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Fulfillment in As You Like It9 1Fulfillment in As You Like ItR ic h a r d B u r rowrburrow@kendrick.reading.sch.ukSince Bloom and Jaffa’s seminal work most political philosophers who haveengaged with Shakespeare have placed him firmly in the classical tradition.1 Few have directly challenged this view, but occasionally it has beenacknowledged that there are elements in his thinking which are impossibleto reconcile with classical philosophy. David Lowenthal notes of Prosperothat it is his “three year daughter’s smile…and not his philosophy that borehim through the ordeal at sea,” and argues elsewhere that in Romeo andJuliet Shakespeare goes “beyond the value placed on sexual love by classicalphilosophers…celebrating a higher form of love in a new way.” 2 Scott Cridereven argues that Shakespeare “enacts a modern love” in the way he celebrates“the lyric will to constancy in love” in his sonnets. 3 If these critics are correct,Shakespeare would clearly be diverging from the classical tendency to valuefriendship only insofar as it facilitates philosophy. 4 The comedies are notoften studied by political philosophers—perhaps precisely because they seemto be concerned principally with love and friendship—but I would argue thatthey contain the heart of Shakespeare’s thought about the ways in which lovecan fulfill us. The events of As You Like It can easily be summarized: the hero,1See Allan Bloom with Harry V. Jaffa, Shakespeare’s Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1981). This approach informs such work as Paul A. Cantor, “Prospero’s Republic: The Politics ofShakespeare’s The Tempest,” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, ed. John E. Alvis and Thomas G.West (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2000), 241–59; and John E. Alvis, “Shakespeare’s Understandingof Honor,” in Souls with Longing, ed. Bernard J. Dobski and Dustin A. Gish (Lanham, MD: LexingtonBooks, 2011), 3–38.2David Lowenthal, Shakespeare and the Good Life (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 56;and Lowenthal, “Love, Sex and Shakespeare’s Intention in Romeo and Juliet,” in Souls with Longing, 181.3Scott F. Crider, “Love’s Book of Honour and Shame,” in Souls with Longing, 300.4David Bolotin, Plato’s Dialogue on Friendship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), 170.© 2015 Interpretation, Inc.