Belonging In Shakespeare's As You Like It

Belonging can have positive and negative consequences.
To belong is to have a secure relationship with a particular facet of society in which one is accepted by those within. The need to feel such a connection with others can often drive us to extreme situations with a varying array of consequences both positive, such as finding one’s place in society, and negative, such as inhibiting one’s sense of self and limiting individuality. Shakespeare’s play As You Like It explores the concepts of traditional notions of belonging by examining filial, fraternal and romantic bonds, the consequences of belonging geographically, and accepted roles of gender.
The title itself gives the play to the audience, before any plot is introduced, with the words
Among all other institutions, that of the family and our relationships within it shape our identities most profoundly and for the longest time. The negative consequences of ostracism from this fundamental unit comprise the core of the plot in As You Like It. Orlando’s pining of his treatment by brother Oliver uses animalistic imagery to illustrate the breakdown of his own family unit. Orlando suggests that Oliver treats his “animals on dung-hills” better than himself, implying Oliver cares more for his animals than his own brother. The lexical chain used by Orlando of emptiness and nothingness conveys his feelings of ostracism from his family and foreshadows the ultimate fracturing of fraternal bonds in Oliver’s attempts to end his life. This same sense of alienation is repeated in the Court of the Duke Frederick, in which the parallel plot of Rosalind’s excommunication from her usurped father directly correlates to the despair and estrangement felt by Orlando. In Rosalind we also find the character of Celia, a personification of strong congenial bonds, providing an alternative to filial ties in her position as friend and
The lexical chain of bonds and belonging used by Duke Senior, “co-mates...brothers,” reinforces the notion that feelings of togetherness and mateship are forged and strengthened in the transgressive free space of Arden. These positive connotations imply that the forest engenders such feelings in juxtaposition to the artificiality and malignance of Court. The Forest itself is an allegory for the Garden of Eden, using biblical allusion to associate a paradisical quality to the Forest. Much like Rosalind and Celia to come, Duke Senior reinterprets the coup-de-tat and exile as a positive consequence in which he may educate himself spiritually and find a deeper connection with nature, “books in brooks, sermons in stones.” All characters who come within gradually recognize the Forest’s illuminating and reformative qualities. The tabula rasa allows characters to develop and recognizably change whilst there, re-evaluating their lives and relationships. The isolation from expectations, and providing of ultimate freedom, allows individuals a blank space with which to get in touch with their sense of