The Forest of Arden

Product Information

The play is set in a duchy in France, beginning in a courtly environment; but most of the action takes place in a location called the 'Forest of Arden'. Excavation resumes at Wem manor at the centre of medieval and Tudor history". Whitchurch Herald. 3 June 2023 . Retrieved 8 July 2023.

Act 2, scene 7 As Duke Senior and his companions sit down to eat, Orlando enters, demanding food. Welcomed by the duke, he brings Adam to join them. The name still occurs in the several place names in the region: Hampton-in-Arden and Henley-in-Arden.Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS, and two or three Lords, like foresters DUKE SENIOR Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,

As You Like It follows its heroine Rosalind as she flees persecution in her uncle's court, accompanied by her cousin Celia to find safety and, eventually, love, in the Forest of Arden. In the forest, they encounter a variety of memorable characters, notably the melancholy traveller Jaques, who speaks many of Shakespeare's most famous speeches (such as " All the world's a stage", "too much of a good thing" and "A fool! A fool! I met a fool in the forest"). Act 2, scene 6 Orlando leaves Adam, near starvation, under a tree and goes off determined to find food.

Plot

Robert Catesby, leader of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, was a native of Lapworth, a village in Arden. It is believed that many local families across the Arden area had resisted the Reformation and retained Catholic sympathies, possibly including the family of Shakespeare, whose paternal ancestors were from the Balsall area. Forests are secretive and mysterious, full of unexplained sounds and shadows, and many writers have conjured up a sense of unease combined with nostalgia by using a forest setting, from the wonderfully-imagined living forests of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings cycle to Kipling’s poem The Way Through the Woods read here by Andrew Motion. In 1758 the Earl of Aylesford and five others founded (or possibly refounded) the Woodmen of Arden. This is an exclusive archery club that takes its offices from the medieval Royal Forest court positions, such as Verderer and Warden. The organisation claims to be a successor to an older organisation of woodmen, however there is scant evidence that forest law ever applied in the forest of Arden. James, Alastair (4 September 2023). "An academic explains just how queer Shakespeare's As You Like It really is". Attitude . Retrieved 15 September 2023. Fear and forests, writes Shakespeare scholar Professor Anne Barton, go hand in hand. Forests are where we get lost and meet wild men, where chaos rules and anything can happen. Shakespeare uses forest settings, sometimes magical, sometimes menacing, in many of his plays. In As You Like It, the Forest of Arden is a place of freedom, transformation and love – but also hardship for the shepherds who work there. When in Macbeth Birnam Wood does come to Dunsinane, Macbeth knows he is doomed.