As You Like It

desiderata.english

As a Chinaman old-fashioned, traditonally-minded way, my ocunsellor-cum-mGf Mr Coww always says: A man's word is his bond.

Keeping up to that spirit, I remember telling a recent wordplay "convert" Reader MOSES that I would tackle, maybe also tickle, the Bard again this Sunday morning, when breakfast is always CONTINENTAL for this bourgeosie-wayward Blogger (well, occasionally I ass-sure thee), so it's not completely true I am a clost-socialist leaning ... Ah, I digress early because of THE TIGER, who led us in a night walk through Petronas hunting, and wanting, wandering. Wondering?!

So after a "late" luxurious outing, Moses's bond has to be kept, so I "googled" the way as we all like it --especially on a LAZY, HAZY SUNDAY! (yes, no doubt about it, your suffering asthmatic mates will surely confirm it -- the haze still bewitches us! The lazy part applies to this pig, dunno about other (pigs, I mean, and this is figuratively speaking, not meant to be demeaning -- wordplay, remember? If I should offend, blame it on Mr Coww, or a DR HOWDY, whose parody using Animal language entertained us under Comments in a previous post. If you find this reference a mite misty, don't be a lazy coww, go do some moo-ing work!;))


""**One of Shakespeare's early plays, As You Like It (1598-1599), is a stock romantic comedy that was familiar to Elizabethan audiences as an exemplar of "Christian" comedy. Although the play does include two offstage spiritual conversions, the "Christian" designation does not refer to religion itself. Instead, it denotes the restoration and regeneration of society through the affirmation of certain Christian values such as brotherly love, marital union, tolerance for different viewpoints, and optimism about life at large.

The plot is very simple: the resolution of the dramatic problem in the warped attitudes of two evil brothers toward good brothers, and related obstacles to marriage for several couples in the play (most notably Rosalind and Orlando) are easily overcome, and a happy ending is never in doubt. On one level, the play was clearly intended by Shakespeare as a simple, diverting amusement; several scenes in As You Like It are essentially skits made up of songs and joking banter. But on a somewhat deeper level, the play provides opportunities for its main characters to discuss a host of subjects (love, aging, the natural world, and death) from their particular points of view. At its center, As You Like It presents us with the respective worldviews of Jaques, a chronically melancholy pessimist preoccupied with the negative aspects of life, and Rosalind, the play's Christian heroine, who recognizes life's difficulties but holds fast to a positive attitude that is kind, playful, and, above all, wise. In the end, the enjoyment that we receive from the play's comedy is reinforced and validated by a humanistic Christian philosophy gently woven into the text by a benevolent Shakespeare.**""

A study of As You Like It as a Form 5 subject for Literature was once available (i.e. at GCE-level); but way back then, the students would be lucky to be able to "source" a good, published guide! Minerva P?

Now, the lazy buggers, one'd just visit thy online fRiend, and before you finish gargling thy mouth wash, your computer lights up with all sorts of compass to:


Summary and Analysis – Themes – Characters – And much more...

Don't we the parents like http://yanconer.blogspot.com, moses and Desi, off course, envy these Young but NOT so Insignificant&IgnorantCows?

So I dug up my archives (please IgnorantCows there, the past tense of dig is NOT digged,you can't deface the English anyway as you like it -- unless you're right up there with Willy with a B(e)ARD who constantly broke a few rules under Poetic Licence; if you need to ask this Teacher what PL is, then I've got my message across. You are NOT there YET! People like Dr Howdy might be in his company, ylchong just maybe (someimes I need to blow my own horn, othersiw my Lapdogs and Cowws don't come Home, from the Range, HOWDY has a good ditty there).So you IgnorantCowws, just be patient-ah, come back every Sunday for more Desi's Inggeris, will you? If the response keeps on coming tsunami-like, desiderata2000 may just turn commercial ( a hot topic now ongoing in Blogosphere...ah, do I digress?)And that's another rhetorical question! No 2, one inside, and one outside the brackets .. 4see, a writer must be accurate, honest2! The way I get involved in so much wayward rambling, I may drive away what few my Readers presently number,( did not install the Readers Meter which Yan says she's done, Cos I am quite a COW-ward, and dare not face the truth. Truth be sold, I'm also Ignorant in installing it!) so I shall quickly go back to Moses original query, about us ALL being Actors, and that the World's a Stage.


One definition of “History” has been “His Story”, and the history of the human race is indeed best recorded through well-told stories. And an effective channel is The Play, as all who have read, or seen, any of Shakespeare plays, would agree. In secondary school during our time, it was fortunate that we had studied classics like “Macbeth” and “Julius Caesar” (Friends, Romans and countrymen!/ Lend me your ears…) from which we learnt several memorable lines. Who could forget Brutus’ stabbing with a dagger into Caesar’s back being described as the “most unkindest cut of all” in a speech by Mark Anthony in the betrayal of Caesar by his “best friend”? And Caesar’s exclamation “Et tu, Brute!” (meaning “You too, my friend Brutus!”) as he lay dying from his friend Brutus’ stab in the back.

And Shakespeare in just about thirty lines summed up a human life cycle comprising seven stages, thus, from As You Like It:

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His act being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewing and puking in the nurse’s arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saw and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion


Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.


It would have taken a lot of prose to paraphrase adequately the seven-stage cycle of a man’s life, and yet the attempts would not do sufficient justice to the verses so eloquently put in a nutshell by the Bard. Maybe the profession referred to as a “soldier” would change to that of a lawyer, maybe a doctor, or a computer specialist in contemporary times, but most adults would smile at the end stage on reaching an advanced age (maybe 54 during Victorian times? now in the 70s or 80s due to improving health standards) when adults enter “the second childhood”. All of us would readily acknowledge the apt description of the senile years – without (sans) teeth, eyes, taste and “everything”.

I'd better stop here, lest Moses say I'm already at that stage; ah, SEVEN is my favourite number!