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Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Ecocritital
Dialectics in William Shakespeare’s
As You Like It
Animesh Roy
Rabindra Bharati University
Kolkata, India
Abstract:
A study of nature as the background and theme in Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays has long been the area of
scholarship among Shakespearean scholars. But this paper goes beyond the scope of a simple thematic study
of nature in Shakespeare’s works to an ecocritical interpretation of his pastoral play As You Like It. In As
you Like It Shakespeare explores a range of perspectives on nature and the environment, right from overtly
romanticising and celebrating it to criticising it because of its harsh realities. In his use of both the pastoral
and the counter pastoral Shakespeare questions the notion of an ideal nature in the countryside as a general
perception present at that time and points out that our understanding of nature is instead rather subjective.
In William Shakespeare’s As You Like It Duke Senior, Amiens, Jacques, Touchstone and the shepherd Corin
experiences and understands the reality of Nature in the Forest of Arden in very different ways.
Keywords: Ecocriticism, Ecology, Nature, Pastoral, Environment.
William Shakespeare’s genius which ranged over the expression of the widest gamut of issues, emotions,
passions, feelings and desires in his plays was not singularly free from his concern about nature and environment.
A study of nature as a background and theme in Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays has long been the area of
scholarship among Shakespearean scholars. But this paper goes beyond the scope of a simple thematic study of
nature in Shakespeare’s works to an ecocritical interpretation of his pastoral play As You Like It. The paper tries
to delve into the idea and perception about nature and environment present during the period of Shakespeare
and to understand the reasons behind such a belief. It points out that the idea and concern for nature is rather
subjective, relative and is shaped by one’s social and cultural experiences amidst nature. Explaining the
relevance and importance of an ecocritical interpretation of Shakespeare’s works Simon C. Estok points out:
“We can assume that literary theories about representations of environmental issues have a place in serious
Shakespearean scholarship; that there is a case (many, perhaps) compelling enough to persuade Shakespeareans
of the usefulness of ecocriticism and to convince ecocritics that the growth and development of ecocriticism
itself stands to gain substantially from readings of Shakespeare; and that applying ecocriticism to Shakespeare
is very different from doing thematic nature criticism.” (01)
Ecocriticism may be understood as a theoretical and literary enquiry that gained popularity among the
academia in the West in the 1990’s. Ecological criticism or ecocriticism is methodologically similar to other
forms of cultural criticism such as Marxist, feminist and postcolonial criticism. It is one of the several ways
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of appreciating literature in general and a literary text in particular. Just as feminist criticism explores how the
issues of sex and gender are represented in literature and how the notions of sex and gender has evolved over
time, ecological criticism similarly looks at how nature is represented in literature and how the idea of nature
has evolved over time across cultures. Simply defined, “ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between
literature and the physical environment.”(Glotfelty xviii) “Ecocriticism takes as its subject the interconnection
between nature and culture, specifically the cultural artefacts of language and literature. As a critical stance,
it has one foot in literature and the other on land; as a theoretical discourse, it negotiates between the human
and the nonhuman.” (Glotfelty xix) In his seminal book titled Ecocriticism, Greg Garrard defines ecocriticism as “the study of the relationship of the human with the non-human, throughout human cultural history
and entailing critical analysis of the term ‘human’ itself.” (5) Lawrence Buell in his book The Environmental
Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the formation of American Culture categorically defines about
what primarily constitutes an environmental work : (1) The non-human environment is present not merely as
a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history.
(2) The human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest. (3) Human accountability to the
environment is part of the text’s ethical orientation. (4) Some sense of the environment as a process rather
than as a constant or a given is at least implicit in the text. (7-8)
However, doing an ecocritical interpretation of Shakespeare’s plays is far from being simple. As Simon
C. Estok succinctly points out that “Doing ecocritical Shakespeare is a difficult business, one very different
in many ways from doing ecocriticism with someone such as Thoreau. With Shakespeare, doing ecocriticism
is something of a balancing act between valid Shakespearean scholarship on the one hand and real ecological
advocacy on the other.”(08) Since ecological concerns are a recent phenomenon, seen almost as an effect of
the technological excess and as a result of the industrial revolution, questions are raised about the relevance
of the ecocritical interpretation of Shakespeare’s works. Besides, an ecocritical interpretation of Shakespeare
is often received with scepticism. In a seminar in 2005 Greg Garrard pointed out that “the historical context
in which he [Shakespeare] wrote was neither afflicted by major environmental problems, nor plagued by
doubts about the role of humanity on Earth.” However, to support Garrard’s argument entirely in this regard
would be to support a flawed understanding of the environmental history. Ecological concerns were present
in Western literature from much earlier times and they predate that of Shakespeare. It may be noted that even
during the time of Shakespeare, London was suffering from severe problems of air pollution. “The air was
especially bad in the cities. London air was filthy, largely the result of coal burning and deforestation.”(Estok
09) Ken Hiltner gives a fine description about how industrial air pollution was a serious issue of discussion
in the seventeenth century England and how very representational the incidents were in determining the role
humans have played in the environmental crisis. N.D.G. James in his A History of English Forestry points out
that there has been a serious concern about the forest lands of England in the sixteenth century. This concern
becomes all the more evident with the passing of the Act for the Preservation of Woods by Henry VIII in 1543.
Timber was used in England for a variety of purposes like in the navy, for domestic use, as fuel, in industry and
there were serious concerns about a possible scarcity in future supply of wood due to the rapid wiping out of
forests. Thus there has been concerns for the environment even before, during and after Shakespeare’s time.
If there is any single trope in Western culture which has shaped the construction of our understanding of
nature and environment in a profound way, it is that of the pastoral. Arguably, pastoral begins with the Greek
poet Theocritus. Later it was picked-up by Virgil and other Roman poets and writers. Pastoral literature is
often preoccupied with an excessive romantic description of nature. It describes a place of perfect peace and
happiness; a place without malice, ill will and where human beings live in perfect harmony with nature. The
two defining qualities of the pastoral tradition are “the spatial distinction of town (frenetic, corrupt, impersonal)
and the country (peaceful, abundant), and the temporal distinction of a past (idyllic) and present (‘fallen’)”.
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(Garrard 35) However, while pastoral may literally be about the nature and environment, it is often a veiled
way of broaching about sensitive issues such as social, political and ecclesiastical. “What perhaps distinguishes
pastoral from other forms of lyric or narrative is that in pastoral there is always an implied comparison with
another culture, court or city, or another kind of vocation or material production.”(Hattaway 19) William
Shakespeare’s As You Like It is one of his mature attempts at pastoral. But, unlike his other play such as The
Two Gentlemen of Verona in which just like a typical pastoral he presents a simple, idealised life in the countryside, As You Like It may be taken both as his celebration and critique of the pastoral. His critique of the
pastoral as an ideal landscape may stem very much from his awareness of the contemporary environmental
problems. Shakespeare tends to point out that our perception and understanding about nature is not something
general and universal; rather it is relative, subjective and is subject to one’s own experience amidst nature
itself. In William Shakespeare’s As You Like It Duke Senior, Amiens, Jacques, Touchstone and the shepherd
Corin experiences and understands the reality of Nature in the Forest of Arden in very different ways.
One of the central concerns of this paper is to understand the environmental realities and the contemporary
attitudes towards the environment during Shakespeare’s time. The major part of the play’s action takes place
in the Forest of Arden. The Forest of Arden in Shakespeare’s As You Like It was a real forest in Warwickshire,
England which might have captured the attention of the contemporary urban audience as a modern day locus
amoenus far from the environmental problems of the then London. However, ‘Forest’ in Elizabethan England
was not necessarily vast stretches of woodland, but may have also included pasture, sparsely populated tilled
and untilled lands– England in Shakespeare’s time was not much forested than it is now. As Agnes Latham
points out, “It is tempting to try and make some distinction between the forest, where the Duke hunts and
lionesses couch, and the cleared land, where Corin keeps sheep. Audrey fetches up her goats, and Rosalind
and Celia live ‘like fringe upon petticoat’. Doubtless that the whole neighbourhood was known locally as
‘the Forest’. Shakespeare would be familiar with such usage with reference to the Warwickshire Arden, by
his day barely forested at all.”(xi)
Some of the perceptions about nature and the environment presented in Shakespeare’s As You Like It
were much older and they predate Shakespeare. One such notion is the nostalgia for the past. It looks back at
a simpler past when human beings lived in a state of perfect harmony with the planet. This description of a
perfect past is alluded in the conversation between Oliver and the wrestler Charles:
CHARLES They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and
there they live like the old Robin Hood of England. They say many young gentlemen flock to him
every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.
(As You Like It I.I.105-109)
Here “ ‘Arden’ is a name that not only signifies a ‘real’ local habitation in Shakespeare’s Warwickshire but also
alludes to the topos of the ‘greenwood’ that was venerated in idylls and in ballads and romanticised settings
for Robin Hood and his outlaws, echoes of which sound throughout the text.”(Hattaway 09)The reference is
here to that of a golden world, a golden time when there was a perfect harmonious relationship between the
humans and nature. This is very much like Eden from Genesis during the pre lapsarian period as well as like
the Golden Age from Hesiod and Ovid; it presents the world as a locus amoenus, an ideal world where humans
lived in harmony and at peace with the Earth. People didn’t have to work for meeting their requirements.
Mother Earth provided them everything abundantly they wanted.
While the locus amoenus was imagined in the past, it is also imagined in the rural countryside. Ever
since the Myth of Gilgamesh there has been an inversion of the country/city dyad and it is the country which
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is preferred as something which is natural, original compared to the city which is unnatural and artificial. In
Shakespeare’s As You Like It Duke Senior moves to the Forest of Arden along with other noblemen of his
erstwhile court after being banished by his brother. The pristine, verdant and natural environment of Arden is
contrasted with the unnaturalness of the city in Duke Senior’s words:
DUKE SENIOR Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel not we the penalty of Adam,
The seasons’ difference; as the icy fang
And the churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body.
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
‘This is no flattery; these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am’.
Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.
(As You Like It II.I. 01-18)
As a form of nostalgia, this perfect place is imagined both spatially and temporally in the not too distant past
and in the not too distant countryside, as a contrast to the artificial, wearisome and turbulent city life. However,
it is to be noted that the pastoral as a form of art was chiefly written by city people and not by people from the
countryside. This myth about an ideal place is often highly romanticised and may not be accurate. Thus the
view about pristine nature in the countryside is utopian and is far removed from reality. It is to be noted that
“For the characters who have escaped from the court, the forest is a place imaginatively familiar and also a
metonym for values, particularly those allied with Nature; for those that live there, it has material associations
with property and with work.” (Hattaway 01) Duke Senior being someone from the court, his perception of
nature in the Forest of Arden is highly romanticised.
This view of the Forest of Arden as an ideal place is also resonated in the song sung by Amiens:
AMIENS Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Upon the sweet bird’s throat,
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Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
(As You Like It II.V.01-08)
Both Duke Senior and Amiens being persons from the court, sees the Forest of Arden as a wonderful place; a
locus amoenus, which is very much in lines of the theory of Theocrites and Virgil, classical pastoral.
However, this idea of nature in the Forest of Arden as a locus amoenus is contradicted and displaced by
Corin, Touchstone and Jaques. “The shepherd Corin describes not the pleasures but the labours of the country, and the play’s fools, Jaques and Touchstone, establish a kind of reality principle, both demonstrating a
derisive scepticism about the satisfactions of country as opposed to pastoral life.”(Hattaway 20) Corin being
a shepherd by profession, someone who lives in the forest experiences the realities of Nature more closely:
CORIN Fair sir, I pity her,
And wish, for her sake more than for mine own,
My fortunes were more able to relieve her;
But I am shepherd to another man,
And do not shear the fleece that I graze.
My master is of churlish disposition,
And little recks to find the way to heaven
By doing deeds of hospitality.
Besides, his cote, his flocks, and bounds of feed,
Are now on sale; and at our sheepcote now,
By reason of his absence, there is nothing
That you will feed on; but what is, come see,
And in my voice most welcome shall you be.
(As You Like It II.IV.71-82)
Corin describes the hardships of shepherd’s life because of the enclosures, the seizure of the common land
for the purpose of wool production. Corin’s discourse registers the loss of an English Eden remembered. This
tinge of satire for the environment of the Forest of Arden is also evident in another conversation between
Corin and Rosalind:
CORIN: Assuredly the thing is to be sold.
Go with me; if you like upon report
The soil, the profit, and the kind of life,
I will your very faithful feeder be,
And buy it with your gold right suddenly.
(As You Like It II.IV. 91-95)
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The far from the ideal condition of the nature of the Forest of Arden is also brought out in the conversation between Orlando and Adam when Orlando forbade Adam to lie in the damp atmosphere of the Forest:
ORLANDO Yet thou liest in the bleak air. Come, I will bear thee to some shelter...
(As You Like It II.VI. 14-15)
If the idea of nature in the Forest of Arden between Duke Senior and Corin presents a sharp contrast to
each other, Touchstone sees nature through a variety of perspectives. His is a balanced view of nature and not
a wild celebration or criticism of nature:
TOUCHSTONE Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at home I was in a better place;
but travellers must be content.
(As You Like It II.IV. 13-15)
... ... ... ... ... ...
TOUCHSTONE Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a
shepherd’s life, it is nought. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is
private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is
not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no
more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?
(As You Like It III.I.13-21)
“Touchstone’s discourse belongs in the humanist tradition of the paradoxical encomium, exemplified by
Erasmus’ Praise of Folly and the Gargantua and Pantagruel of Francois Rabelais, in which fools are used to
expound upon the follies of the world.” (Hattaway 20)
The point of view put forward by Jaques presents another version of the reality of nature in the Forest of
Arden. It sheds light on the man animal relationship in the forest. Jaques seems to point out what happens
when humans start to intrude and encroach in the habitat of the animals:
JAQUES ‘Poor deer’, quoth he, ‘thou mak’st a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much’. Then, being there alone,
Left and abandoned of his velvet friends:
‘Tis right;’ quoth he ‘thus misery doth part
The flux of company’. Anon, a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps alone by him
And never stays to greet him. ‘Ay,’ quoth Jaques
‘Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;
Tis just the fashion. Wherefore do you look
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Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?’
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what’s worse,
To fright the animals, and to kill them up
In their assign’d and native dwelling place.
(As You Like It II.I.47-63)
Duke Senior understands the role played by humans in the forest but he shares a position of sheer contradiction:
DUKE SENIOR Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Should, in their own confines, with forked heads
Have their round haunches gor’d.
(As You Like It II.I.21-24)
Thus in As you Like It Shakespeare explores a range of perspectives on nature and the environment,
right from overtly romanticising and celebrating it to criticising it because of the harsh realities. In his use of
both the pastoral and the counter pastoral Shakespeare questions the notion of an ideal nature in the countryside
as a general perception present at that time and points out that our understanding of nature is rather subjective.
Works Cited
Primary Source
Shakespeare, William. “As You Like It.” William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., 1980. 254-283. Print.
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Culture. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1995. 01-27. Print.
Estok, Simon C. “Doing Ecocriticism with Shakespeare: An Introduction” Ecocriticsm and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 01-18. Print.
Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. London and New York: Routldge, 2004. Print.
—,“Green Shakespeares.” British Shakespeare Association Biennial Conference 2005— Seminar: Shakespeare and Ecology. Newcastle, UK. September 2, 2005.
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Glotfelty, Cheryll. “Introduction.” The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, eds. Glotfelty, Cheryll, and
Harold Fromm. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996. Print.
Hattaway, Michael. “Introduction.” As You Like It, eds. Hattaway, Michael. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press,
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Hiltner, Ken. “Renaissance Literature and Our Contemporary Attitude toward Global Warming.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary
Studies in Literature and Environment 16.3 (Summer 2009): 429-441. Print.
James, N.D.G. A History of English Forestry. Oxford: Blackwell. 1981. Print.
Latham, Agnes. “Introduction”, The Arden Edition To The Works Of William Shakespeare: As You Like It, eds. Latham,
Agnes. Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi and Madras: B.I. Publications Pvt. Ltd., 1975. Print.
“Introduction to Literature and the Environment.” Ken Hiltner.www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Hw_H1zJo. 24 April 2015.