Age in the Eye of Shakespeare, focus on; As You Like It

Abstract

Being aged is an inevitable process of nature but the way society and its institutions define aged people may not be an acceptable process to judge every single aged people, as each human is different from others in regard to physic, life philosophy and mentality signifying that every human is an unique creation of the Creator. However, Shakespeare, being so much celebrated, praised and a universal writer delineates his characters and their involvement to his drama being somehow dogmatic in regard to age. This paper aims at the approach of Shakespeare towards the young and the elderly characters and tries to bring out a hypothesis based on gerontological theory in mind. The key objective of this paper is to find out what Shakespeare thinks about the aged people and how the aged characters been portrayed in As You Like It. Furthermore, this paper will distinguish the thought of Shakespeare, being xenophobic about the aged, with that of the gerontologists’ remark of approaching an aged man. In order to achieve its aim, a critical analysis planted on the gerontological view of Age will be conducted. Decisively, this paper hopes to come up with the attitude Shakespeare possesses at the time of treating an elderly man.