I was excited to hear the term "prelapsarian" in class today (even more so to hear the word 'cowboy') as it was one of the first things I learned about in another Lit class this semester, Regional/Western Lit. In that context, the Western is all about returning to the purity and savagery of the unsettled West before it is destroyed by the industrialization and domesticity of the East (a symbolic Eden separate from the knowledge that followed the fall). The western hero knows that nature is the best teacher for how to be a man rather than "book learning." This got me thinking about the "green world" and how Shakespeare uses the woods/edenic scenery as a mode for restoration for his characters as well as a place of mystery (and danger if you are a maid traveling alone). The woods in MSND caused all of the lover's problems but ended up solving them too, acting as a Puck-esque mischievous role in the story. So far in As You Like It, the woods have served to reveal to Duke Senior that the pastoral (maybe Western?) life is what he prefers, reminding me of how the Western myth insists that nature is where one must return to be pure and to escape the wrongs he has been dealt or has committed outside of the woods.
As far as other mythical references go, James mentioned Cain and Abel but I was thinking more of the story of Jacob and Esaul in which Rebecca tricks her husband Isaac into giving the wrong son the birthright. No, Duke Senior was not tricked out of his position, but you get the idea. Celia reminds me of Ruth, in that she is a faithful friend who goes with Rosalind to her exile like Ruth followed Naomi: "And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, [or] to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people [shall be] my people, and thy God my God."
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