On Jealousy from As You Like It

The Spring Shakespeare offering (there are three more in the summer) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, OR is his mid-career comedy As You Like It. Set it the familiar dual worlds of the "court" and the "country," As You Like It is a whimsical and entertaining look at different expressions of love, expressions that become very tangled throughout the play but end up becoming resolved through the brilliant strategem of Rosalind. But because Shakespeare is Shakespeare, you can count on any play of his, except for his earliest ones, to provide provocative thoughts galore about human nature and action. This essay will focus on the usurping Duke Frederick's jealousy at Orlando, the youngest son of a former rival to the Duke, who had just bested the Duke's wrestler, Charles, by "throwing him" in a competition.

Shakespeare's Language

After Orlando has thrown Charles, the Duke congratulates him and wants to know his parentage. When Orlando declares he is the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys, the Duke's genial countenance suddenly falls:

"I would thou hadst been son to some man else./ The world esteemed thy father honorable, But I did find him still mine enemy" (I.ii.214-16).

His bitter and spiteful words, coupled with Orlando's learning that the Duke was out to "get him," evoke the plaintive musing from Orlando:

"Thus must I from the smoke into the smother (i.e., out of the frying pan into the fire...")/ from tyrant Duke unto a tyrant brother" (I.ii.277-78).

Not only is his brother against him, which we saw in I.i, but the most powerful person in the area, the usurping Duke, is also against him.

It isn't until Act II, however, that Adam, the faithful old servant of Rowland de Boys, informs Orlando that his older brother Oliver wants to burn the house down while Orlando is sleeping that night. Thus, he must flee. Why is it that this youngest son of Rowland, Orlando, who has never wronged anyone, is the victim of the Duke's jeaousy and his brother's plots? Adam explains to Orlando:

"Know you not, master, to some kind of men
Their graces serve them but as enemies?
No more do yours. Your virtues, gentle master,
Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.
O, what a world is this, when what is comely
Envenoms him that bears it!" (II.iv.9-14).

As almost always, Shakepeare's langauge is as vivid as it is pictorial. Graces become enemies, not friends; "holy traitors" rather than something truly holy; something that secretes poison rather than glory into the bloodstream of the person who has the virtues. Why is this true?

Lingering on the Language and Reality of Jealousy

Of course, we have a word for it: jealousy. But having a word for something doesn't explain the phenomenon. It is as if we decided to call someone's cruelty grace and thought that by so turning the lexicographical world upside down we would have explained something. But we don't. We just put a name on something. What, then, is the essence of jealousy? As we look at Shakespeare's character presentations in Acts I and II of As You Like It, I would say that jealousy has two dimensions: an irrational one and very rational one. The irrational dimension of jealousy is in the flavor of the "mystery of iniquity" explored by Herman Melville in Billy Budd, where that pure-souled creature is undermined and eventually put to death only because of his virtue. That is, the irrational dimension of jealousy is simply because it galls a person that someone has something that he doesn't have, and thus the first person has to destroy the second person. This kind of jealousy says, "You have something, and I don't. I will therefore destroy you."

But the second kind of jealousy is a bit more subtle and is based on a reason that is not only explicable but rather understandable. The usurping Duke Frederick wants not only to kill Orlando but to banish the beautiful and witty Rosalind, daughter of his displaced brother Duke Senior. Why does he want to do so, when she not only has evinced no iscariotic design but has befriended Frederick's daughter? Frederick explains to his daughter Celia:

"She (Rosalind) is too subtile for thee; and her very smoothness,
Her very silence and her patience,
Speak to the people, and they pity her" (I.iii.75-77).

In other words, Rosalind has gifts and skills which the Duke himself needs to make himself a legitimate Duke, but which he in no wise can get for himself. Thus, anyone who has those skills, and may use them as an instrument of drawing loyalty away from the Duke, is to be banished. Even if the person vows to use them in the Duke's service, the Duke has to be suspicious simply because he doesn't have what she had.

So, the essence of jealousy, in this point, is not so much a person's desire to have what he doesn't have but to begrudge those who have desirable characteristics their possession of them. When the religious leaders said of Jesus in disgust, "The world has gone after him," you can tell that plots to kill him were not far away. If a person can't still the raging voices within the mind, voices that despise another person because of their enduements, you just have to try to silence the other person, if you have the ability. That the person has the skill reminds the jealous person of who miserable his own existence is. Not wanting to be reminded of that, he seeks to end the first person's existence.

Conclusion

Jealousy haunts certain people--who end up stalking other people. It's irrational component ("because I want to") coupled with its rational dimension ("the world will go after her or him instead of me") make it a potent human motivation. What should talented people do in the midst of this reality, a reality that infects academia and church, law and medicine, politics and the arts, business and pleasure? Husband your talents. Don't display them always for all to see. Be cautious about demonstrating your luster. Be aware of your own shortcomings and, even, your sin. Realize your humanity. Speak softly. But don't hide the light under the bushel. Don't deny who you are. Show it forth for some to see. But only when you have the sense that what you have will be worthily received. The trouble with pearls (i.e. YOU) cast before swine is that they become trampled.

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