Contrary Notions of Identity in As You like It - Yavanika

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I D E N T I TY IN AS YOU LIKE IT
view of human being. However, in the spirit of inclusiveness, Shakespeare
does not simply dismiss the cynical satiric view as error.
Rather, he presents incontrovertible evidence that this view of the self
has a certain validity. In the confrontation of Touchstone and William
in the opening scene of Act V, we are shown that from a certain perspective,
the self is indeed constituted through exclusion of and opposition
to other selves. The enhancement of one self often does, in fact,
entail the diminution of another: Touchstone gets Audrey by taking
her away from William. Thus, as Touchstone tells William, "To have
is to have; for it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured of a cup
into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other. For all your writers
do consent that ipse is he. Now, you are not ipse, for I am he"
(V.i.43-47). Ipseity, or personal identity, is by definition the consequence
of difference or distinction from others: "ipse is he," and as
Touchstone rightly notes, you cannot be ipse if I am he. For Touchstone,
moreover, the being which one identity contains is like drink
(ipse, the Latin pronoun meaning himself, is also a slang name for a
kind of ale36): it cannot be included in another identity. The ensuing
action demonstrates this exclusiveness of identity, for Touchstone gets
Audrey, while William loses her: Touchstone the glass (to adopt the
fool's "figure in rhetoric") is filled through emptying William the cup.
But the fact that persons often - or even usually - exist in exclusion
of and opposition to one another does not prove that such opposition
constitutes the self, as the satiric view tacitly assumes. Hence the triumph
of the closed, exclusive self is not ultimate in the play. In the
final scene the fool's wit is seen to be an ancillary to love, and the
satiric vision, in the figures of Jaques and Touchstone, is partially
dismissed and partially absorbed into the Shakespearean comedy of
love.
In this scene the fool Touchstone assumes an inclusive identity,
pressing in "amongst the rest of the country copulatives" (V.iv.56-57)
and giving the assembly instructions (V.iv.69-103) on how to live as
an inclusive self. All disagreements, Touchstone counsels, should be
pursued with tentative, conditional assertions, never with a direct
attack against another person. Such relativism allows differing opinions,
multiple perspectives, to exist side by side. Thus if, as Touchstone
says, he disliked the cut of a certain courtier's beard and said so,
the courtier would reply not with the Lie Direct but with the Retort
Courteous, merely stating that he was of the opinion that his beard
was well cut. Such a response avoids the absolutist stance of the heroic
ego, which views any difference of opinion as a threat to the self. The
Retort Courteous is not cowardly; it rather embodies a respect for the
360ED, Compact edn., 2 vols.,l:1482.
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