Sustainable forestry: clearing a space for class in Shakespearean Comedy

In her seminal work Class, Critics and Shakespeare, Sharon O’Dair identifies a systematic
silence surrounding class within recent literary criticism.1 Some of this critical silence can be
ascribed to a concern that ‘class’, an invention of 19th century Marxist economic theory, may
be of little relevance in a discussion of Shakespeare’s plays. As social historian Harold Perkin
has pointed out, it is not clear that ‘class’, as such, existed in the early modern period. People
saw themselves not in terms of a particular class, but instead in relation to those above and
below them. “Vertical” relations of deference and superiority were more important than
shared, “horizontal” ones.2 This essay retains the term ‘class’, however, using it
interchangeably with ‘degree’ and ‘rank’ as, within the world of the play at least, certain
“horizontal” social groupings do occur and ‘class’ operates as a useful label. Of interest, then,
is how this social order is affected, restructured, undermined upon entering the forest. The
Shakespearean forest, or ‘second world’, has long been treated as an abstraction or extension
of the aristocratic mind. For Berger, “the second world is a playground, laboratory, theatre or
battlefield of the mind, a model or construct which the mind creates, a time or a place which
it clears, in order to withdraw from the actual environment.”3 A retreat into the woods is a
figurative form of escapism. In As You Like It, the ‘otherness’ of this “second world” is
appropriated for the benefit of aristocratic self-discovery, and the necessity of its reality for
native inhabitants is largely disregarded. The “clear[ing]” of a “time or a place” within the
mind also has destructive repercussions on the real Forest of Arden; driving its native
dwellers to the margins. Interestingly, however, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream the
aristocratic class are unable to exert a similar monopoly over the woods outside of Athens.
They must share, however unwittingly, the use of the forest with the fairies and the “rude
mechanicals” (3.2.9). The result is a model of forestry that is significantly more sustainable
than that displayed in the Forest of Arden. Again, the modern concept of sustainable forest
management - “the extent to which silvicultural practices mimic nature’s patterns of
disturbance and regeneration”4 - may not seem applicable to Shakespeare. However, with

1
O’Dair, Sharon. 2000. Class, Critics, and Shakespeare: Bottom Lines on the Culture Wars (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press), p. 3
2
Perkin, Harold. 2002. The Origins of Modern English Society, 2nd ed (London: Routledge), p. 22
3
Berger, Harry, and John Patrick Lynch. 1988. Second World and Green World: Studies in Renaissance
Fiction-Making(Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 46
4
C.D. Oliver. 2003. Sustainable Forestry: What Is It? How Do We Achieve It?, Journal of Forestry, Volume
101, Issue 5, p. 9, https://doi.org/10.1093/jof/101.5.8
growing contemporary anxieties about enclosure and the rapid depletion of the real Forest of
Arden due to tree felling, access to and exploitation of the forest is certainly a preoccupation
that is reflected in the literary landscape.

The Forest of Arden in As You Like It is unmistakably ‘Other’ to the aristocratic citizens of
the court. Drawn straight from Virgil’s Eclogues, this bucolic ‘old world’ is the site of the
exiled Duke Senior’s court-away-from-court. It is this romanticised pastoral ideal that “many
young gentlemen flock to” every day and “fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden
world” (1.1.111-3). Absent from this idealised vision, however, is an awareness of this
displaced court of “gentlemen” to their disruption of environment that they assume. Their
appropriation of the forest land is, instead, posited as entirely natural. The gentlemen “flock”
like sheep to the shepherd-Duke Senior, and a stage direction introducing the forest court –
“enter Duke Senior, Amiens, and two or three Lords dressed as foresters” (2.1) – figures
pastoral integration in outward appearance. They are, however, only dressed as; wearing
costumes like the “vj grene cottes for Roben Hoode” mentioned in Henslowe’s 1598
inventory.5 To fulfil their nomadic fantasies and to establish their monastic desertum-civitas6,
the Duke and his retinue set about ridding Arden of any alien culture through a repeated
insistence that no people inhabit the forest, it is a “desert city” (2.2.22). As Krieger points
out, “the courtiers purge Arden of people in order to fill the world with their pastoral style”.7
Here we see Berger’s 'second world’ model in action: the aristocratic mind has “clear[ed]...a
time or a place” in the forest where it can retreat from the “painted pomp” (2.1.2) of the
court. Crucial to this appropriation of the forest as a subjective entity is a cultivated
misperception of its real-world qualities. The Duke reads metaphorical idealisms into the
harsh realities of his ‘green world’: “the icy fang and churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
which when it bites and blows upon my body...I smile, and say ‘This is no flattery. These are
counsellors that feelingly persuade me what I am” (2.1.5-11). The weather, for the Duke, can
be metaphorised and stylised – reduced to “churlish chiding” and subjected to service in his
court. Such metaphor is the exclusive right of the upper class in this forest. It is the aristocrats
alone that can incorporate the forest within the “landscape of the mind”, and can do so only
because they remain free from the need to work in the forest, free from the “imposed

5
Barton, Anne. 2017. “Let the Forest Judge”, The Shakespearean Forest (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge
University Press), p. 131
6
Saunders, Corinne J. 1993. The Forest of Medieval Romance: Avernus, Broceliande, Arden (Cambridge
[England] ; Rochester, N.Y: D.S. Brewer), p. 14
7
Krieger, Elliot. 1979. A Marxist Study of Shakespeare’s Comedies (New York: Barnes & Noble Books), p. 94
objective conditions of Nature.”8 Corin the shepherd, by contrast, is subject to these imposed
conditions, and can therefore only deal in literalisms: “the property of rain is to wet, and fire
to burn [and] good pasture makes fat sheep” (3.2.26-7). For Corin, the seasons dictate
whether he can eat and make a living; for the Duke, the climate persuades him who he is. The
schism between aristocratic idealism and rural reality comes to a head in Orlando’s carving
on the trees of Arden. Echoes of the Duke’s romanticised musings on finding “tongues in
trees, books in the running brooks” (2.1.16) can be heard in Orlando’s claim that “these trees
shall be my books, and in their barks my thoughts I’ll character” (3.25-6). However, the
Duke’s metaphorical mode does not translate across. A passive reading of the ‘book of
nature’ is rejected in favour of a more permanent, and certainly more destructive, imposition
on the forest. Orlando’s reason for inflicting his doggerel verse upon the trees is seemingly
unselfish: it is so that “every eye which in this forest looks shall see thy virtue witnessed
everywhere” (3.2.7-8). However, the possessive pronouns – “my books”, “my thoughts” –
cast doubt upon this claim. What is seen instead is the imposition of an aristocratic mind that
has disregarded the boundaries of metaphor in its desire to erect a more enduring monument
to itself. Barton notes that Orlando’s vandalism “scarcely allows the forest to speak for
itself”9 and, indeed, there is something grotesque in forcing the trees to bear and speak his
verse. However, in carving the trees, Orlando also forces them into a literary tradition that
finds its roots in the pastoral. The Forest of Arden, as romanticised by the aristocratic mind,
must be formed of the carved trees straight out of Theocritus’ Idylls and Virgil’s Eclogues.10
Jaques’ entreaty to Orlando - “I pray you mar no more trees with writing love-songs in their
barks” (3.2.254-5) – may well carry with it the sentiments of the native dwellers of the forest
whose habitat now bears the scars of aristocratic colonisation.

If the Forest of Arden displays an unsustainable model of forestry, the woods outside of
Athens in A Midsummer Night’s Dream seem to offer an attractive alternative. In early
modern comedy, often the role of lower-class characters was to play the fool; their task of
mirroring and mocking their masters being secondary to the main romantic plot. Indeed,
much of their dialogue was conceived as an extemporal interlude, a “jocular aside within the

8
Ibid.
9
Barton, Anne. 2017. “Let the Forest Judge”, The Shakespearean Forest (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge
University Press), p. 121
10
Knight, Leah. 2014. Reading Green in Early Modern England (Farnham, Surrey, England ; Burlington, VT:
Ashgate), p. 81
statement made by the principal dramatis personae”.11 While this was the societal model of
“sharp law[ed]” Athens, no such model existed outside of the city walls in the ‘green world’
of the woods. Instead, upon entering the wood, the aristocratic characters are elbowed aside
and forced to give equal room within the comedy to “rude mechanicals” (3.2.9) and
supernatural fairies. The displacement of upper-class characters doesn’t rob their plot of
significance, but it does force it to take its turn in the spotlight and to be upstaged by stories
from worlds that are alien to it. Indeed, in a semi-Saturnalian manner, the aristocratic lovers
are uprooted from the central scene of the play, a structural site that, ordinarily, would have
been theirs. However, framed between the two pillars of Athenian scenes that open and close
the play is...Bottom’s dalliance with Titania. The play’s scenic structure is a comic deflation,
but it also places at its centre the moment when a common working-class man is wooed by a
queen and transformed into a “gentleman” (3.1.156), while a queen is “reduced to a
tradesman’s concubine”.12 This class inversion is complicated, of course, by the fact of
Bottom’s metamorphosis into an ass. Just as he is “purge[d]” of “mortal grossness” (3.2.153),
he is bestowed with physical deformation; he is deified and bestialised almost
simultaneously. In As You Like It, we see the lower-class pushed to the margins of the forest
to make room for the grand fantasy-court of the Duke Senior. Here, however, a lower-class
character occupies the centre of the comic plot and, in Titania’s “bower” (3.2.189), the centre
of the woods. As a model for sustainable forestry, this form may promote collaboration and
sharing across classes, but the access of the common man is prioritised. This redistribution of
forest space within the play refers to a very real source of socio-economic discontent:
enclosure. As access to common land came increasingly under threat, agrarian riots, such as
the Kett’s Rebellion of 154913, quite literally commandeered the central political stage. In
similar, slightly less militant, spirit, Bottom and his fellow “hempen homespuns” (3.2.71)
hijack Act 5 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Although we are out of the woods, the
Saturnalia is late to end. As such, the vulgar, parodic jig that normally followed a
performance in the Elizabethan theatre, is allowed to invade the play proper and to colonise
the finale usually reserved for resolving the aristocratic dilemma. A collapse of structural
authority is followed by a collapse in textual authority; Ovid’s account of Pyramus and

11
Ryan, Kiernan. 2009. “The Seventh Man: A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Shakespeare’s
Comedies (Basingstoke [England] ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan), p. 81
12
Ibid., p. 86
13
Fletcher, Anthony, and Diarmaid MacCulloch. 2015. “Robert Kett and the ‘Rebellions of Commonwealth’”,
Tudor Rebellions, 6th edn (London: Routledge), p. 77
Thisbe is rewritten in doggerel verse with the efficacy of its original rhetoric completely
dismantled:
Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth and tall
And finds his trusty Thisbe’s mantle slain;
Whereat his blade, with bloody, blameful blade,
He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast;
And Thisbe, tarrying in mulberry shade,
His dagger drew, and died.
(own emphasis added)
As Theseus identifies, these mangled verses require a sympathetic reception and a
collaborative imagination: “Our sport shall be to take what they mistake, and what poor duty
cannot do, noble respect takes it in might, not merit” (5.1.90-2). In spite of a fashioning of
intellectual hierarchy – “poor duty”, “noble respect” – as the playlet commences, the
aristocratic audience are drawn further and further into a collaborative role within its
performance. Their heckling from the side-lines forms somewhat of a Chorus. The unwitting
sharing of the comic stage within the Athenian woods is translated onto the stage of the
playlet. In cutting short the dialogue of the performance – “no epilogue, I pray you” (5.1.349)
– Theseus appears to reassert a social order. However, the closure that Theseus seems to have
clinched with his perfectly balanced valedictory couplet (“solemnity / jollity”) is dislocated
with a single stage direction: “Enter Robin Goodfellow with a broom”. Again, a minor
character, one that is not subject to the law of Athens, displaces aristocratic authority.
Theseus’ order for “no epilogue” is contravened by magical creatures that add not only an
epilogue, but a whole other scene to play. Theseus assertion of a temperate equilibrium –
“solemnity” balanced with “jollity” – is impugned by an outpouring of supernatural festivity.
Indeed, the final epilogue of the play is not delivered by ducal authority but by Robin
Goodfellow; simultaneously a symbol of working-class labour - “broom” – and of social
misrule.

In the 21st century, it is impossible to talk about sustainability and human impact on the
natural environment without talking about class, the two issues are inextricable. Despite the
differing climate situations of present day and Shakespearean England, many of the central
socio-economic concerns remain largely unchanged. The deforestation and privatisation of
land by aristocratic landowners inevitably disadvantaged the poorest and most vulnerable
members of society. By romanticising the pastoral landscape, translating it, as Duke Senior
does into a figurative ‘landscape of the mind’, the aristocratic class avoid blame for any
physical repercussions of their disruptive presence. However, the beginnings of a modern
model for sustainable forestry can be seen in the Athenian wood of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream: fair and needs-based access to the forest is maintained and the colonising impulses of
an authoritarian figure like Theseus are kept under control.

Word count: 2, 299

Bibliography

Barton, Anne. 2017. “Let the Forest Judge”, The Shakespearean Forest (Cambridge ; New
York: Cambridge University Press). Accessed 03 May 2020

Berger, Harry, and John Patrick Lynch. 1988. Second World and Green World: Studies in
Renaissance Fiction-Making (Berkeley: University of California Press). Accessed 03 May
2020

C.D. Oliver. 2003. Sustainable Forestry: What Is It? How Do We Achieve It?, Journal of
Forestry, Volume 101, Issue 5, p. 9, https://doi.org/10.1093/jof/101.5.8. Accessed 04 May
2020

Fletcher, Anthony, and Diarmaid MacCulloch. 2015. “Robert Kett and the ‘Rebellions of
Commonwealth’”, Tudor Rebellions, 6th edn (London: Routledge). Accessed 04 May 2020

Knight, Leah. 2014. Reading Green in Early Modern England (Farnham, Surrey, England ;

Burlington, VT: Ashgate). Accessed 04 May 2020

Krieger, Elliot. 1979. A Marxist Study of Shakespeare’s Comedies (New York: Barnes &
Noble Books). Accessed 03 May 2020
O’Dair, Sharon. 2000. Class, Critics, and Shakespeare: Bottom Lines on the Culture
Wars (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Accessed 03 May 2020

Perkin, Harold. 2002. The Origins of Modern English Society, 2nd ed (London: Routledge).
Accessed 03 May 2020

Ryan, Kiernan. 2009. “The Seventh Man: A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Shakespeare’s

Comedies (Basingstoke [England] ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Accessed 03 May 2020

Saunders, Corinne J. 1993. The Forest of Medieval Romance: Avernus, Broceliande,

Arden (Cambridge [England] ; Rochester, N.Y: D.S. Brewer). Accessed 03 May 2020