Belonging: As You Like It Essay

Belonging in As You Like It

Our most fundamental unit of belonging is the family, then the wide community followed by the state and finally the world. In primitive societies, the most extreme punishment was exclusion, ostracism, banishment or excommunication. As You Like it begins with Orlando resentful of his mistreatment by his first born brother who eventually banishes him from the family. Mean time we turn to the nation state where a younger brother has usurped the throne and exiled his older brother. Later Ferdinand also banishes Rosalind from his court. All three become outsiders who seek refuge in the forest of Ardens and live like Robin Hood.

A lot of people are banished in As You Like It. Some characters go forcibly, threatened from their homes, such as Duke Senior, Rosalind, and Orlando. Some have voluntarily abandoned their positions out of a sense of rightness, such as Seniors loyal band of lords, Celia, and the noble servant Adam. It is, then, rather remarkable that the play ends with four marriagesa ceremony that unites individuals into couples and ushers these couples into the community. The community that sings and dances its way through Ardenne at the close of Act V, scene iv, is the same community that will return to the dukedom in order to rule and be ruled. This event, where the poor dance in the company of royalty, suggests a utopian world in which wrongs can be righted and hurts healed. The sense of restoration with which the play ends depends upon the formation of a community of exiles in politics and love coming together to soothe their various wounds.

True treasure is found in a community in which we are known, accepted, and valued as flawed-yet-gifted contributors to the welfare of the whole. Such community is rooted in faith, respectful of its traditions, hopeful about its future, committed to loving mercy, and doing justice. Communities of this kind rely on an assumption that we help one another, loving our neighbours as ourselves.

This is best shown when Orlando unselfishly helps Olivers distress and transforming into a caring compliant member of the forest exiles.

In the second plot Duke Ferdinand also becomes converted by a religious man, abandons his attempt to capture all the exiles and retreats from world into religious life, restoring the crown and all lands to the ones he had banished. Order has been restored.