Globe Education Online

This is the third bulletin from Rosalind (Naomi Frederick). It covers her work with the text, Rosalind's view of love and the dance rehearsals for the jig.

Rosalind’s idea of love

I think we get some clues from Rosalind early on that she is actually ready for love – she’s got men on the brain! When Celia is trying to cheer her up, Rosalind agrees to try and have some fun, and her first suggestion is that they have a chat about falling in love. Then, when she and Celia are joking about nature and Fortune, Rosalind says that Fortune deals a really bad hand to women and that men have it much easier! So it seems that she is thinking about love and maybe even finding a husband.

When Orlando appears, it’s a sexual attraction at first, and then it becomes something even fuller. She thinks he has a beautiful heart and stands for beautiful things. His speech, for example, explaining why he wants to wrestle (“I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me” 1.2.181-182), makes her see these hidden depths to him. Then he wins the wrestling! And then it turns out that he is the son of Sir Rowland – who her dad worshipped more than any other human that ever lived! So to her, this boy is revealed with a succession of amazing attributes.

When Rosalind gets banished, the rug is pulled out from under her feet and she’s lost again. Even though she hadn’t established anything with him, she’s left with a wound that she doesn’t know how to heal. It’s so great that she entirely forgets about her father in the forest! She’s in love, so her priorities are completely out.

I don’t actually have any scenes with Duke Senior until the end. But we do have an off-scene moment at the end of Act 4 which is so interesting. She casually mentions that she met her father the day before while dressed as a boy:

I met the Duke yesterday, and had much question with him. He asked me of what parentage I was; I told him, of as good as he; so he laughed and let me go. But what talk we of fathers when there is such a man as Orlando? (3.431-35)

Basically, when her father, the man who has been exiled, asks who her parents are, she makes an off-the-cuff joke about it saying that they are as good people as he is. And then she moves the conversation back to Orlando – it’s so quick!

She’s not particularly attractive at that point and is behaving like an idiot. It takes until the end of the play, the day of the wedding, when she can actually calm down from this crazy loved-up state, and embrace her dad again and give him back the love that has always been there.

Work with the text

There is a fantastic text expert here – Giles Block – who is in every rehearsal, and at the start it is really wonderful to know there is somebody who is keeping an eye on things all the time. He can chart your progress, following your journey and your decisions through the piece. Once the scripts go down, he points out words that you miss out. Interestingly, he approaches that by asking “What is the significance of you missing out this word? Clearly your mind has skipped over something quite important and there’s a reason for that". He can fill out your thought process in the part by encountering those mistakes.

He also gives suggestions about where the emphasis comes in a word, because sometimes you latch on to one particular emphasis yourself even though there is an endless choice, but it’s very nice to have someone to say, “Have you thought about this?” Suddenly, they suggest something and it gives you a choice. It’s very useful having that accurate and expert ear.

Dancing: the jig

The jig is actually quite famous at the Globe; it is compulsory at the end of every show and there is a reason for that. It’s not just the feel-good factor at the end, or that fact that they did it in Shakespeare’s time (although they did); the important thing about the jig is that it’s a celebration at the end of the play, and in As You Like It, it comes after the wedding so everyone (apart from Jaques) is in the mood for dancing.

Our director was inspired by Slumdog Millionaire, and the whole Bollywood idea that everyone in the streets gets up and dances. It’s such a fabulous moment, it makes you want to get up and dance. It’s also rather lovely as an opportunity just to break out and bridge that gap between the Elizabethan period and now; it’s the same, because when people go wild, it’s the same everywhere – it’s an expression of joy and energy and life.

In our first session, Fin [Walker] the choreographer came with pop music and made us close our eyes. She told us to dance as we wanted to, with our eyes closed, staying on the spot; then half the group kept their eyes closed and the other half found somebody to watch and support. The idea of being watched when we’re dancing was gently introduced to us. Meanwhile, she was looking at how the music was making us move, and from that we devised the various moves that we might use in our dance.

The composer [Stephen Warbeck] was also watching and went away and wrote some music. Finn brainstormed our sessions and started to construct certain sequences from the moves we’d been using to the music. So the dancing uses our own moves. It’s very organic but then that’s the point; there isn’t a set example. You do it how you do it, and it’s just fun – all dancing is OK and there is no right or wrong.

These comments are the actor's thoughts and ideas about the part as s / he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his / her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsals progress.

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