As You Like It Essay: Violating the Established Social Order

Violating the Established Social Order in As You worry It The recent White House sex scandal raised issues about gender, desire, and an established social order - issues that questioned established social norms and ideas about the power and regime of sex. Our society is not the first to recognize the effects that sexual politics and gender relations have had on social order, however. The works of William Shakespeare are robust evidence that Elizabethan England was firmly in touch with these notions. Shakespeares keen observations and careful crafting demonstrate over and over again that the battle for power is an present one, and that social order is an ever-changing phenomenon. Quite often, Shakespeare questions the norms of gender, desire, and social order, and does his best to show that these norms can easily be changed (often with hilarious consequences). As You manage It is a primeval example. Rife with usurpations, cross-dressing, female aggressiveness, and even a god n amed Hymen, Shakespeare does his best to throw the established norms into disarray. He takes the rules regarding gender, desire, and social disorder completely upside-down. As You Like It shows that, like a hymen, these rules are made to be broken. The catalyst for the chaos the drives the play is certainly the violation of social order. Charles the wrestler tells us, the senescent Duke is banished by his younger brother the new Duke (I,i,99-100), and we are off and running. The old usurped Duke (Senior) has gone to live in the forest of Arden with several loyal followers, and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England (I,i,116). This allusion to the social outsider who robs from the rich and gives to the poor highlights how th... ...of Chicago Press, 1946. Harris, Laurie Lamzen, ed. Shakespearean Criticism Volume 5. Detroit Gale Research Company Book Tower, 1984. Holland, Norman. Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare. newborn York McGraw-Hill, 1966. OConnor, Evangeline M . Whos Who and Whats What In Shakespeare. rude(a) York Avenel Books, 1978. Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. Eds., Louis B. Wright and Virginia A. LaMar. New York Washington Square Press, 1960. Spurgeon, Caroline. Shakespeares Imagery And What It Tells Us. London Cambridge University Press, 1965. Stevenson, Burton. The Standard Book of Shakespearean Quotations. New York Funk & Wagnalls Company, Inc., 1953. Thaler, Alwin. Shakespeare and Our World. Knoxville, TN University of Tennessee Press, 1966. Webster, Margaret. Shakespeare Without Tears. New York Capricorn Books, 1975.