A Certain Amount Of Liberty Speech For Playwrights In Elizabethan England
Satire is historically a way to criticize society by pointing out its flaws in humorous light. In modern day United States, Saturday Night Live is the most popular satirical platform creating political, economic and social commentary on a weekly basis in the form of four minute scenes where they highlight the controversial. Typically, satire points to a way to make the problem they are pointing to better. Saturday Night Live’s platform is not necessarily changing problems, but rather bringing problems to the attention of their audience to encourage the audience to make change by presenting it in comical light. One of the ways Saturday Night Live effectively creates their license is by focusing on problems in all parts of society, thus “getting away with” making controversial statements about political leaders and governmental policy without creating a scene. A recurring bit from SNL is “Weekend Update” wherein a host acting as a news anchor takes news articles from the previous week and parodies them, also bringing in guests for editorials. In this way, they act wise in pointing out mistakes in society but also make fools of themselves and the current event they are parodying.
In the same way, playwrights and those involved in artistic endeavors were given a certain amount of liberty speech and written word in Elizabethan England. William Shakespeare was no exception to this creating plays frequently commenting on gender roles and the patriarchy, religion, and governmental structures. Specifically in his play, As You Like It, Shakespeare creates “Touchstone” as a character representative of the artistic license Shakespeare is given in Elizabethan England. At the time, censorship played a heavy role in what artists were allowed to show to an audience. Shakespeare uses Touchstone to license his critique of censorship itself: As You Like It argues the world should be a place less run by formal rule and governmental restriction and more a place where the people in the society have the liberty to ask the question “what if?” and act upon it. In this way, Shakespeare creates Touchstone as an authorial figure in the play to showcase his own role of criticism in Elizabethan society.
In order to understand the historical context of Shakespeare’s plays, it is paramount to understand the heavy handed role censorship played in artistic ability. When a playwright created a work, they would write one entire copy of the play for themselves, and one play in entirety to send to the office of censor. The actors in the play would receive copies only bearing their specific lines preceded by a “cue” for them to listen to so they knew when to begin their part. The office of the censor would score the work, eliminating what they deemed inappropriate, misrepresentative, or smearing. The office of the censor had a heavy hand by way of fear. There are famous examples of men having the ears or hands cut off when they failed to either run their material through the office of censor or they failed to heed what the office had eliminated.
The disconnect with the office of censorship lies in the relationship between what the author creates and puts through the censor and then what the audience ultimately ends up seeing. Annabel M. Patterson argues in her book Censorship and Interpretation that the office of censor was unreliable and a lot of content sifted through and made it to the ears of the English citizens. Patterson argues that prepublication of material especially in a setting where the actors may speak different ways on stage is highly ineffective. However, I believe in her argument Patterson overlooks the fear surrounding the censorship office. Much like the Panopticon experiment posed by philosopher Jeremy Bentham, playwrights and actors alike never knew when they were being observed by someone who could get them in trouble, causing them to approach their performances hesitant to veer far off script. The relationship with an authorial figure and the positions of power trying to suede the typical English citizen away from enlightenment and elevated knowledge of what the governmental structure was imposing upon their minds. What their citizens knew was highly concerning for the government as they wanted to be able to control as much as possible the way their citizens behaved. As Shakespeare ran his material through the office, his plays had material added and removed to fit this ballot of requirements for the way the government wanted to be represented in its society. The most heavily censored of Shakespeare’s plays were his histories as he wrote the way things happened in a light the throne was disapproving of.
In As You Like It Shakespeare creates a way to get around this censorship rule in a way by creating the role of the “wise fool.” He creates Touchstone as a character who is allowed to speak his actual thoughts. At the time, a literal touchstone was a dark stone used to determine whether or not gold was real or fake. A person would take the piece of alleged gold and rub it on the touchstone next to a strip of rubbed known gold and then washed with nitric acid which shows impurity. The color of the known gold was compared to the color of the alleged gold and the quality of the alleged gold was known. This kind of stone was valuable in society as it proved the worth of gold and what could be made from it (Encyclopedia Britannica). Figuratively, a “touchstone” as a character is one who can speak the truth about power, but does it in a way which is entertaining or funny. This splay of parrhesia gives a character the license to speak truth to power without necessarily getting in trouble for it. By imbedding a character in his play who cannot get in trouble for what they say in the context of the play, Shakespeare allows himself the room as a playwright to speak to governmental and societal problems he has issue with without necessarily defying the rules of censorship.
The character of Touchstone delineates the chances of Shakespeare and/or his actors being exposed to trouble from the court. Much like the literal stone, Touchstone is able to scratch the surface of other characters in the play and discover their value by doing very little work. He first enters the scene of the play with Celia and Rosalind as he confronts them about a situation where a knight promises something based on honor the knight himself did not possess (Act I, Scene 2). In the same scene, he postures that fools cannot speak in a wise way about what wise men do poorly showing the limitations of his role as he does have to work to censor himself sometimes. Ultimately, Touchstone runs away with Celia and Rosalind to the forest with Rosalind disguised as a man. Here he comes to the conclusion he is actually a much bigger fool in forest than he was in the court (Act 2, Scene 4). The best display of Touchstones opinion and character are made towards the end of the play as he addresses types of lying and the varying degrees on a scale of on to seven on different degrees of lies. He ultimately lands on the opinion that as long as you work your way around the lie, posturing “if” questions, then you can end any argument depending on who you’re arguing with. He shows how he makes fools of everyone around him but still manages to leave everyone content and happy with the outcome. Touchstone does the role of the fool justice by giving himself the license to say what he wants without hurting anyone immensely.
Shakespeare incorporates another fool into As You Like It. He creates the character of Jacques. Jacques is an attendant of Duke Senior and is a generally self-reported depressive character saying, “I suck / melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs” (2.5.12-13). During act two of the play, Jacques expresses interest in becoming a permissioned critic and fool as Touchstone is. Jacquis believes he is full of genius insight on humanity, however is not as insightful as he appears or tries to be. Jaques postures some of the most famous lines from Shakespeare saying, “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players: / They have their exits and entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts” (2.7.146-150). Shakespeare uses this same comparison in other works as well, showing the theatricality of human’s monotonous lives. However when Jacques delivers this speech he loses merit as the idea of life and humans as a theater and actor with seven stages of life was originally posed by Aristotle in 384 B.C. (Aristotle). Aristotle’s works would have been familiar content to Shakespeare audience as they learned his content in school. Thus the audience at the time would see straight through Jacques banal philosophizing and see him for what he truly is. In this way he does not need a “touchstone figure” to show his true nature, as in showing his lack of wisdom shows it for himself.
