What country, friends, is this?

You find yourself in a new place. A different environment.

You don’t know it.

Yet.

How do you feel about finding yourself in a strange place? Excited? Intimidated? Curious?

Shy? Lost? Terrified?

I guess the circumstances of your arrival will play a big part in this. Whether you chose to travel to this place, or found yourself there by less predictable means.

Basically, did you jump or were you pushed?

Are you tourist, explorer, emigrant, refugee or exile?

Whatever the circumstances, you can be sure that how you respond to your environment will end up saying as much about you as the place in which you find yourself.

Shakespeare has a love of transformative locations, places away from the known, the familiar, where anything can happen, whether fearful, funny or fabulous, places of refuge, but also danger, excitement. Difficulty and disaster can be overcome, self-knowledge blossoms.

Viola asks the question, “What country, friends, is this?” (Twelfth Night 1.2)

Shipwrecked off the coast of

Illyria, along with the ship’s Captain and a bunch of the crew, she is heartbroken and grieving over the presumed drowning of her twin brother.

Does she sink down in a miasma of misery and hopelessness?

She does not.

Practical and resourceful, it only takes her a few lines to stop lamenting her lost brother and come up with a plan: disguise herself as a boy (ah, that favourite Shakespearean go-to strategy) and get herself a job working for the noble duke Orsino who, tellingly, she recalls is a bachelor.

Hmm.

As I said, she’s resourceful.

Her presence in this new land proves her also to be blunt, honest, sensible and compassionate, surrounded as she is by misplaced declarations of love and ruthlessly cruel comic tricks. She is a survivor, making the best of her situation with her wits and side-stepping the follies of the native Illyrians.

The Forest of Arden (As You Like It) is thronging with exiles and escapees from the corrupt and dangerous city court. The usurped Duke Senior has found himself a civilised home in the forest, living with his loyal courtiers in a bucolic alternative court of friendship, kindness, feasting and music beneath the greenwood trees.

“They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England. They say many young gentlemen flock to him every day and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.”     (1.1)

Rosalind finds herself thrown out of the court, disguises herself as a boy (of course) and finds her own survival and new life in the Forest of Arden with her bff and cousin, Celia.

Orlando, Rosalind’s love interest, also stumbles into this arcadia with the ancient Adam and, despite his fear and aggression, is offered only kindness.

“Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you:

I thought that all things had been savage here.” (2.7)

Old and young, courtier and peasant, find answers in this idyll, play games, flirt, argue and generally succumb to the transformative power of this extraordinary forest.

It's Rosalind who commands the action, her wits and common sense not only ensuring her own and Celia’s survival and ultimate happiness but solving everybody’s romantic problems and allowing everyone to learn a little more about themselves. Wrongs are righted, harmony and goodness win the day and all can return to the city transformed for the better.  

Another very busy forest is the one just outside Athens, home to fairies and the chosen rehearsal space for a bunch of amateur thespians.

Joining them are Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius, all fleeing the city in the name of love.

This forest is truly magical, drawing its inhabitants into a chaotic confusion of identity and sexual attraction, despair and violence.

By the end of this midsummer night, not many of the characters could actually tell you what happened to them, but harmony and peace is restored, “Jack shall have Jill, naught shall go ill”. (3.2)

The morning dawns with Titania, the four lovers and Bottom each dimly aware that they have dreamed strange and vivid things, but that their world is restored to how they would wish it.

Does that make everything that happened to them ok?

The ends justifying the means?

What I love about these hapless drugged, deceived characters is that they each stand up for themselves, none of them is a pushover. The only thing that shuts them up is Oberon’s magic flower juice, subjugating all of them within his power.

The tangle of the young lovers’ affections makes for fabulous comedy and does ultimately manage to tease out who should be with whom at the end.

Bottom reckons he’s had a “most rare vision” and is quite delighted by his dream.

I find Titania’s fate the most unsettling – the powerful queen standing up for what she feels is right, brought down only by her petulant husband’s magic and enslaved in an affair with the ass that is Bottom, just a puppet at the mercy of Oberon and Puck’s games.

Restored to herself, and with Oberon having got what he wanted, Titania is grateful for the status quo being restored.

So my advice to travellers into magical forests – stand up for what you believe in, hold your ground, but avoid fairies with purple flowers in their hands.

In “Cymbeline” our heroine Imogen has to flee the court, having found herself badly treated

by very badly behaved men, disguises herself as a boy (what else?) and finds herself in the forest where, unbeknownst to her and them, her long-lost brothers live in a cave.

She is courageous, strong-willed and refuses to give in to the dark forces of fate that seem to threaten her at every turn.

Here, in the forest, she finds compassion and kindness; the boys marvel at her goodness and gentleness, whilst noting her “grief and patience”.

The forest is again key, a world away from the city, offering sanctuary and, ultimately, restoration and peace.

Shakespeare’s location of transformation in “The Tempest” is a magic isle “full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not”. (3.2)

Here he strands Prospero and his infant daughter, Miranda, for twelve years, until Prospero uses his magic power to draw his enemies to him.

It isn’t an arcadian idyll.

There has been violence, threat and cruelty meted out before Prospero’s arrival and since, the status quo only maintained by Prospero’s vengeful force of will and magic. The shipwrecked courtiers from Prospero’s past all have lessons to learn, as indeed does Prospero himself. Ultimately, the magic of the isle is that enemies are brought to justice, there is reconciliation, and those who were enslaved find freedom.

The riotous culmination of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” unfolds amidst the trees of Windsor Park, Falstaff expecting a night of unbridled passion: “For me, I am here a Windsor stag, and the fattest I think in the forest!” but is forced to face up to some home truths.

Time and again the woods, the rural idyll, a location set apart from the everyday world, offer characters a time out, a place to dream, wonder, play, explore and learn about themselves. This is not just in Shakespeare, of course.

How many fairy tales require their heroes and heroines to venture into the forest to escape evil, undergo change and self-determination?

I believe it was Einstein who rather beautifully said "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read more fairy tales."

And what qualities do these adventurers and outcasts show, these Snow Whites and Red Riding Hoods and Hansels and Gretels?

Pretty much the same qualities as the Rosalinds, the Imogens and the Violas: courage, honesty, kindness, optimism, a good heart, a practical nature, an ability to be fully present, to learn, to listen, to be curious, to stand up for themselves and to look for a hopeful, rewarding life. 

So, you find yourself in a new place.

A different environment.

You don’t know it.

Yet.

What do you do?

Embrace it.

Follow in the footsteps of these brilliant exiles, outcasts, explorers and optimists.

The astute amongst you will know where this is going.

...

If you want a place to dream, wonder, play, explore and learn about yourself,

a place to explore the magic and imagination of theatre,

the power of words and movement, develop

your own skills, maybe learn something new, maybe even learn something new about yourself, what are you waiting for?

Like Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hansel & Gretel, like Imogen, Rosalind, Viola, Helena, Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius, come with us, step into the woods…

Click here to find out more.

"Are not these woods more free from peril than the envious court? 

... And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

(As You Like It)