on As You Like It Playnotes (continued)

Christopher Marlowe was a rising star in the London theater world whose life was cut short in 1593. Author of The Tragical Historie of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Marlowe was the pre-eminent rival of Shakespeare’s.

Men may have influenced the comedic nature of As You Like It in another way. The first major “clown” that Shakespeare wrote for — Will Kempe — excelled at improvisational physical comedy. Kempe was an attraction in his own right: he sometimes received top billing on the title pages of plays in which he performed. But Kempe left the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in mid-1599, perhaps because he would not subordinate his outsized comic talents to serve the plays.

Robert Armin took over the roles that Kempe originated, including the doltish Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. But in As You Like It, Shakespeare showcased Armin’s more intellectual wit for the first time in the character of Touchstone, the court jester who “knows himself to be a fool.” Many roles in a similar vein would follow: Armin played Feste in Twelfth Night (1600) and the Fool in King Lear (ca. 1605), for instance.

As You Like It may also have been shaped by the musical talent on hand in Shakespeare’s London. Robert Armin was also a singer, and may have boosted the presence of music in the play. One of the songs, “It was a Lover and His Lass,” was set to music by Thomas Morley, an organist at St. Paul’s Church London and proponent of the multi-voice madrigal style. Whether Morley pilfered Shakespeare’s lyrics or Shakespeare borrowed Morley’s melody or both cribbed the same popular song, the play’s music further illustrates Shakespeare intermixing with the artists of his day.

Robert Armin took over the “clown” roles for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1599. An actor and singer, he also wrote plays himself. Depicted is the title page of Armin’s History of the two Maides of Moreclack, printed in 1609.

Music permeates As You Like It. The script specifies four songs. One of them, “It was a lover and his lass,” also appears in a First Book of Ayres, which was released by madrigal composer Thomas Morley in 1600.