"Migration, Exile, and Home in Shakespeare's As You Like It and Its Animated Adaptation." Flucht -Exil -Migration. Special issue of Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 155: 116 -133 (original) (raw)

2019, Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 155 (2019): 116-133.

Mit der Verwendung dieses Dokuments erkennen Sie die Nutzungsbedingungen an. By using this particular document, you accept the terms of use stated above. Migration, Exile and Home in Shakespeare's As You Like It and Its Animated Adaptation MICHAEL MEYER Scholars have studied migration and exile in As You Like It through a historical lens. They mainly explore Shakespeare's response to literary and philosophical writings on exile on the one hand, or early modern examples of banishment and exile on the other hand. 1 In Shakespeare? Drama of Exile, maybe the most sustained study of this topic, lane Kingsley-Smith takes account of numerous historical examples of banishment and exile, but does not consider specific cases to be of great relevance to Shakespeare's plays.2 She dismisses the speculation that Shakespeare's domestic exile was material in writing about this topic, but then concedes that his displacement from Stratford to London may have had an impact on the relevance of creativity in his plays, the pressure on the exiled writer to invent a new name, adapt a new accent and construct a story and the world in language.3 Kingsley-Smith argues that philosophy and pastoral literature form the basis of the representation of exile in the comedies.4 Other scholars point out that migration and exile were widespread phenomena in the early modern period and of importance to Shakespeare: Domestic migration of the lower ranks for social and economic reasons met with distrust in England, as the wandering of workers, vagrants and masterless men was considered as a rejection of the family, the nation and the law. The English monarch, Parliament, or Justices of the Peace could and did banish gypsies, Blacks, the Irish, Catholics, Anabaptists, Puritans, beggars, minstrels and players, apart from more prominent courtiers.s The politics of favour and disfavour motivated 1 Paul Joseph Zajac combines literary and historical perspectives in his political reading of Duke Senior's community of contentment in "The Politics of Contentment: Passions, Pastoral, and Community in Shakespeare's As You Like It", Studies in Philology 113:2 (2.016), 306-336.