"The worst fault you have is to be in love."
"'T is a fault I will not change for your best virtue."
~ Jaques, Orlando, As You Like It
The biggest thematic element in As You Like It is love. Love in this play is positively connoted; often you will see modern stories and movies portraying love, but also incorporating a much more realistic perspective of it. In the play, love magically fixes everything. It turns evil people into positive, happy people (Oliver falls in love with Celia and suddenly stops his scheming). Love makes some others ridiculously optimistic and frankly, a little annoying (Orlando turns into a poet). As You Like It is very unrealistic and shallow, but not in a negative sense - it just doesn't have a whole lot to it. We discussed in class today that if Shakespeare's writings were essays that you wrote for class, As You Like It would be the religion essay: an overused theme composed of mostly BS with maybe an insightful thought or two.
Two songs today that could be related to the play and a more modern novel are "Poison and Wine" by the Civil Wars and "Love Story" by Taylor Swift. "Poison and Wine" would be more realistic because it examines poignancies in relationships, conflict of emotion for another person. "Love Story" would relate to the play because it describes a fairy tale-like situation in which everything magically turns out well in the end.
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