Joan H Parks

The Book Club Chronicles Joan H Parks

The ladies keep trying to find as easier Shakespeare play to study and decided upon As You Like It, a comedy. As they start reading it, they discover that it is complicated. Most of the plot is confined to Acts 1 and 5. They use a Globe version on a DVD and use it and the text for study. They reflect upon the friendship between Rosalind and Celia, and how it changes throughout the play, Celia being dominant until Rosalind disguises herself as a boy, when she becomes the leader. Their reading deepens as they witness their own responses to this very female tale. All wrestle with their physical aging and the threats and advantages of retirement. They reflect on the intensely lyric nature of As You Like It and the many subversions, subtle or not, that Shakespeare wrote into this beloved play. They wrestle with their own love stories, late life marriages, and the how their pasts haunt their present as they struggle to make sense of this simple on the surface but very complicated theatrical play. Most of all, once again they, as a group, revel in the beautiful language of Shakespeare that pierces their hearts and at the same time uplifts them.