In As You Like It we learn that the banished Duke is living in a state which is linked with the ancient Golden Age, rooted in Paganism.
Charles, the wrestler tells Oliver, Orlando’s brother:
They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England. They say many young gentlemen flock tto him every day, and fleet the time carelessly as the did in the golden world. (I.1, 113-119) [1]
“Golden world” is the key word, though no less interesting is the reference of Robin Hood, the virtuous outlaw living merrily as an exile in a forest himself. [2]
Focussing on the Golden Age imagery, we turn to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where arguably inherited from Hesiod, we read about this first, and best of the four ages of mankind as follows:
Golden was that first age, which, with no one to compel, without a law, of its own will, kept faith and did the right. There was no fear of punishment, no threatening words were to be read on brazen tablets; no suppliant throng gazed fearfully upon its judge’s face; but without judges lived secure. […] There was non need at all for armed men, for nations, secure from war’s alarms, passed the years in gentle ease. The earth herself, without compulsion, untouched by hoe or plowshare, of herself gave all things needful. And men, content with food which came with no one’s seeking, gathered arbute fruit, strawberries from the mountain-sides, cornel-cherries, berries hanging thick upon the prickly bramble, and acorns fallen from the spreading tree of Jove. Then spring was everlasting, and gentle zephyrs with warm breath played with the flowers that sprang unplanted … (I, 89-112) [3] [4]
Notice the apparently pre-cultural society, the eternal spring, and the general content with what nature produces by herself.
But the Golden-Age-like state in which Shakespeare’s Duke is supposed to live differs quite from its ancient model.
Specifying his conditions of living in II.1, the banished Duke himself tells us:
Now my co-mates and borthers in exile,/ Hath not old custom made this life more sweet/ Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods/ More free from peril than the envious court?/ Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,/ The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang/ And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,/ Which when it bites and blows upon my body/ Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say/ ‘This is no flattery. These are counsellors/ That feelingly persuade me what I am’. (II.1, 1-11)
Most importantly, this clearly contrasts with Ovid’s claim that there was “everlasting spring” in the Golden Age; moreover, Shakespeare’s imagery is influenced by Christian imagery in the context of Eden. “Adam’s penalty” has happened, even though the Duke imagines that “he does not feel it” as a happy exile in the Forest of Arden.
Again, the vegetarianism implied in Ovid’s above description is re-inforced when Pythagoras cites the Golden Age in defence of his diet excluding meat. In Metamorphoses XV, we read:
But that pristine age, which we have named the golden age, was blessed with the fruit of the trees and the herbs which the ground sens forth, nor did men defile their lips with blood. […] All things were free from treacherous snares, fearing no guile and full of peace. … (XV, 96-103)
This echoes not only the Duke’s commending that in the Forest of Arden there is “no flattery” as in the court, but it also coheres with a resentment against hunting, a typical courtly occupation. In II.1, we read:
Duke Sen. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?/ And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,/ Being native burghers of this desert city,/ Should in their own confines with forked heads/ Have their round haunches gor’d. First Lord. Indeed my lord,/ The melancholy Jacques grieves at that,/ And in that kind swears you do more usurp/ Than doth your borther that hath banish’d you. (21-28)
This certainly renders more ambiguous the happy state of the Duke and his fellows, and it should be noted that Jacques, a melancholy man, is inhabiting this place together with the Duke and his merry company. [5]
In general, I should like to suggest that, in difference to the ancient motif, which was much concerned with survival, Shakespeare’s Golden Age is primarily about moral issues. Having abandoned the “envious court” and the “public haunt” for the Forest, it seems that the Duke imagines that he can remedy the “stubbornness of fortune” (II.1, 19), or “adversity,”
… Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,/ Wears yet a precious jewel in his head […] (12-14)
Thus, the Duke thinks himself in security of Fortune’s blows, at the price, of course, of Fortune’s gifts also. In Christian terms, he flees the “penalty of Adam” (whatever this means exactly) which is not felt, but which is certainly not out of effect.
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[1] Cited after William Shakespeare, As you like it, Arden Shakespeare, edited by A. Lantham (Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1975).
[2] Another instance of virtuous, but banished gentlemen occurs in Two Gentlemen of Verona, where Valentine, having been banished due to his amorous pursuit of Silvia, joins a group of honest gentlemen living in the woods, and even reference to Robin Hood is made also. The parallels between the two plays are even more significant considering that both Silvia and Julia end up following Valentine into the woods, just like Celia and Rosalinde do.
[3] Cited after Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by F. Justus Miller, vol. I of II (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann LTD, 1971).
[4] That Shakespeare surely referred back to the Pagan Golden Age Imagery is strongly suggested by the fact that, as “Jupiter’s tree” is invovked by Ovid, so it is referrd to in III.2 (232), though as an image for Orlando who is “found under a tree like a dropped acorn” (230-231). Moreover, Jove’s presence is tangible as Rosalind in disguise famously calls herself “Jove’s own page” (120), “Ganymede” (I.3, 121).
[5] Importantly, in one of Shakespeare’s major sources, Thomas Lodge’s Rosalinde, there was no figure corresponding to melancholy Jacques such that the banished Duke’s dwelling place in Lodge’s play is much more straightforwardly happy than is the case in Shakespeare.
First published on Juli 14 2026 on Ko-fi
