‘nothing’s Said Now That Has Not Been Said Before’ (terence, 1874, Prologue)

This essay contends that the transformations of As You Like It and The Country Wife from their respective earlier sources Lodge s Rosalynde and Moli re s L Ecole des Femmes do not detract from their originality and that in borrowing from their sources they are re- interpreting issues which have repeatedly troubled humanity across time. Reimagining the romance as a play and the French comedy as an English comedy respectively enables a new generation of audiences to relate and understand the similar issues within their own political and social milieu.

Throughout known history people have told stories stories help people understand the world. Even 2000 years ago, stories and plays were not necessarily brand new, but taken from earlier sources. The above quote, taken from the prologue of Terence s play, defends his reuse of characters from Plautus earlier Colax, which similarly borrows from Menander s Eunuchus. Menander s plays, many of which are sadly lost to the ravages of time, are because of adaptations by later playwrights and poets still available to the modern world enabling insight into the vestiges of a shared history and what entertained Athens as High Comedy in 291BCE. Whilst looking at Wycherley s The Country Wife it is necessary to recognise not only its most recent source Moli re s L Ecole des Femmes, but to take into consideration and acknowledge the earlier influences, thus within Wycherley one can recognise Terence and Menander respectively borrowing as he did Horner s eunuch status from them.

Equally, As You Like It adopts the Greek and Roman concept of the pastoral which was perhaps taken from Virgil s Eclogues and was used by Sidney in Arcadia . The pastoral provided

a platform to examine and criticise society, a premise which Shakespeare seemed to adopt readily, distancing any criticism of society from the real world. In employing the pastoral, like the earlier Romans and Greeks, Shakespeare uses it to reflect upon the conflict between civilisation and the natural world, using it to provide an alternative reality for the resolution of difficulty or to overcome adversity. Yet, as Greenblatt says, the pastoral is a construct in itself because it is created by an author writing from a city perspective (Greenblatt, 2005, p.1615) there is a sense of unreality about it, there is little work done, even the shepherds sit and talk. This pastoral world, then looks back to the Golden Age as described in Ovid s Metamorphoses and a world where it was not money that provided status but familial ties (Shakespeare, 2012, p.20). Shakespeare, despite siting his play in a lovely, unreal, pastoral world introduces an element of counter pastoral in the form of social criticism by giving a clear voice to the shepherd Corin who ties the play to its society, Shakespeare reflects back to the audience the Enclosures Act, which caused much hardship in Elizabethan rural communities: But I am a shepherd to another man (2.4.71), Corin is no longer able to graze his own sheep as the common land has been enclosed he needs to work sheep for another, which causes him to be hungry and homeless. Whilst it is possible to see Lodge within the Shakespearean comedy it is also possible to see the distance between the two become more apparent here as Lodge s story remains a romance, Shakespeare delves into questions of gender, class and society. This counter pastoral continues as Barthes notes the play functions as a writerly text (Shakespeare, 2012, p.21) forcing the audience and players to examine everything about it in order to understand it, with little plot this is essential. By enhancing the source material and building questions of gender and class into the play, Shakespeare has further transmuted the source into a more elaborate experience.

Furthermore, As You Like It, features further influence from the classical world namely Greek Classical New Comedy. The Greek Comedy plot ensured that love overcame adversity (Shakespeare, 2012, p.12), although this being Shakespeare, it is not formulaic swapping as he does the eloquent hero for an eloquent heroine (Rosalind). Bakhtin notes that in the Greek the boy and girl are of marriageable age and both are beautiful, intelligent, charming and chaste (Bakhtin,1981, p.87) as they are in both Shakespeare and Lodge.

By dramatising Rosalynde Shakespeare was using a very popular story by 1598 was in its third reprint. The plot of the play follows the story closely, but the small changes significantly deepen and enrich the story. In dramatising the romance, Shakespeare cuts and cuts again at the narrative changing the time frame from seven months to about ten days (Lodge, 2012, p.26). He does this by removing the initial narrative detailing the death of Sir John of Bordeaux and the details of his will, opening the play by dropping the audience straight into the middle of a conversation between Orlando and Adam. Orlando, as a younger son, received just a poor thousand crowns (1.1.2) inheritance the laws of primogeniture ensuring his brother inherited the majority of their father s estate, thus he would need to find a way to support himself. Conversely, Lodge places greed at the heart of the brother s quarrel Saladyne has been left less than his brothers and determines to keep Rosader a footboy (Lodge, 2012, p.49), but typically Shakespeare changes this to make Oliver envious of Orlando not covetous.

The opening conversation introduces the reasons for Orlando s unhappiness with his brother Oliver (Saladyne) who he feels is treating him like an animal, refusing him an education:

stays me here at home unkept for call you that keeping for a gentleman

of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? (1.1.6-8)

Orlando reflects the language of Elizabethan humanism: he desires self-improvement now and not in the afterlife. His reference to being kept like an ox, was an indication of lower orders of creature how base those without education would be perceived. Orlando would not be considered a gentleman without an education, he would also be unable to better himself and move to court without it. Rosader is less interested in the education, more in the masculinity being deprived to him he could become a knight, I have strength to perform any honourable exploit (Lodge, 2012, p.49), this is reflective of the move away from Petrarchan manly strength to a man more inclined to think and use education and rhetoric to make his way in the world. Contextually, social hierarchy was changing, the aristocracy were no longer assured a place at court, the need for knights at arms was gone, and the mercantile classes were rising to positions of power. Hence, Lodge s romance, with its battles and knightly deeds were replaced by Shakespeare with religious conversion and no battles or swooning maidens requiring rescuing, which was more relevant to the theatre going audience he was writing for. Orlando, uses the word hind (1.1.15) to describe himself it is a female deer or a servant and as such it is perceived as of lower standing, (at this time Galen proposed that men were more developed than women), perhaps the suggestion is Orlando is being emasculated as he appears to be powerless to change his circumstances. It is Rosalind whilst in the forest who helps him to move forward and the learn the language of love. In contrast to Lodge Shakespeare places his Rosalind at the centre of the play, she becomes the protagonist, rather than the focus being upon the relationship between Rosader and Saladyne (Smith, 1991, p.44). Lodge creates a female secondary character who is feisty and witty but Shakespeare endows her with depth, richness, poise (Berry, 1981, p.44) and eloquence.

Shakespeare deepens the themes of the story moving towards a questioning of society and gender, which Lodge, whilst cross dressing Rosalynde does not elaborate upon. His jokes are always based upon the concept of Rosader knowing that he is speaking with Rosalynde dressed as a boy, whereas Shakespeare subtly questions and digs away at the notion of gender his humour being based upon the lack of knowledge expressed by Orlando as he converses and flirts with Ganymede. By shortening the time between the brothers argument and the wrestling match Shakespeare shifts the focus of the play from the masculine battles of the brothers to the deepening love between the hero and the heroine. He loses the euphuistic, descri ptive language employed by Lodge and replaces the narrative with dialogue, which often takes the form of teaching Rosalind teaching Orlando, as in the criticism of his verse she plays and puns with language, would detect the lazy foot of Time (3.3.257) pointing out his inability to use verse structure correctly. This same scene sees the pair circling each other verbally, he calls her pretty youth (3.3.281) intimating he sees her as no more than a boy, but he is aware of her attractiveness as a boy. She likewise is aware of him, replying, As the cony that you see dwell where she is kindled (3.3.285). Rosalind intimates the passion she is feeling by referring to the promiscuity of the rabbits in the forest and the passion she feels stirring. Shakespeare, writing the dialogue between the two reinforces the admiration and value placed upon the eloquence of rhetoric. Lodge s Rosalynde is verbally similar to Rosalind but, she does not display the verbal virtuosity of Shakespeare s most popular heroine.

The comparison between the natural world and urban human society, which facilitates the plot in As You Like It, can also to some extent be seen in The Country Wife utilising as it does the disparate nature of the countryside and the city in the characterisation of Margery, Pinchwife s country wife, who he believes is na ve and ignorant, because of her lack of urban experience. Likewise, in Wycherley s source: L Ecole des Femmes, Arnolphe also gets himself a wife from the countryside, although worryingly his is a child who he then proceeds to groom to his specification of what a wife should be like, The girl I plan to marry s [sic] quite na ve / And she ll spare my brow here from horns I that believe (Moli re, 2008,1.1.79-80). Keeping her away from the city and in ignorance Arnolphe believes, as does Pinchwife, that his wife will not cuckold him.

Moli re is studied in translation, which in itself alters the play to suit the audience, in this case an English audience. The differences do not stop there. Comparison of the poetic structure of L Ecole des Femmes and The Country Wife show that Slater, in translating Moli re using traditional alexandrines, is reflecting how the play was written and how performances were conducted in French theatre during the 17^th Century. She points out that this French verse form is not the same as the English (Moli re, 2008, p.xxv) French alexandrines having twelve syllables with each of the syllables being pronounced. Likewise, Slater has continued Moli re s preference for rhyming couplets, I won t go into details. Let s just say, she fell-/And my new love affair s progressing very well (1.4.315-316).

It is possible to see here the hexameter of the line, as well as the rhyming couplet at the end. French verse was mostly written in this way, as Fry says because there is less variation within their accentuation so the line works well. English poetry requires different stresses because our speech uses syllabic pronunciation (Fry, 2007, p.57). The French follows the classical Latin verse structure, whilst English does not. In adapting parts of the plot from L Ecole des Femmes, Wycherley abandoned the French formal verse structure, preferring instead to have his characters speaking in prose, creating a performance more reflective of reality and more understandable to an English audience.

Wycherley enhances the source by adding extra plot lines, creating originality and complexity within the plot. Moli re has only a single plot line, whilst Wycherley adds another two, thus all three feature a male rake (Wycherley, 2015, p.ix): Horner the assumed eunuch who wishes to sleep with married women who love the sport (1.1.142) Pinchwife and Margery and Harcourt and Alithea, who unlike the other characters do genuinely fall in love. Moli re s single theme that of antagonism between the sexes, develops into an anti female satire, You find those husbands here, in every shape and size / They re led a merry dance, as you must recognise (Moli re, 2008, 1.1.23-24), however, Wycherley develops several themes which satirise, not only the antipathy between the sexes which Lady Fidget perhaps displays to the best effect, Tis an arrant shame women of quality should be so slighted [ .] for their titles only (Wycherley, 2015, 2.1.333 335) but he also illuminates the avarice in an emerging economically driven society and the competitiveness of men, who cuckold, not because they want to sleep with the women, although this is an added bonus, but because to sleep with another man s wife is to better him. Both Arnolphe and Pinchwife wish to own and possess something that they imagine other men do not have: a faithful wife. Similarly, both playwrights show the audience the characters erroneous thinking as they are duped and humiliated because of their own behaviour and attitudes by the end of the play. Working within a socially and politically unstable society, Wycherley, to please his audience, combined these themes with sexual innuendo throughout the play, but I ll get into her the back way (4.1.117) because that is what seventeenth Century English audiences required: a more robust form of sexually charged (Corman, 2000, p.52) humour than the earlier Elizabethan, Jacobean or continental audiences.

Wycherley further demonstrates his originality using not only Moli re, but Terence in the creation of this play. His addition of other characters and the extra plot lines, combined with his ability to weave the two sources together and construct a work which is satirical in its focus, yet contemporaneously merging Plautine farcical humour with the more philosophical Terencian humour ensure the resulting play is both highly original and innovative.

Wycherley begins his play, like Terence with a prologue which does not give a lead into the play but defends it from critics, Therefore his play shan t ask your leave to live (Wycherley, 2008, prologue). Giving no indication of what subject matter or any information about the characters, the play promises to be a surprise.

Moli re opens L Ecole des Femmes with Arnolphe planning a wedding, his terror of being cuckolded has made him lock a child away to bring to adulthood, illiterate and ignorant of the world, A wife who writes knows more than can be good for her (1.1.94).

Chrysalde advises him to be careful and better not marry in case he becomes a laughing stock because he has laughed and publically denounced other cuckolded husbands. Arnolphe, however, is convinced he is better than other men and describes what he has done to secure his reputation. The whole of this scene is between the two men, and is single minded in its direction. It provides introduction to the characters and sets up the plot the audience know because of his arrogance that Arnolphe is going to fail. Moli re uses disguise as a comic device. Arnolphe changes his name to Monsieur de la Souche, Beck points out that this is a play on words, with possible phallic intimations, souche being the word for stump and also the root of a family (Beck, 1968, p.254). Wycherley builds upon this comedy, not disguising his male characters but giving them names which are amusing because they relate to their personality or character, Pinchwife is so called because he does pinch his wife, but also because his wife is pinched by Horner the cuckolder (so named because he metaphorically places horns on the heads of cuckolded husbands). Wycherley introduces Pinchwife in Act 1, but slightly later than Moli re and when he does the audience are shown that he is unpopular and slightly ridiculous. A distrusting man who has little regard for women, his insecurity and possible poor sexual prowess, A pox on t! The jades would jilt me I could never keep a whore to myself (1.1.406) resulting in his cruelty towards his wife. Wycherley has cast this character as more unpleasant and unappealing, with insecurity and jealousy as his overriding qualities. Arnolphe, appears controlling, but is less unpleasant and it is possible to pity him at the end of the play, whereas Pinchwife appears to get less than he deserves.

As this essay has shown No story comes from nowhere new stories are born from old it is the new combinations that make them new (Rushdie, 1990, p.73). Both As You Like It and The Country Wife can trace their origins, either through plot, genre or characterisation, back through time to Roman and Greek theatre. It is possible in this instance to see, as mentioned above that the themes of comedy can be readily interpreted to reflect different ages and societies. Neither play attempts to disguise its sources, but appear to embrace them, incorporating and transforming them into original and relevant dramas for their time. Both works are therefore successful amalgamations and composites of earlier works. Nor does this diminish the earlier works Lodge s Rosalynde is perhaps a forerunner of the later novel and stands proudly as a text in its own right, yet Shakespeare s interpretation and dramatisation is at once wonderfully original and relevant and even today it is possible to see originating source material being reinterpreted whilst allowing for the perception of originality within a reimagined frame. As You Like It as recently performed at the National demonstrates Shakespeare reimagined in a current, corporate world,

sharp-edged design turns the court into a corp. Sandwiches are eaten in unison and the crucial wrestling match becomes a team-bonding, savagery-building exercise. The difference between courtiers and bustling execs proves to be minimal (Clapp, 2008)

Likewise, The Country Wife taken from its earlier sources provided a restoration audience with hearty chuckle whilst examining social tensions within an unstable and shifting society. It is the interpretation and combinations, which as Rushdie says make them new (Rushdie, 1990, p.73) it is possible to see both texts in their new combinations providing catharsis for their respective audiences in an environment which is suspended from reality.

To close it would perhaps be appropriate to quote from the earlier Iamblichus discussing tragedy and comedy by looking at the emotions of others we are able to appease our own emotions and make them moderate and clear them away (Kitano, 2001,1.11).

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