masterful and poised than even the play's fool, for whom Shakespeare usually reserves the most piercing observation and clever articulation. She should prove a great challenge and I hope I have a chance to play her.
This play is probably the happiest and most gentle of his plays - most things truly are as we would like it - a cottage in the woods, a band of merry men, love notes on trees and playing pretend...I'd like to live in this world where all malcontents repent and recant and where love flourishes among the trees.
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repent and recant...!
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