As You Like It Country vs City

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In literature a common the opposition, was on the contrast between city life and life in the country. Sometimes, it suggests that city hardships can be cured by a trip into the countryside, and that the perception of a person's harmony and ethic principles can get renewed by conversations with simple and untainted people, like farmers and shepherds. A renewal such as that, in turn, allow someone to return to the city as a better person, able to perform his outmost in the urban life. On the other hand Shakespeare tests the bounds of these beliefs, as, for example, Audrey a simple sheepherdess, is not pure. In the beginning of the play "As You Like It", he set's up an opposition between city and country. This is obvious from the first scene of the play when Orlando was complaining to Oliver about how unfair life is and said: “know no wise remedy how to avoid it” (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 20-21), and then a little later in the same scene, as Charles informs him of the whereabouts of Duke Sinior, the cure seems to be revealed: “in the forest of Ardenne . . . many young gentlemen . . . fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world” (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 99–103). In the forest almost everyone is healed, the lovesick find a good partner and Duke Sinior has his throne returned to him, but everyone is healed under the condition that he or she will return to the city. He doesn't take sides about what kind of life is better, a city life or a pastoral life, but instead he suggests harmonious life between the two. Pastoral life provides relaxation for the stress and busy life of the court, but it also builds a need city life style and culture, one needs both to be

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