Word: arden
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...coffin and didn't have bodies in a lot of them because there wasn't anything to put in." In one strange story, a husband was reported killed. His wife waited a year and then remarried, only to have her first husband reappear like Enoch Arden. The man decided his wife was happy as she was and went away...
...getting back into the flicks. Yet today, he says, "I'd rather play a bad guy than a hero-it would be more of a challenge." Though his Flash Gordon series still survives in TV reruns, Crabbe never bothers tuning in on his old star trips with Dale Arden, Dr. Zarkov and mean Emperor Ming. "I don't have to," he says, flaunting his own credentials as a nostalgia buff. "I have the whole series at home. I can watch them whenever I want...
...sure, this Arden is not a realistic one; it is semi-magical. But whatever it is, the forest must contain greenery (the very word 'forest' occurs 23 times in this play, whereas no other Shakespeare play uses it more than thrice). The text mentions not only mossy oaks and osiers but also olive and palm trees, which are both evergreens; and it cites using the shade of boughs and bushes...
...might adduce the references in the text to "rough weather" and the like, or the presence of a song like "Blow, blow, thou winter wind." But these are not allusions to the current climate, which should be temperate throughout the play. The most important thing that goes on in Arden is ardent young love and courting (of several kinds), which are hardly abetted by snow on the ground and bare branches in the air. "Men are April when they woo," says the heroine...
There is of course no single correct way to mount Shakespeare's plays, but the solutions should lie within certain limits. The Forest of Arden here can no more do without verdure and warm sunlight than the Athenian woods in Midsummer Night's Dream can do without foliage and magic moonlight. Peter Brook's recent staging of the latter in a glaring white squash court provided an unrelievedly offensive evening. This As You Like It is far from being such a total disaster, but the approach adopted does constitute a barrier rather than a bridge...