“이 이상한 사연 많은 이야기”: 『당신 뜻대로』와 ‘봉사’의 도덕경제론

Abstract

William Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy, As You Like It, depicts the transition of English society from a late feudal community to an early modern accumulation society in terms of the idea of ‘service.’ The distanced genre of pastoral provides this play with a well-wrought instrument for social satire in its contrast of two modes of life: country and court. Duke Frederick’s court is governed by ambition and jealousy, the emotions permeated and enhanced by the cutthroat competitive materialism while the exiles’ green world of the Arden forest is only apparently settled in low content. The forest of Arden is already the site of class struggle and clash between poor and rich, self-sustaining agriculture and capitalistic pasturing and stock-breeding. In Shakespeare’s England the villeins have become the superfluous villains in overpopulated towns. The intrusion into the forest of the Duke senior and his trains implies the disturbance and destruction of the rural community by the flooding of avarice and greed. The movement from the court to the country and vice versa reflects the translation of social energy and economic power from city to country or otherwise in a pattern of mutual exploitation and negotiations. In As You Like It Shakespeare limns the social and economic change in terms of the idea of ‘service.’ The old Adam’s fidelity and ‘service’ has become the relic of the antique world, no more in fashion in an acquisitive society. The new Adam must adapt himself to the new-fangledness of a self-seeking society. In Duke Frederick’s court everybody serves himself even as he says he serves others, just as does Iago. However, in the comedic mode of a final reconciliation of conflict and clash, Shakespeare casts a backward looking nostalgic eye on the wistful ‘service’ of secrecy and mutual affection and the old community sustained by that ‘service.’ In the play the idea of ‘service’ is an indicator of the changing moral economy in England in particular and Europe at large at the end of the 16th century.