The Wisdom of Shakespeare Series
AS YOU LIKE IT
by
Peter Dawkins
1998
Foreword by Mark Rylance
I would guess that Wisdom is the marriage of love with knowledge. For wisdom, as I have experienced it, is knowledge shared in the right way at the right time to be of benefit; and love, intuitive love, may be the only guide as to how and when one speaks with benefit.
Shakespeare didn't bother too much with the printed page it
seems, trusting his knowledge to the voices and ears of the theatre,
which only survives by an intuitive sense of timing with present
circumstance. The 400 years of readjustment of the form which
Shakespeare's knowledge takes has kept alive his ability to be wise.
It is difficult to imagine Rosalind curing Orlando of his love
sickness, or Jacques cleansing 'the foul body of th' infected
world' merely by means of a book. Both characters invest
themselves in the motley of disguise, one as Ganymede, one as a fool,
because play-acting such as this gives one the ability to be speaking
and also listening at the same time. The sense of timing and
awareness great Lovers and Fools develop from this listening enables
them to speak with devastating benefit.
Peter Dawkins too has shared his knowledge orally up to this point,
speaking with a listening ear directly to small groups, judging
moment by moment when and how to speak. I have listened and spoken
about Shakespeare with Peter Dawkins for the past ten years. He has
advised on no less than ten separate productions in Britain and
America, including this year's As You Like It in the Globe.
Although his ideas are mercurial, constantly changing shape as our
times change and the plays themselves reflect different meanings,
they continue to spring faithfully from a Jovial wisdom about Love,
which I have found to be at the heart and core of Shakespeare.
I am delighted that he is publishing his ideas on Shakespeare's plays
for the first time in this Wisdom of Shakespeare Series, as they have
more than any other single factor--apart from playing in the
Globe--increased my understanding and enjoyment of Shakespeare, but I
am also aware that this book cannot listen to you, it cannot apply
its author's timing, or care to match his knowledge to the degree of
desire with witch you wish to question.
Peter's way is to explore the underlying structure of the plays which
imitate the underlying structure of life itself as interpreted by
such traditions as that of the Kabala, Hermeticism or Alchemy, and
other teachings from the Western Mystery Tradition. In these
traditions, it was important not only for the mind to be inspired by
what is saw and heard, but also for the emotions to be stirred and
moved. Read imaginatively, this book can be a path for lovers out of
the court and up to the discernable edge of the deepest forests of
Shakespeare. But you must still then enter the unknown dark and
listen in your heart for your own motleyed Shakespeare, page and
hidden princess, until you cry out in despair with Orlando, 'I can
no longer live by thinking!'
Whether you are an actor person like me reading this book to help
you play on the stage, or an actual person reading to help you play
in the yards and galleries of the Globe, As You Like It lives
as you are like it—and as you are
like it will be as you like it.