In class on Thursday of last week it seems to me that we (Professor Sexson) covered pretty much every aspect of mythology that takes place in Acts I and II of "As You Like It". However turner has a whole chapter on "As You Like It" and though he doesn't talk about explicitly about mythology he does make some interesting points in regards to Time and other underlying themes.
As I had said before Fredrick Turner's book focuses on aspects of Time in Shakespeare's work. In the case of "As You Like It" he focuses on three aspects of time: Objective, Subjective, and Natural. Using these three notions of time he describes how different characters and occasions exhibit these different notions of time. Natural time pertains to the characters exile in Arden. Turner calls this time natural time because it operates according to the seasons (nature). What is interesting is that Turner views Arden as being in perpetual spring. However he also acknowledges how each of the characters tries to enact their preconceived perceptions of time on their environment. I tried tying this to mythology by using the ideas of the Pastoral place versus the Urban. I can remember a class I took at the University of Washington called "Dreaming the Earth". In that class we read Vigil's Eclogues. In the Eclogues Virgil juxtaposes the Pastoral with the Urban. In that Pastoral place life operates upon a different pace. People like Virgil's Tityrus live a peaceful life (resting, playing music, tending his flock).
What is interesting is that upon a rereading I came across a passage that reads, "teach the woods to re-echo the name of beautiful Amaryllis" (Virgil). In my opinion this is reminiscent of Turner's idea that the characters in "As You Like It" bring their own perceptions with them into the pastoral place, much like Meliboeus in "Eclogue 1". To take it one step further if you think about the Elysian fields (pseudo Greek heaven) this is the pastoral place of mythology. The place of rest. The pastoral is not only real because it exists in nature but it is also an ideal, a dream of sorts.
Another notion of time that is covered is subjective time. This kind of subjective time in "As You Like It" takes place during the journey. Turner ascertains that journey time is one of rhythm, he even likens the act to the movement of a horse up down as well as forward. "This is time as pace" (Turner 39). This kind of time as a journey also takes place through out a play because a play, film or book is a thematic event with a starting point and an end. This journey becomes more and more explicit when the reader or audience understands the thematic structure, like that of a comedy. For instance the u-shape. This is how instinctively a audience member or reader knows the end is near without it being explicit e.g. a timer.Certainly there are physical aspects of reading etc.. that let us know the end is near for example the thinning number of pages remaining in a book. However I agree with turner. I feel that if the audience or reader etc... had not a way of measuring the time they would intuitively perceive where in the journey they lay based on the thematic sequence.
The most prevalent portion of Turner's Chapter on "As You Like It" focuses on Jacques and his notions of time etc...More though than time I found something else more interesting. Turner writes about Jacques famous lines, "All the world's a stage..." (Shakespeare). Even though Jacques is detached he also has the most historical and objective perception of time. That said time is meaningless in the objective sense because it has no real bearing on the world because there is only the present moment and nothing else, essentially the acknowledgement of a past and a future is to treat time like myth itself. What complicates this matter is that Turner believes that by Jacques saying all the world is a stage etc... his is inadvertently saying that the people (the players) are participating or acting in a play that has already been written. "A play exists before it is performed; time is like a motion picture, every frame of which has already been prepared" (Turner 33). Now where I get confused is whether that makes time more subjective or more objective. The idea of life as a play already written lends to ideas of fate. Like in mythology fate plays a huge role in every action and outcome in the lives of people. And I am spent.
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