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Educated at King Edward’s High School, Birmingham, and St Catharine’s College, Cambridge University, Peter is a recognised authority on the Baconian-Rosicrucian philosophies and Ancient Wisdom teachings, including the wisdom enshrined in the Shakespeare plays. One specialised area of research has been into Bacon, Shakespeare, the Rosicrucians and other philosophers of the Renaissance, and to this end The Francis Bacon Research Trust was founded in 1979, of which Peter is the founder-director. Since then Peter has been giving seminars, lectures, workshops and summer schools in the UK, Europe and America, and leading many wisdom tours and geomantic pilgrimages world-wide. He has been giving Wisdom of Shakespeare seminars and workshops since 1985, including at the London Shakespeare Globe Theatre during 1997-2005.

I would like to thank all my friends who have helped make this book possible, and in particular the following people: the ‘Roses’ team who have assisted me, edited, illustrated, and helped design and prepare the book for publishing—my wife Sarah, my son Samuel, Michelle Beaufoy, Geralyn Walsh, Scott Oldham and Suzy Straw; my ‘professional’ friends who have given me encouragement, information and ideas—Mark Rylance (actor and Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Globe Theatre), Claire van Kampen (Director of Music and Artistic Assistant of the Shakespeare Globe Theatre), Hugh Young (actor-director of Daylight Theatre) and Jill Line (Lecturer in Shakespeare); and my ‘supportive’ friends who have helped make this venture financially possible—Gay Browning, Francis McKeagney, Mary Walsh, Diana Myers, Mary Pout and Diana Tinson.

Besides the plays themselves, a clue to the greatness of Shakespeare in this respect is given by Ben Jonson in his tribute to the Author prefacing the Shakespeare 1st Folio of 1623, as also by the inscription on the contemporaneous Shakespeare Monument.

On the Shakespeare Monument, erected c. 1620-23 in Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, to honour the memory of Shakespeare, the great Bard is referred to (in Latin) as ‘A Pylus in judgment, a Socrates in genius, a Maro in art’.

Pylus was the appellation of Nestor, King of Pylus, one of the Argonauts who went in search of the golden fleece and who was the most perfect of Homer’s heroes in the Trojan war. As a statesman, ruler and judge, Pylus was renowned for his eloquence, address, wisdom, justice and prudence of mind.

Socrates was the most celebrated philosopher of Greece and a renowned orator. The Delphic Oracle proclaimed him as the wisest of mankind. He was the principal instigator of the great philosophies that have constituted the major traditions of Western civilisation since his time, and was the advocate of clarity and the inductive procedure, for which he was particularly famed. His great aim was the happiness and good of his countrymen, and the reformation of their corrupted morals. By introducing moral philosophy he induced people to consider themselves, their passions, their opinions, their duties, faculties and actions. He used drama to aid him in this, and the theatrical tragedies of his pupil Euripides are said to have been at least partly composed by him, although he remained hidden as a playwright behind the mask of his pupil.

Maro was the surname of Virgil, the greatest of the Roman poets. He was known as the prince of poets and Homer’s successor. He was not only a highly learned scholar and refined writer, but also a high initiate of the Orphic Mysteries as practised at Naples, where he lived for the last part of his life. His Æneid was based upon the Mysteries and Homer’s epic tales, the Iliad and Odyssey.

For Shakespeare to be likened to these three illustrious men—not just one, but all three—is an enormous complement, and the inferences say a great deal about the Bard.

This viewpoint is supported by Ben Jonson, a renowned playwright and poet in his own right. In his tributory poem to Shakespeare prefacing the Shakespeare 1st Folio, Jonson refers to his ‘beloved’ friend as an Apollo and Mercury, and as the ‘Sweet Swan of Avon’. Furthermore, implying that Shakespeare was, like him, a noted classical scholar, he declares in his tribute that even if Shakespeare had small Latin and less Greek, he (Ben) would still honour him, calling forth the great Roman and Greek tragedians to hear and applaud his tragedies. As for comedies, Ben can think of no one of the ancient Greeks or Romans who even approaches Shakespeare: he is alone, supreme.

To be likened to the gods Apollo and Mercury, rather than just inspired by them, is a mighty tribute, particularly as coming from the talented and critical poet laureate, Ben Jonson. Apollo is the god of poetic inspiration and illumination, and leader of the choir of Muses. Mercury is the god of eloquence and learning.

The ‘sweet swan’ is a reference to the singing swan, which is sweetest when singing its own ‘swan-song’. This was the symbol of Orpheus, musician to the Argonauts and the originator of the Orphic Mysteries that subsequently became the wisdom teachings and Mysteries of Classical Greece and Rome. These Mysteries formed the foundations of Classical philosophy and of all Platonic and Neoplatonic thought. Orpheus was considered to be the representative of Bacchus, the god of Drama, whose drama was in particular the Mysteries that were performed by the bacchants, bacchantes and eumolpoi (‘good singers’), the initiates and hierophants of the Orphic Mysteries. Both comedy and drama, and theatre as such, derive from the Bacchanalian Mysteries. Moreover, the white swan, symbol of Orpheus and the Eumolpoi, is an emblem of Apollo.

Mercury (Roman Mercurius) is derived from the Ancient Egyptian Maa Kheru, meaning ‘the True Word’ and ‘he who is of true voice’. It was a title bestowed on the high initiates of the Egyptian Mysteries—i.e. those who had sung their ‘swan-song’ and undergone psychological death and rebirth. The title continued to be used in the Classical Mysteries. Another Greek name for Mercury was Hermes Trismegistus (i.e. Hermes the Thrice Greatest), but this title was applied specifically to the greatest of all the initiates in any epoch. From this name comes the term ‘Hermetic’ for the great wisdom teachings and developing philosophical thought that have been handed on from the time of the Ancient Egyptians to successive generations and cultures, and of which we are inheritors today via the Neoplatonism of the Renaissance and the great poetry of Shakespeare.

The works of Shakespeare declare him to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the Neoplatonists. His plays are suffused with Renaissance Neoplatonism. To understand this is to understand Shakespeare.

Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), a scholar, physician and priest, was commissioned by Cosimo to translate into Latin the Hermetic writings and the dialogues of Plato, together with the Neoplatonic writings of Porphyry, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite and Plotinus. The translation of the Corpus Hermeticum was ready in 1464 and published in 1471 under the title of Pimander, and the translations of Plato’s dialogues, completed c. 1468, were published as the Platonic Theology in 1474.

Ficino’s understanding, as that of others including St. Augustine, was that a divine theology or wisdom tradition, based on love, began simultaneously with Zoroaster among the Persians and with Hermes Trismegistus (i.e. Thoth) among the Egyptians. They believed that this wisdom tradition led in an unbroken chain to Plato via Orpheus and Pythagorus. It is this wisdom which is reputed to underlie the Hebrew, Orphic and Christian teachings, all of which developed from the blended Hermetic and Magian origin.

Demonstrating that this wisdom tradition was associated with Christianity, with links via Moses and the Zoroastrian Magi, Ficino was able to reconcile Platonic and neo-Platonic philosophy with Christian theology. He regarded both philosophy and religion as being manifestations of a spiritual life, each needing the other in order to attain the summum bonum or greatest good.

According to the Neoplatonic philosophy which Ficino founded, love is the sustaining principle of the universe, and the attainment of the highest good is dependant not upon the Church but upon an impulse universal to man. The soul is not only immortal, but all souls by an inner urge naturally seek truth and goodness.

Ficino was immeasurably helped in the development of Neoplatonism by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94). Pico joined Ficino’s circle in 1484 and introduced Cabala into Ficino’s Neoplatonism, being the founder or first great exponent of Christian Cabala. In this Pico was following in the footsteps of the poet-philosopher Ramon Lull, who in the 13th century, in Spain, brought together Jewish Cabala, Islamic mysticism and Christian revelation into a single method, which had an enormous influence on succeeding generations. As a result of Pico’s and Ficino’s partnership, Neoplatonism became a universal philosophy, which blended Hebrew Cabala with the Hermetic, Neoplatonic and Christian teachings, making a synthesis of them all. As a result, the spiritual, magical and scientific core of Renaissance Neoplatonism was born.

Having travelled from Italy into France, this Renaissance Neoplatonism took a strong hold in England in the 16th century, beginning in King Henry VIII’s time and reaching a zenith during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, particularly in the works of William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Bible is remarkably extensive and detailed. The teachings of the Bible underlie all his plays to such a degree that the plays seem, in fact, to be dramatised commentaries on the Bible teachings, aided by Cabalistic philosophy and Hermetic wisdom as well as by Shakespeare’s extraordinary observation, insight into and knowledge of human nature.

Not for nothing then, it would seem, was an Englishman urged to possess a copy of both the Bible and the Shakespeare plays, and to always carry them with him when travelling.

Minerva is the Roman name for the Greek goddess of wisdom, Pallas Athena, the Tenth (and Chief) Muse, and the especial muse of Shakespeare. Her Greek name literally means ‘Spear Shaker’, and she was renowned for shaking her spear of light at dark ignorance, exactly as Ben Jonson says of Shakespeare in his Folio tribute:

For a good Poet’s made, as well as borne.

And such wert thou. Looke how the father’s face

Lives in his issue, even so, the race

Of Shakespeare’s minde, and manners brightly shines

In his well torned, and true filed lines:

In each of which, he seemes to shake a Lance,

As brandish’t at the eyes of Ignorance.

The intention and hope of this series is to help reveal to lovers of Shakespeare some of the extraordinary and brilliant light concealed in Shakespeare’s plays, and to pay homage to one who has been an exceptional friend and teacher to me and countless others—the great English Bard.

Shakespeare didn’t bother too much with the printed page it seems, trusting his knowledge to the voices and ears of the theatre, which only survives by an intuitive sense of timing with present circumstances. This 400 years of readjustment of the form which Shakespeare’s knowledge takes has kept alive his ability to be wise. It is difficult to imagine Rosalind curing Orlando of his love sickness, or Jaques cleansing ‘the foul body of th’ infected world’ merely by means of a book. Both characters invest themselves in the motley of disguise, one as Ganymede, one as a fool, because play-acting such as this gives one the ability to be speaking and also listening at the same time. The sense of timing and awareness great Lovers and Fools develop from this listening enables them to speak with devastating benefit.

Peter Dawkins too has shared his knowledge orally up to this point, speaking with a listening ear directly to small groups, judging moment by moment when and how to speak. I have listened and spoken about Shakespeare with Peter Dawkins for the past ten years. He has advised on no less than ten separate productions in Britain and America, including this year’s As You Like It in the Globe. Although his ideas are mercurial, constantly changing shape as our times change and the plays themselves reflect different meanings, they continue to spring faithfully from a Jovial wisdom about Love, which I have found to be at the heart and core of Shakespeare.

I am delighted that he is publishing his ideas on Shakespeare’s plays for the first time in this Wisdom of Shakespeare Series, as they have more than any other single factor – apart from playing in the Globe – increased my understanding and enjoyment of Shakespeare, but I am also aware that this book cannot listen to you, it cannot apply its author’s timing, or care to match his knowledge to the degree of desire with which you wish to question.

Peter’s way is to explore the underlying structure of the plays which imitate the underlying structure of life itself as interpreted by such traditions as that of the Kabala, Hermeticism or Alchemy, and other teachings from the Western Mystery Tradition. In these traditions, it was important not only for the mind to be inspired by what it saw and heard, but also for the emotions to be stirred and moved. Read imaginatively, this book can be a path for lovers out of the court and up to the discernible edge of the deepest forests of Shakespeare. But you must still then enter the unknown dark and listen in your heart for your own motleyed Shakespeare, page and hidden princess, until you cry out in despair with Orlando, ‘I can no longer live by thinking’!

Whether you are an actor person like me reading this book to help you play on the stage, or an actual person reading to help you play in the yards and galleries of the Globe, As You Like It lives as you are like it – and as you are like it will it be as you like it.

As You Like It is one of the most popular light-hearted and fun Shakespeare plays, set in a highly romanticised Arcadian dream-world. It is pure fairy-tale—or so it seems on the surface. Not far beneath the surface is a historical reality of sorts, including political, social and psychological matters which still concern us now, when our imagination can suitably translate them into modern terms. For the most part, however, the play is treated by audiences as a romantic and highly entertaining fairy-tale, having a magic which somehow continues to make the play pertinent and enjoyable today. What that magic might be is what this book investigates.

Deeper beneath the surface of the play can be found truths about the human soul and the journey (or journeys) we each take through life. Keys given in the story-line, in the speeches of the play, open the doors to the world of the magician. Rosalind even talks about being conversant with a great magician who lies hidden in the forest. Who or what is this magician that lies therein, and what is the magic?

For the plan of the book, I begin with a sketch of the play’s background history, to set the scene in terms of the writing of the play. This is followed by a chapter summarising the story of the play, scene by scene. This is for the benefit of those who do not know the play or do not know it very well, but it could be helpful also to a reader who is conversant with the play, as it deliberately picks out the key points which will be discussed in the book.

After laying out the background and story in the first two chapters, the rest of the book delves into the deeper matter of the play, step by step. First there is a chapter identifying the major plots and themes. This is then followed by a chapter on some initiatory themes in the story which relate to those allegorised in certain myths and fairytales. The fifth chapter outlines the sequential cycles of initiation hidden in the story, which create its real structure and purpose. Together with this is an explanation of what initiation means in the context of the play. The following two chapters continue by providing a more detailed description and explanation of each cycle, and an in-depth discussion of the key philosophical points.

Finally, to conclude the book are three chapters indicating the special significance of Shakespeare’s choice and use of location, the importance and meaning of the names of the characters, and how the Hebraic and Christian Cabala underlies the play. The final chapter on the Cabala focuses on what is called the ‘Tree of Life’, with an explanation of what it means and how it can be used to understand the play, to understand life generally and to understand ourselves.

I have used the Arden edition of The Merchant of Venice when quoting from the play, which I highly recommend both for its text and its notes. I have also used the Companion Bible for biblical references, which are many, since the play is almost a text-book on the Bible. I recommend that the earnest reader has a copy of these two source books (or their equivalents) at hand when they read this book, in order to get the most from what I have written.

I have not attempted to provide a bibliography, except for the references which annotate the book. Some people may call this remiss; but there are many excellent books available in bookshops and libraries, both modern and ancient, all of which I certainly have not read although I have read and studied extensively! My suggestion is to follow your own intuitions and inspirations in this matter, based on the knowledge you already have. The matter we are dealing with is Renaissance Neoplatonism, itself derived primarily from Christian, Hebraic, Neoplatonic and Platonic, Pythagorean, Orphic, Hermetic, Ancient Egyptian, Magian and Druidic sources.

Finally, I wish you joy in your reading and hope that you will find this book useful. To search for truth seems to be one of the pleasures of life, for nearly all of us have an in-built natural curiosity to know. When what we discover is actually illuminating and useful in our lives, then it really is a joy. It is this joy that I wish for you, and the pleasure of enjoying Shakespeare’s works of art even more than before.

As You Like It was probably written sometime between 1598 and 1600. It does not appear in Francis Mere’s list of Shakespeare plays, which he gives in his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury, published in 1598, but it was entered in the Stationer’s Register on 4th August 1600. The play was registered together with two other Shakespeare plays, Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, and Ben Jonson’s comedy, Every Man in his Humour. These were entered as books ‘to be staied’, implying that there was a threat of piracy and the Lord Chamberlain’s Company acted to assert their copyright. However, As You Like It never appeared in quarto. Its first appearance in print was in the Shakespeare 1st Folio of 1623.

There is a theory suggesting that As You Like It was written by Shakespeare initially for private performance at the marriage of Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, to Elizabeth Vernon, one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, in 1598.¹ This theory supposes that this is the reason for the inclusion of the wedding masque in the play and why Meres does not mention As You Like It in his list, as, being privately performed, he may not have known of its existence. This theory, however, is unsubstantiated.

About this time, 1598-1600, there was a temporary revival of interest in the Arcadian pastoral and woodland theme, with its idea of a golden or naturalistic and care-free age—one filled with love and adventure. This included renewed enthusiasm for the euphuistic plays of John Lyly. There was also a parallel interest in the associated mythology of Robin Hood and his merry men, living in the Forest of Sherwood. In 1598, for instance, there were two plays about Robin Hood in performance at the Rose theatre, by the Lord Admiral’s Men, which were very popular—The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon by Anthony Munday, and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon by Munday and Chettle. As You Like It would seem to have been written in the wave of this enthusiasm.

Shakespeare’s play has an Arcadian setting in the Forest of Arden, and includes references to Robin Hood. The Forest of Arden in the play is actually the anglicised form of the Forest of Ardennes, a hilly, wooded but pastoral region on the borders of France, Belgium and Luxembourg. It was referred to in poetry on pastoral and Arcadian themes, and was especially made famous in this context because of its use as a romantic setting in Ludovic Ariosto’s popular book, Orlando Furioso. By using the Ardennes, Shakespeare was following his main story source, Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde, and, to suit this, he makes reference to characters in the play as being French, such as Orlando, who is called ‘the stubbornest young fellow of France’, and Amiens and Le Beau who have French names. Moreover, the hunting, love-making, formalities and sparkling repartee of the play is an accurate and perceptive representation of the culture of 17th century France, ruled over by the Valois court and French nobility. In this respect the play closely parallels Shakespeare’s earlier comedy, Love’s Labour’s Lost, which is likewise set in France amongst the French aristocracy. However, Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden is also connected with the English Forest of Arden and the famous outlaw, Robin Hood, both historically and symbolically.

The English Forest of Arden no longer existed as a forest in Shakespeare’s time, but many centuries earlier it had covered most of what later became Warwickshire, from the river Avon valley northwards to the site of Birmingham. South of the Avon the ancient forest joined another forest covering a large part of the Cotswolds, which became known as the Whychwoods, home of the Huicca tribe and the huiccas or witches (i.e. wise people) of old. Robin Hood was originally Robin of Loxley, his parent’s home being at Loxley, situated a few miles south of Warwick in what was once the Forest of Arden and close to the ancient Huicca territory.

In addition to the Robin Hood and Arcadian themes, the inclusion in the play by Shakespeare of the satirical Jaques, which allows a discussion on the ethics of satire, was also of contemporary topical interest. Satirical writing was the source of much heated argument during 1598-9, and in June 1599 an act for the suppression of satirical writing was passed, leading to the burning of Nashe’s and Harvey’s vitriolic pamphlets.

The Globe theatre opened in Spring 1599, and it is possible that As You Like It was written especially for the newly erected playhouse, with Jaques telling the audience that ‘all the world’s a stage’. Like Shakespeare’s contemporaneous Henry V, with its opening reference to the ‘wooden O’, it would have been most appropriate.

In a Jacobean revival, As You Like It is thought to have been played before King James I at Wilton, seat of the Pembrokes, in 1603. A letter of 1603, from Mary (née Sidney), Lady Pembroke, to her son, William Herbert, the 3rd Earl, asking him to bring the King from Salisbury to see a performance of As You Like It at Wilton House, is unfortunately missing.² The letter is reputed to have mentioned that, ‘We have the man Shakespeare with us’. The court was indeed at Salisbury at that time, to avoid the plague in London, and a possible corroboration of the story is given by the Chamber Accounts of December 1603, which record a payment to John Heminge, on behalf of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, for coming to Wilton ‘and there presenting before His Maiestie an playe’.³

The major source for As You Like It appears to have been Thomas Lodge’s prose romance, Rosalynde, a new edition of which was published in 1598. It had been published first in 1590, and then again in 1592 and 1596. The intriguing title-page of this work reads:

The author declares, in the Dedication to the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Hunsdon, to have written the novel ‘to beguile the time’ whilst on a voyage ‘to the islands of Terceras and the Canaries’ with Captain Clarke, in 1586-7. He mentions the work as being ‘hatched in the storms of the ocean, and feathered in the surges of many perilous seas’.

Euphues is from the Greek, meaning ‘well-grown’, and was a name used by John Lyly for his literary hero and adopted by a group of writers who studied at Oxford in the 1570’s, under the tutelage of John Rainoldes. The name was applied, as Euphuism, to a style of writing that they developed—an epigrammatic, witty and elaborately balanced style which they had first learned at Oxford.⁴ Lodge was one of the original euphuists, but the novelist and playwright, John Lyly (1554-1606), became the most noted for this style, and it was he who first used the name Euphues as the title for his romantic novel, Euphues, an Anatomy of Wit (1578), followed by a sequel, Euphues and his England (1580). The style soon became fashionable in both literature and polite conversation in England, in the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. Shakespeare was well versed in euphuism, but he mocked it as much as he used it.

Just as Euphues means ‘well-grown’, Philautus has the connotation of ‘Lover of fine, clean, elegant, splendid things’, which goes well with the whole ethos of euphuism. The sons of Philautus are, therefore, those who love pure and refined things, and are themselves of this quality. According to the ‘Schedule annexed to Euphues Testament’, placed as a foreword to Lodge’s Rosalynde, the mother of Philautus’ sons is Camilla. Camilla was famed as a fierce warrior queen, queen of the Volsci, who was dedicated when young to the service of Diana, the divine huntress. Philautus and Camilla thus represent the Renaissance ideal and ethos of the scholar-warrior, epitomised in England by the character of Hemetes the Heremyte (i.e. Hermes the Hermit), who combined the qualities of Mars and Mercury, and personified by Sir Philip Sydney, the nation’s hero.

The Schedule goes on to reveal that the ‘sons’ referred to are young but ‘nobly born’ and therefore with ‘great minds’. Preceding the Schedule is Lodge’s Letter, ‘To the Gentlemen Readers’, making it clear that Philautus’ sons are gentlemen. Strictly speaking, gentleman was the term for a man of gentle birth (ie noble, or well-born), belonging to a family having both land and position, and entitled to bear arms. They were the so-called landed gentry, who ranged from the squires and knights up through the various levels of aristocracy. However, the term was also applied as the complimentary designation of a member of certain societies or professions, such as the gentlemen lawyers of the Inns of Court, and of certain privileged students (the gentlemen commoners) of the two universities, Oxford and Cambridge. The euphuistic ‘University Wits’ were gentlemen-poet-playwrights.

Another symbolic name is Silexedra, given as the place where Euphues had his cell and where his golden legacy, Rosalynde, was found. The cell is reminiscent of the hermit’s cave and Prospero’s cell, and also of the cave where the senior Duke and his friends found shelter in the Forest of Arden. Silexedra is derived from the Latin, silex, meaning ‘crag, rock, cliff’, and perhaps intentionally makes a link to the famous crag, the Athenian acropolis, where Pallas Athena, the great ‘Spear-Shaker’, had her temple and capital. Alternatively, and perhaps even more aptly, it might refer to the other famous crag or rocky peak, Mount Parnassus,⁵ the home of Athena and her male counterpart Apollo. There also dwelt their ‘sons’, Æsclepius, the great healer, and Dionysus (Bacchus), the god of drama. Delphi is situated on the slopes of the Parnassian mountain, together with its oracle and the cave from which flows the Castalian spring of poetic inspiration. Apollo and Athena are the classical archetypes (i.e. god and goddess) of poetry, philosophy and illumination, and therefore of all philosopher-poets.⁶ Both Spenser⁷ and Shakespeare⁸ claimed that their muse was Pallas Athena, and Shakespeare was further likened to Apollo by Ben Jonson⁹ and John Weaver.¹⁰ Lodge, however, in humble vein, did not claim that his romance contained ‘anie sprigs of Pallas bay tree’, but ‘some leaves of Venus mirtle’.¹¹

The main story of Lodge’s Rosalynde is reused by Shakespeare in a condensed form as the basis for his As You Like It. Rosalynde’s principal plot concerns the three sons of Sir John of Bordeaux, of whom the youngest son is mistreated by the eldest, and the adventures of the principal ladies, Rosalynde and Alinda, plus the subplot of the shepherds, Montanus, Phoebe and Corydon. The underlying plot deals with the usurpation of the throne by the bad King Torismond and the eventual restoration to the throne of the rightful King Gerismond. This restoration takes place by means of a battle and the slaying of the evil king.