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“As You Like It” opens as Orlando complains to the aged servant Adam of his own “servitude” to his brother’s bondage. He has been withheld what he feels he deserves: a high-class life with wealth, but his brother Oliver has denied him any rights to their father’s money. It is ironic that he complains of his “servitude” to Adam who is in fact Oliver’s servant. The two are bound by their common discontentment under the Oliver’s dictatorship. Orlando says, “This is it, Adam, that grieves me, and the spirit of my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude. I will no longer endure it...” (Act I.i 21-24). We’re introduced to Oliver, the evil brother who plans to have Orlando killed by the Duke’s wrestler. This, we discover, is a result of jealousy. “(Orlando is) so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether mispris’d. But it shall not be so long, this wrastler shall clear all.” So, to gratify his pride he seeks to have his brother banished from existence. Banishment is common in the play, and is representative of the corrupt desires of greedy court people. The good Duke was banished and his kingdom taken by his brother. Here is another theme--that of family members turning against each other. So powerful is this greed and evil that some even take up the sword against a member of their own family.
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