Literary articles - William Shakespeare 2024

A Study Guide  of “As you like it” by William Shakespeare

ABOUT SHAKESPEARE

Because Shakespeare is acknowledged to be the greatest dramatist and poet in the English language, a natu­ral and burning curiosity has fired critics, scholars, and artists from the time of his death to the present day. The complete facts of his life have eluded them all because actors and playwrights of that Age were not held in high esteem, and the writing of letters and the keeping of journals were not common practice.

What can be pieced together of that life has been arrived at by painstaking detective work and educated guesses. The sources of information are scanty at best, mostly drawn from four areas: 1) documents and records of the period, that is birth and marriage certificates, deeds, legal depositions, and account books; 2) traditions, anecdotes, and recollections passed down through the years, some of very dubious validity; 3) literary references by other au­thors; and finally 4) conclusions that might be drawn from Shakespeare’s writings themselves.

We can be relatively sure that Shakespeare was born about three days before his April 26, 1564 baptism to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden Shakespeare in Strat- ford-on-Avon, a market town of about 2,000 people in Warwickshire. We know that the playwright was the third child after two daughters died in infancy and that five mo re children followed. John Shakespeare was a wool dealer and glove maker in Stratford who became a prominent borough official and civic leader until about 1577, when he experi­enced financial difficulties and dropped out of public life.

There is no secure information about Shakespeare’s schooling—a sore point with many snobbish critics who cannot conceive of a person who has not gone to college writing as elegantly and knowledgeably as Shakespeare did. It is assumed that he went through the Stratford grammar school from the age of six until his sixteenth year. Days were long at school, from five or six o’clock in the morning until 5 p.m., six days a week. Latin and Greek were cer-tainly taught, and there Shakespeare must have come into early contact with the Roman plays of Seneca, Plautus, and Terence which found their way into his own works as did the poetry of Ovid, Virgil, and Horace and the histories of Caesar and Livy. By any contemporaneous or modern estimation, Shakespeare must have been an educated man. As Dryden observed, “He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacle of Books to read Nature; he looked inwards and found her there.”

The first real concrete record of Shakespeare’s ac­tivities does not surface until 1582 when he was 18, at which time a marriage license was issued to him and Anne Hath­away, a woman eight years his senior from a tiny neighbor­ing village. Five months after they were married, their first child Susannah was born, followed in 1585 by the birth of twins, Hamnet who died at the age of eleven, and Judith who died in 1662, eight years before the death of Shakespeare’s last descendant.

Seven years after the birth of the twins, Shake­speare’s name occurs in connection with the first of his plays produced in London. It is reckoned that he left Strat­ford around 1587, but what he did in those years is pure con­jecture. Some legends say he was a schoolmaster; others claim he got into an altercation with a local squire for poaching deer and had to flee; still others maintain that he

went off to join a touring company of players. We shall never know.

Title page of the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s plays with the famous Martin Droeshout engraving, 1623.

In 1592, however, in a dying warning to fellow playwrights, Robert Greene attacked Shakespeare as “an up­start crow” and firmly establishes him as the successful au­thor of the three history plays, Henry VI, Parts One, Two, and Three. By then it was assumed that Shakespeare had al­ready also written and had seen productions of The Comedy of Errors, Richard III. The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour’s Lost, and the bloody, but popular tragedy of Titus Andronicus.

Between 1592 and 1594 the theatres were closed on account of plague, and Shakespeare turned to poetry, composing Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and probably the 154 sonnets.

At the theatres’ reopening, Shakespeare had be­come a stockholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, so- called because it was under the patronage of England’s Lord Chamberlain. It was one of London’s two major theatres. Four years later the theatre moved to the other side of the Thames and opened the Globe, where ultimately most of the great tragedies were presented.

During the period 1594-1600, with the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet as well as the two parts of Henry IV among others, the theatre company prospered and Shake­speare became a man of means. He lived in a fine home in London and purchased the largest house in Stratford. He was granted a coat of arms acknowledging him as a

“gentleman,” an honor coveted but never achieved by his father because of his money problems.

By the turn of the century Shakespeare had written his major romantic comedies: As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night', and with the accession of James to the English throne after the death of Elizabeth in 1603, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were taken under the monarch’s wing, calling themselves thereafter the King’s Men. Many of the plays were then performed at Court, and in 1608 the company was able to open a second theatre, the Blackfriars, indoors, mainly for the upper classes, which al­lowed Shakespeare to turn to more subtle themes and pas­toral romances, including Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest.

Shakespeare’s reputation as a fashionable writer by then, however, was perhaps beginning to wane or he lost en­thusiasm for the bustle of London life, for in 1611 he retired to Stratford returning pen to paper only to compose Henry VIII, a pageant which by stage accident occasioned the burning of the Globe in 1613 at its premiere performance. He is also reputed to have collaborated in the writing of a minor play entitled Two Noble Kinsmen.

Apparently he died on his birthday in 1616, some say as the result of contracting a “fever” after drinking with some of his playwright friends. His grave is marked by a stern and ominous warning, supposedly composed by the Bard himself, adding to the mystery surrounding his life but perhaps merely posted to keep his remains from being moved as was often done:

Good frends for Iesus (Jesus’) sake forbeare

To dig the dust encloased heare!

Blest be ye (the) man yt (that) spares thes stones, And curst be he yt moves my bones.

An elaborate version of Shakespeare’s coat of arms.

SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS

It is generally acknowledged that Shakespeare’s writing for the theatre falls largely into four main periods.

1)             The Early Period (about 1590-1595). The plays that fall into this group reflect Shakespeare's youthful vital­ity and energy, both in conception and verse. Plays from this

period include Romeo and Juliet, A Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Richard III.

2)       The Middle Period (about 1595-1600). The plays emanating from this time betray a developing dark attitude about human nature, even cynicism at times. This is characterized by Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, and Troilus and Cressida.

3)        The Mature Years (about 1600-1607). During this period Shakespeare produced his greatest work: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and such comedies as Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure.

4)        The Late Period (about 1608-1613). This era is marked by the playwright's concern with more mystical matters set often in pastoral surroundings. The difficult plays of this group include Pericles, Cymbeline, The Win­ter’s Tale, and The Tempest.

According to Shakespearean scholar G.B. Harrison the complete list of the plays with their approximate dates is as follows:

1591

Henry VI, Parts One, Two, and Three

Richard III

Titus Andronicus

Love's Labour's Lost Two Gentlemen of Verona The Comedy of Errors The Taming of the Shrew

1594

Romeo and Juliet

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Richard II

King John

The Merchant of Venice

1597

Henry IV, Parts One and Two Much Ado About Nothing Merry Wives of Windsor As You Like It

Julius Caesar

Henry V

Troilus and Cressida

1601

Hamlet

Twelfth Night

Measure for Measure All’s Well That Ends Well Othello

1606

King Lear

Macbeth

Timon of Athens

Antony and Cleopatra

Coriolanus

1609

Pericles

1611

Cymbeline

The Winter’s Tale

The Tempest

Henry VIII

A drawing of the Swan theatre by Johannes de Witt, now in the university library at Utrecht, Holland

SHAKESPEARE’S THEATRE

With our contemporary exposure to modern theatre, television, and film, with their capacity for reproducing everyday reality so precisely and astounding us with amaz­ing special effects, it is perhaps difficult to envision the kind of productions and the quality of imagination that Elizabethan audiences experienced when they attended a performance of Measure for Measure.

Our information about the playhouses of that time is very sketchy, derived as it is from one or two drawings, scanty stage directions, a few building specifications, con­tracts, and prop lists. It is clear, though, that the major plays were presented out of doors in open theatres in daylight. When nighttime scenes were called for, a few words sufficed to set the hour and the mood. Locations were also clarified by the actors’ speeches. We can, therefore, assume that only the barest, most essential pieces of furniture and scenery were set—a chair, a bush, or a throne. The plays were done without intermission—many of the audience members stood throughout—and, therefore, they had to move quickly from scene to scene in an almost cinematic way in order to achieve as the Chorus in Romeo and Juliet calls for “the two hours’ traffic of our stage.”

To accommodate tombs, beds, and balconies and to allow “dead bodies” to exit without being carried off, some device was needed to permit them to be hidden or to give them some elevation from the stage level. It is therefore conjectured that there was a curtained area somewhere on the back wall of the stage area, both on the platform level and above it. Since actors often had to traverse the playing area from one side to the other, it is likely that there were

entranceways or doors on either side of the stage which also served to clarify opposing forces in a play—Montagues and Capulets, French and English armies, or rebels and loyalists. The rest of the play was performed on a large square or rect­angular (we cannot be sure) area which extended out into the audience, surrounded on three sides by the spectators.

Usually stage directions in many of the texts were added later by the editors, but an early edition of Romeo and Juliet gives us some clues about the theatres. After Juliet drinks the potion the script indicates, “She falls upon her bed within the curtains,” and then one assumes they are closed. After discovering and lamenting Juliet’s supposed death, “They all but the Nurse go forth, casting rosemary on her and shutting the curtains.” Suggestions such as these are all that historians have to go on in determining how the plays were staged.

It is thought that the architecture of the playhouses was developed from touring companies who set up and per­formed at innyards against one wall of the building. Audi­ences could stand at ground level or watch from balconies and galleries on three sides. These galleries found their way into the structure of theatres built for the purpose of produc­tions.

Enlarged detail of the Globe playhouse on the south bank of the Thames from a map of London published about 1625

Behind the stage was the “tiring” area (coming from the word “attiring”) where the actors could change costumes (they played more than one role because the companies were small, the casts large), where props were stored (many plays were kept in the repertory during the season and the life of the theatre), and from where music and special effects might emanate (it was a cannon explosion which started the fire that destroyed the Globe Theatre in 1598).

The stage itself was pitted with several openings (or traps) from which ghosts could emerge, in which graves could be “dug,” or characters descend. Later in the devel­opment of the company Shakespeare worked for, an indoor theatre, the Blackfriars, was purchased. This catered to a more elite clientele, permitted performances in all sorts of weather, perhaps allowed some rudimentary lighting effects,

but, above all, acoustically gave Shakespeare the opportu­nity to write more subtle dialogue with more complex imagery and ideas than the direct, open, heroic speeches required by playing out of doors.

The Second Blackfriars theatre as reconstructed by Irwin Smith in Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Playhouse: Its History and Design. (New York: New York University Press, 1964).

The act and scene divisions in the plays were later textual additions but an audience usually knew when a major section had ended by the rhymed couplet which summarized or rounded out a series of dramatic events, for example, when Rosalind and Celia meet and agree to flee from the inhospitable court to the forest of Arden, Celia ends Act I by saying:

Let’s away,

And get our jewels and our wealth together,

Devise the fittest time and safest way

To hide us from pursuit that will be made

After my flight. Now go we in content

To liberty, and not to banishment.

Shakespeare wrote for the company of actors who made up the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later the King’s Men. Heroic roles were fashioned around the talents of their leading actor, Richard Burbage. As he grew older, the roles conceived for him also matured so that early in his career Burbage played Romeo and Hamlet, then later he assayed King Lear and Othello. Will Kemp played the lower, broader, comic roles like Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing and Costard in Love's Labour's Lost. He apparently broke off with the theatre and was replaced by the more ethereal singer and dancer, Robert Armin. For him Shakespeare conceived a totally different sort of comic role more appropriate to his talents and temperament. He played Feste in Twelfth Night and Touchstone in ,4.s' You Like It.

The women in Shakespeare’s plays were all played by boys, and they must have developed great acting skills to portray such complex personalities as Juliet, Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra. Their careers, however, were short-lived since it would have stretched believability too far to have kept

them in such parts after their voices had changed in about their fourteenth year.

Shakespeare himself acted in the company, his most famous role being that of the Ghost in Hamlet, but his influence as a shareholder was obviously due to the enor­mous popularity of the plays he supplied rather than from his distinction as a performer. Tradition holds that Shakespeare played the role of Adam in^4s You Like It.

The demis e of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre came with the substitution of violence, sex, and spectacle for an identifiable humanity in the plays and sentimentality for true feeling. The acting quality no doubt also deteriorated when companies of children became fashionable; and the death knell of the most vital theatre in world history sounded when the Puritans took over the State and closed the theatres in 1642.

SUMMARY OF THE STORY

Duke Senior has been banished from the court by his usurping younger brother, Frederick, and many lords, including the melancholy Jaques, have followed him into exile to the Forest of Arden.

Rosalind, Duke Senior’s daughter, falls in love with Orlando, the youngest son of the late Sir Rowland de Boys, when he comes to the court to try his fortune in a wrestling match, but then she too is banished by her uncle, the usurping duke, whose daughter, Celia, accompanies her into the forest. The princesses disguise themselves; Rosalind becomes the boy, Ganymede; Celia, the boy’s sister Aliena. They take with them Touchstone, a court fool. Orlando flees to the forest to escape the tyranny of his older brother, Oliver, who has plotted to kill him at the wrestling. In the Forest of Arden, Orlando meets Ganymede, and goes every day to ‘him’ to talk of love and woo the ‘boy’, who impersonates Rosalind. Phebe, a shepherdess, spurns the love of a shepherd, Silvius, but herself falls in love with Ganymede. Touchstone meets a peasant girl, Audrey. . . . All these unions are eventually sanctified by Hymen, the god of marriage, and after the spiritual conversion of Duke Frederick, possessions and positions are restored to their original owners.

—synopsis quoted from Stratford Shakespeare Festival Program, Stratford, Canada, 1978

The Forest of Arden in the 1879 production of As You Like It at the Memorial Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon

THE SOURCES OF THE STORY

Shakespeare’s genius did not usually extend to the invention of new material to accompany his rich characteri­zations and relationships, his clearly devised and exciting plot and structure, and his soaring poetry. He drew his ideas from Roman, Greek, and English history and mythology, other plays, and translations of continental novellas. Often he combined different tales into a new creation.

Most scholars agree that Shakespeare’s principal source for As You Like It was a prose romance by Thomas Lodge, Rosalynde, or Euphuie’s Golden Legacy. Lodge based his tale on a 14th century poem, sometimes erroneously attributed to Chaucer, called The Tale of Gamelyn. Geoffrey Bullough observes that Shakespeare’s “play is more than an adaptation of Lodge’s romance, but... he drew much from it, both in detail and for his general conception.” Bullough also points out that Shakespeare may have derived his play’s title from Lodge’s Introduction “To the Gentlemen Readers,” in which Lodge writes: “If you like it, so: and yet I will be yours in duetie, if you bee mine in favour.”

In addition to Lodge’s work, Shakespeare would have been generally aware of the tradition of pastoral literature and its idealized depiction of the greenwood. It is often pointed out that Shakespeare knew the reality of the country and could not have helped but temper his sources, rejecting some of their excessive sentiment. Bullough believes that Shakespeare may have used an old play, Syr Clyomon and Clamydes, as both an inspiration and an additional source for his depiction of some of the more realistic aspects of country life. While the greenwood in As You Like It may represent a return to a “golden age” of innocence, it is often pointed out that very few characters in the play intend to remain in the forest as the play ends. Shakespeare, using his sources, found his own balance between sentiment and reality, between country and city values, between those who love at first sight and those who struggle with love. In this way Shakespeare’s play may be seen as “both an example and a parody of pastoral literary conventions.”

THE DATE OF COMPOSITION

Shakespeare’s plays were written to be produced. Their publication, often in pirated editions, occurred much later. Therefore, dates of composition can only be deduced and never firmly established from, as one critic put it, “extrinsic” evidence—that is, dates of publication and refer­ences to the plays by others and “intrinsic” evidence— clues in the text itself, perhaps surreptitious references to contemporary events or a comparison of other plays regarding style, structure, form, psychological insight, and even punctuation.

Scholars place the writing of 45 You Like /Z in either 1599 or 1600. The only extrinsic evidence—and the only record of the play during Shakespeare’s lifetime—is found in an entry in the Stationers Register of 4 August 1600, in which the play is “stayed." The listing of a play is usually understood to mean that there may have been an intention to publish it, or this may have been an effort to assert

copyright. In fact, As You Like It was never published during Shakespeare’s lifetime, appearing first in the First Folio of 1623, the collected works of Shakespeare published seven years after his death. It is speculated that the play was a popular one and that it was probably presented at the newly built Globe theatre, but there is no evidence. When we do first learn of the play on the stage it is in the form of a “barbarous ‘improvement,’ ” an adaptation of 1723 by Charles Johnson and entitled Love in a Forest.

Intrinsic evidence is slight, though some scholars see in Touchstone’s comment, ‘it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room,” a veiled allusion to the death of Christopher Marlowe in a tavern brawl (occasioned by a fight over the “reckoning” or bill), as well as a reference to a line in Marlowe’s play, The Jew of Malta (“infinite riches in a little room”). Marlowe, however, died in 1593, and accepting the validity of this passage as alluding to his death has led some to argue for 1593 as the proper date for the composition of the play. Most do not agree with dating the play that early. As You Like It also includes a quote from Marlowe’s poem, Hero and Leander: “Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?” First published in 1598, it is possible that Shakespeare had recently read it at the time he was writing As You Like It, and that the allusions to Marlowe are memorial in nature. Other critics have pointed to several Robin Hood plays that were produced in 1598, and they speculate that Shakespeare wrote his play to exploit a current vogue for romantic outlaws in forest settings.

Juliet Stevenson as Rosalind, Hilton McRae as Orlando, Royal Shakespeare Company, Barbican Theatre, 1985

ABOUT THE PLAY

“To liberty and not to banishment”

When at the end of Act One Rosalind and Celia turn Duke Frederick’s banishment of Rosalind into an escapade in the Forest of Arden, they demonstrate the power of comedy to transform life’s tears into laughter. Like the fairy-infested woods outside Athens in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Arden is a magical place. There the usurped Duke Senior and his followers, having discovered that the woods are “More free from peril than the envious court,” can “fleet the time carelessly” like Robin Hood of old. There the uneducated young hero Orlando, threatened at home by his wicked brother Oliver and at court by Duke Frederick, can find a gentle welcome for himself and his faithful old servant, Adam. There Celia, daughter of the reigning duke, can

become owner of a sheep cote, and Rosalind, daughter of the banished duke, can disguise herself as a boy. There lovesick swains can learn what true love is, and a disdainful mistress can be taught to value it. And there by play’s end evildoers can repent and the broken bonds of brotherhood can be restored.

Of all the comic transformations that take place in Arden, the most wondrous is that of the lady Rosalind into the boy Ganymede, for just as the costume change frees the actress from the constraints of stays and farthingales, the gender change frees the character from the constrictions society places on female behavior. The Rosalind of Act One is a conventional heroine, sighing over the newly met Orlando and perplexed by her sudden banishment. Though brave enough to defend herself from the accusations of treason Frederick levels against her, Rosalind needs Celia to suggest the remedies for her predicament: escape to Arden and the use of disguise. Warming to Celia’s suggestion, Rosalind immediately improves it:

Were it not better,

Because that I am common tall,

That I did suit me at all points like a man?

From that point on improvisation becomes the key to Rosalind’s personality as she transforms herself first into the boy Ganymede, then into the physician who would cure Orlando of love sickness, then into the magician who can set straight the love complications her new identity has created.

Rosalind is such fun to play because the character is having so much fun improvising these masculine roles. But she is even more fun to watch because the audience is in on the secret of her identity. While delighting in the masquerade, we see how difficult it is for the girl in love to maintain the boyish facade. For no sooner has Rosalind become Ganymede than she encounters her beloved Orlando marring the trees of Arden with sonnets in her honor. “Alas, the day,” she moans, “what shall I do with my doublet and hose?” Far from being the disadvantage she first imagines, Rosalind’s masculine attire gives her a distinct advantage in the love game she will play with Orlando. Just as Arden protects Duke Senior and Orlando from the perils of the court, her forest disguise protects Rosalind from discovery. Her doublet and hose free her from the conventional female role such as Phebe plays with Silvius and allow her to speak to Orlando “like a saucy lackey” and discover the reality of his love. Liking what she hears, she offers to assume the role of his beloved Rosalind and cure him of love sickness: “I would cure you, if you will but call me Rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me.”

Rosalind’s improvisation of the love cure is Shakespeare’s greatest addition to the plot and characters he appropriated from Thomas Lodge’s romance Rosalynde. It enables him to poke fun at the conventional poses of lovers, who think it necessary to write sonnets to their mistress’s eyebrow. It keeps the love affair of Rosalind and Orlando at the center of the audience’s consciousness, even as he creates the other “country copulatives”—the suffering Silvius and disdainful Phebe, the suddenly-in-love Oliver and Celia, the court jester Touchstone and his goatherd Audrey. Most of all, it gives him the chance to play with gender assumptions as Rosalind poses first as a boy and then as a boy pretending to be a girl.

As Hamlet is an actor’s dream role, Rosalind is that of an actress. Not only is her part the longest in the play (747 lines) — twice as long as any other character’s, and longer than either Macbeth’s (704 lines) or Prospero’s (665 lines) — but it is also the richest, for like Hamlet she gets to play many parts. As the actor must keep the audience on edge about Hamlet’s antic disposition, the actress must make the audience believe the masculine swagger without allowing us to forget the girl in love beneath it.

Though we have no evidence of the popularity of As You Like It when performed by Shakespeare’s company, we can assume that the Elizabethan audience took as much pleasure at being in on the joke of Rosalind’s disguise as modem audiences do. In fact their pleasure at Rosalind’s sexual ambiguity was probably greater than ours, for where we see a girl (the actress playing Rosalind) playing a boy (Ganymede) playing a girl (Rosalind), Shakespeare’s contemporaries saw a boy (actor) playing a girl playing a boy playing a girl.

In letting the audience share in the secret of Rosalind’s identity, As You Like It gets to the heart of dramatic pleasure: we know more than the characters, even Rosalind, for we are constantly reminded “how many fathom deep in love” she is with the man she claims she would cure. But the play remains popular for other reasons as well. In a humorous way, it treats some of our deepest personal concerns: what does it mean to be a man or a woman? a lover of either gender? a brother, sister or friend? By placing these questions in Arden, it offers the comic possibility of a world where such questions are answered and where the troubles they cause are magically set right.

Arden changes everyone who enters there, except perhaps for Jaques. But even that confirmed cynic, who “can suck melancholy from a song the way a weasel sucks eggs,” and who sees the Seven Ages of Man as one long decline into senility, seems to sense that he has not completed his sojourn there. When the other characters, renewed by their stay in Arden, set out to return to court, he chooses to remain behind with the other character in need of the forest’s restorative powers, the newly contrite Duke Frederick.

The movement of Shakespeare’s comedy is ultimately conservative: Duke Senior is restored to power; Orlando receives his rightful inheritance; Rosalind gives herself to her father before giving herself to Orlando. But though Rosalind trades the freedom of Arden for the institution of marriage, she does so only after having used that freedom to teach Orlando how to love and to learn how deeply he does so.

Thus, though in the end As You Like It returns its characters and its audience from the magic of Arden to the reality of the workaday world, it brings all of us back transformed.

Maureen Connolly McFeely Adjunct Assis tant Professor of English Dramaturg, As You Like It

thoughtful realism. In this they are in keeping with the essential mode of the play.”

—Levi Fox

Roberta Maxwell as Rosalind in disguise as Ganymede, Stratford, Canada, 1983

A FEW CRITICAL COMMENTS

“The pastoral impulse at the end of the 16th century in Eigland means that at that period in history Englishmen were learning to feel the oppression of the cities. And we know that—during the later years of Elizabeth and the early years of James—builders were pushing out along Holbom and the Strand, fields were receding farther and farther into the distance and problems of over-crowding were becoming known. The monstrous nightmare of the modern city had not yet made its appearance but there was already reason enough, especially in days when court intrigue was merciless and none too savoury, for finer souls to dream their dreams of Arcady, or of Arden.”

—E.K. Chambers

“As You Like It is a fairy tale. But fairy tales are very serious. They deal with myths, with the deep subconscious rivers whose rumblings are forever there in our lives but not articulated. They deal with Good and Evil.

“As You Like It is a comedy, which means a play of transformation—the transformation of souls from Evil to Good, of nature from Winter to Spring, and of the world from darkness to a new dawn.”

—John Hirsch

“Shakespeare’s type of romantic comedy [may be called] the drama of the green world, its plot being assimilated to the ritual theme of the triumph of life and love over the waste land. The forest or green world is a symbol of natural society . . . not the physical world man now lives in but the ‘Golden World’ he is trying to regain. The natural society is associated with . . . magic, and spiritual energy.”

—Northrop Frye

“As You Like It— with what smiling expansiveness the title invites you to view the play. It is very difficult to say it with a frown. It does not come out right because the vowels are open. The beckoning finger asks you to make no comment but rather simply to listen and watch in a quiet, friendly fashion. It asks you to make no harsh, modern judgements. Goodness and wickedness spring unbidden into the hearts of people. It is impossible to have one without the other, since opposites hold the balance of the world. We swing with natural ease from friendliness to viciousness, from court to country, from warmth to cold, from riches to poverty, from repletion to hunger, from youth to age and from the single state to the married. The wheel of fortune whirls us around and we are victims of its whims. Even the form of the writing reflects this kind of pendulum­swing, as it moves from verse to prose and back again. Poetry, to put it crudely, means you are in love, whereas prose usually means that you are still thinking about it!”

—Janet Suzman

“In some plays the songs are more integral. It is hard to think of As You Like It without ‘Under the greenwood tree,’ ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind,’ and ‘It was a lover and his lass.’ The sophisticated pastoral needs such lyrics as a vital part of its relationship with the convention on which it makes urbane comment. Their special achievement is to preserve the charm and freshness, stripping away the artifice and substituting a more

Janet Suzman as Rosalind, Rowena Cooper as Celia, and Patrick Stewart as Touchstone, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1968

“The simultaneous sense of the real and the ideal which Shakespeare has been pointing to in his earlier comedies is to be found only in Rosalind. In her conception Shakespeare is at last able to express at once engagement and detachment, the capacity to feel as well as to control emotion, the commingling in her temperament of feeling and judgment in perfect equilibrium. It is this which makes Rosalind the dramatist’s climactic achievement in his search for a comic heroine who would express in word and act a particular comic vision.”

—Peter G. Phialas

“Rosalind steps forth ... a perfected symbol of the romantic heroine. Romance has been tested in her until we know it cannot shatter; laughter has made it sure of itself. There is only one thing sillier than being in love, and that is thinking it is silly to be in love. Rosalind skips through both errors to wisdom.

“She, not Jaques, is the philosopher of the play. Hers is the only mind that never rests. . . . The more experience Rosalind has the merrier she grows. She too is a traveler, but she has not sold her own lands. She has taken her integrity with her to Arden, tucked under her three- cornered cap.”

—Mark van Doren

“It is perhaps the most marvelous of all Shakespeare’s stage illusions that his women hold the stage as brilliantly as they do while under several stark disadvantages: the average length of the leading male and female roles in the thirty-five [sic] plays is 660 lines and 310

lines, respectively; only two female roles are among the twenty longest in the canon (Rosalind at 750 lines, Cleopatra at 670); and female characters speak a mere seventeen percent of the total lines in all the plays.”

—Gary Schmidgall

“Modem criticism has had to resist the simplistic tendency to equate Northrop Frye’s ‘green world’ with a bucolic setting. The green world is an imaginative landscape not a representation of nature by Constable or Watteau or Monet. Arden is the quality of Rosalind’s creative inspiration not a spot on the map which automatically transforms its visitors or inhabitants. . . .

“Arden is, like the Boar’s Head tavern, a playground most open to those who have the imagination to respond to its liberating possibilities. For a Rosalind or a Hal, such spaces allow them the freedom to release possible versions of self inconceivable in the court world.”

—Samuel Crowl

“Like A Midsummer Night's Dream of a few years earlier, As You Like It has a fullness in its romantic and pastoral action that suggests a studied equilibrium in the world of the play. The four pairs of lovers are set against each other in analogous relations, as if we needed them all to establish a view of love. Shakespeare liked to dabble in contraries that do not necessarily involve us in contradictions; the world of the play manifests a copiousness that includes opposites.”

—Maurice Charney

“Before rehearsals began, I knew that for many people Jaques is either their favourite or least favourite Shakespearean character, that he carries with him a reputation for having his arms permanently folded and eyebrows forever arched, and that he’s the one who does ‘All the world’s a stage.’ I had played the part once before, eight years previously, so I was already sure that he was more than a famous speech on legs. However, as we worked, I found an even clearer picture of a Jaques who is perceptive but passionate, vulnerable but anarchic, and a man whose means of expressing these qualities was completely unpredictable. He’s very sure of himself and a bit of a mess.

“If, as Beerbohm writes, As You Like It is not a play but an extended lyric, then ‘All the world’s a stage’ is one of its great arias. That’s what I went for anyway, trying also to keep its roots tethered in the scene. Hang on to it and let it go at the same time. A suitably impossible aim. It was also used as a kind of fulcrum to the production since the interval was taken at the end of that scene. The play moved from Winter to Spring, and the design from white to green. The second half was always a more relaxed experience for me. If ‘All the world’s a stage’ shows Jaques cursed by his own perception, the second half shows the result—condemned to wander forever, endlessly trying to relocate some innocence, endlessly disappointed. And it is Jaques who initiates the conversations with Touchstone, Orlando, and Rosalind, and Jaques who, when disarmed, runs away. Therein lie both his vulnerability and his arrogance.

“There is another irony, too. He is also able to function as occasional breeze to an audience who might otherwise become too heady on Rosalind and Orlando, because of course he doesn’t change. He starts the play offstage under a tree by a stream, and ends it offstage sitting in a cave.”

—Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman as Jaques, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1985

“Shakespeare’s As You Like It provides a perfect example of two kinds of time. In the court, profane time rules the prudential world of legality and mundane responsibility but beyond it in Arden, festive time takes over. In the forest, all kinds of subversion and inversion take place and in this parenthetic setting characters can abdicate their daily roles. Men can become women, women can become men, dukes become shepherds in just the same way that masters may be seen serving at table at Christmas, and a child or fool can be appointed the Lord of Misrule.

“The world is turned upside-down and just as the shaking of the kaleidoscope between two successive configurations creates the possibility of a stable pattern on either side so the mischief-making disturbance of order between one stretch of profane time and the next guarantees the stability of the future period. This is why we call such periods recreational, and in a sense what seems to happen is that the prevailing order is called into question and ultimately re-created. These mischief-making times can only exist, and have any meaning, because profane time will return. The celebrants will resume their normal roles having been re-created in the intervening period.”

—Jonathan Miller

“The popularity of Rosalind is due to three main causes. First, she only speaks blank verse for a few minutes, second, she only wears a skirt for a few minutes. . . . Third, she makes love to the man instead of waiting for the man to make love to her—a piece of natural history which has kept

Shakespeare’s heroines alive, whilst generations of properly governed young ladies, taught to say ‘No’ three times at least, have miserably perished.”

—George Bernard Shaw

“If we were obliged to answer the question which of Shakespeare’s plays contains, not indeed the fullest picture of his mind, but the truest expression of his nature and habitual temper, unaffected by special causes of exhilaration or gloom, I should be disposed to choose As You Like It. It wants, to go no further, the addition of a touch of Sir Toby or Falstaff, and the ejection of its miraculous conversions of ill-disposed characters. But the misbehaviour of Fortune, and the hardness and ingratitude of men, form the basis of its plot, and are a frequent topic of complaint. And, on the other hand, he who is reading it has a smooth brow and smiling lips. . . . And it is full not only of sweetness, but of romance, fun, humour of various kinds, delight in the oddities of human nature, love of modesty and fidelity and high spirit and patience, dislike of scandal and censure, contemplative curiosity, the feeling that in the end we are all merely players. . . . And, finally, it breathes the serene holiday mood of escape from the toil, competition, and corruption of city and court into the sun and shadow and peace of the country, where one can be idle and dream and sing.”

—A.C. Bradley

“As You Like It is far from being one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, but it is one of his best-loved ones. ‘I know nothing better than to be in the forest,’ says a character in Dostoevsky, ‘[there] all things are good.’ We are in a forest, the Forest of Arden, during four-fifths of As You Like It, but it is a forest that by some magic lets in perpetual sunshine. And not only do we have a sense of constant natural beauty around us; we are in the presence, too, almost continuously, of a number of the other supremely good things of life, song and laughter, simplicity and love; while to guard against surfeit and keep romance within bounds, there is a seasoning of caustic and even cynical wit, plenty of foolishness as a foil for the wisdom, and, for variety, an intermingling of social worlds from courtiers and courtly exiles to shepherds and country bumpkins. In this last respect As You Like It repeats the miracle of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

—Harold C. Goddard

ABOUT THE PLAY ON STAGE

The earliest mention of As You Like It on the stage dates from 1723, and actually refers to an adaptation of the play by Charles Johnson called Love in a Forest. Johnson’s play, we are told, was a pastiche which “left out most of the comic characters and patched up the holes thus made with bits of several other Shakespeare plays, including Richard III. Even when Shakespeare’s own play was staged, a song from Love’s Labour’s Lost was invariably inserted.” Johnson’s interpolations also included the Pyramus and Thisbe scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In 1739 there was another adaptation, The Modern Receipt, or a Cure for Love, but this version was published only, not acted. In 1741 Shakespeare’s play was finally reintroduced to London audiences at Drury Lane.

Playbill announcing revival ofy4s You Like It, Drury Lane, 1741

Not surprising, since Rosalind’s part is the longest female role in the Shakespeare canon, As you Like It has proved a popular vehicle for actresses ever since the 18th century. One source tells us that “from 1776 to 1817 As You Like It was the most performed Shakespearean play at London’s Drury Lane Theatre,” and another reports that “As You Like It was saved to the stage by a succession of great Rosalinds—Mrs. [Hannah] Pritchard, Mrs. [Peg] Woffington, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. [Mary Ann] Yates.” Added to his list might be the names of Mrs. Sarah Siddons and Dorothy Jordan, both of whom were memorable in the role.

Peg Woffington actually made her last appearance as Rosalind. She was stricken during a performance in 1757, collapsing on stage as she spoke the epilogue.

The first Rosalind in America was Mrs. Kenna who introduced the play to Philadelphia in 1786. It was, however, Ellen Tree, (later the wife of Charles Kean) who popularized the play in early 19th-century America.

England, 1770s popularized America

Tree Kean, who

As You Like It in

Colley Cibber was an admired Jaques, while Charles Macklin and Richard Yates acted the clown, Touchstone.

The popularity of As You Like ft continued into the Romantic Age of the 19th century. Helen Faucit, Mary Anderson, Julia Neilson, Julia Marlowe, and Ada Rehan were frequent and popular Rosalinds; John Philip Kemble and William Charles Macready both succeeded as Jaques. We are also told that “in Paris, the French novelist George Sand (1804-1876) staged her adaptation of the play (1856), in which Celia marries Jaques instead of Oliver.”

Ada Rehan as Rosalind, London, 1890

In the 20th century Rosalind has attracted many of the finest stage actresses, including: Edith Evans, Margaret Leighton, Peggy Ashcroft, Irene Worth, Katherine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Kim Hunter, Paula Prentiss, Carole Shelley, Roberta Maxwell, Dorothy Tutin, Kate Nelligan, Eileen Atkins, Janet Suzman, Maggie Smith, and Juliet Stevenson.

Tom King as Touchstone, Ellen

Michael Redgrave as Orlando and Edith Evans as Rosalind, London, Old Vic Theatre, 1936

Katherine Hepburn as Rosalind, Old Vic, London, 1950

Multiple marriages occur at the end of As You Like It, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1977

John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave and Sheppard Strudwick have performed Orlando. Jaques has been acted by Balliol Holloway, Anthony Quayle, Max Adrian, Alan Howard, Nicholas Pennell, George C. Scott, Brian Bedord, and Alan Rickman, while Sidney Greenstreet, Hugh Griffith, Edward Atienza, Colin Blakely, and Patrick Stewart have all taken the role of Touchstone.

In 1967 the National Theatre of Great Britain staged a controversial all male production of As You Like It with Ronald Pickup as Rosalind, Charles Kay as Celia, Jetemy Brett as Orlando, and Derek Jacobi as Touchstone.

Orlando throws the wrestler, Charles, in an environmental production, directed by Peter Stein, Berlin, Germany, 1977

Jeremy Brett as Orlando, Ronald Pickup as Rosalind, and Charles Kay as Celia, National Theatre all-male production, 1967

Raul Julia as Orlando, Kathleen Widdoes as Rosalind, New York Shakespeare Festival,. 1973

A different approach to the marriages in Act V, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1980

Maggie Smith as Rosalind/Ganymede, Stratford, Canada, 1977-78

Costume design by Salvador Dali for a 1948 production of As You Like It

Jack Wetherall as Orlando, Peter Hutt as Silvius, Patricia Idette as Phebe, and Maggie Smith as Rosalind/Ganymede, Stratford, Canada, 1977-78

Brian Bedford as Jaques, Jack Wetherall as Orlando,

Stratford, Canada, 1977-78

Nicholas Pennell as Jaques, Stratford, Canada, 1983. As a member of the repertory company Pennell had previously played Orlando at Stratford in 1972.

Mervyn Blake as Adam, Stratford, Canada, 1983

Lewis Gordon as Touchstone, Elizabeth Leigh-Milne as Audrey, and Nicholas Pennell as Jaques, Stratford, Canada, 1983

Arnie Burton as Orlando and Joanne Camp as Rosalind, Pearl Theatre, New York City, 1991

FAMOUS LINES

. . . fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world. (Charles—I.i.l 13-14)

... I show more mirth than I am mistress of. . .

(Rosalind—I.ii.2-3)

The little foolery that wise men have makes a great show. (Celia—I.ii.86-87)

Well said! that was laid on with a trowel. (Celia—I.ii. 101)

. . . one out of suits with fortune . . . (Rosalind—I.ii.236)

My pride fell with my fortunes.       (Rosalind—I.ii.242)

Hereafter, in a better world than this,

I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.

(Le Beau—I.ii.288-89)

Not one (word) to throw at a dog. (Rosalind—I.iii.3)

O, how full of briers is this working-day world!

(Rosalind—I.iii. 11-12)

Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

(Rosalind—I.iii. 108)

Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

(Duke Senior—Hi. 1-4)

Sweet are the uses of adversity. (Duke Senior—Il.i. 12)

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything . . .

(Duke Senior—n.i.15-17)

... He that doth the ravens feed,

Yea, providently caters for the sparrow

Be comfort to my age!      (Adam—U.iii.47-49)

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty,

For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.

(Adam—II.iii.51-53)

O good old man, how well in thee appears

The constant service of the antique world, When service sweat for duty, not for meed!

(Orlando—II.iii.56-58)

Thou art not for the fashion of these times,

Where none will sweat but for promotion.

(Orlando—II.iii.59-60)

Ay, now am I in Arden, the more fool I. When I was at home

I was in a better place, but travelers must be content.

(To uchstone—Il.iv. 14-16)

If thou rememb’rest not the slightest folly

That ever love did make thee run into,

Thou hast not loved.         (Silvius—II.iv.33-35)

(Song) Under the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me . . .          (Amiens—II.v. 1-2)

(Song) Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather. (Amiens—II.v.6-8)

I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs.

(Jaques—II. v.l 1-12)

(Song) Who doth ambition shun,

And loves to live i' the sun, Seeking the food he eats

And pleased with what he gets . . .

(Song) If it do come to pass

That any man turn ass . . .

Amiens—II.v.35-38)

(Jaques—II.v.48-49)

A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ the forest. . .

(Jaques—Il.vii. 13)

“Thus we may see,” quoth he, “how the world wags.”

(Jaques—II.vii.23)

. . And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,

And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,

And thereby hangs a tale.”  (Jaques—II.vii.26-28)

True is it that we have seen better days.

(Duke Senior—Il.vii.l 19)

If ever you have looked on better days . . .

(Orlando—Il.vii. 121)

Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy.

(Duke Senior—Il.vii. 135)

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts.

(Jaques— Il.vii.l 38-141)

Early 19th-century illustrations of the “Seven Ages of Man” Top row: “the whining schoolboy, with his satchel” and the soldier “seeking the bubble reputation”

Bottom row: the justice “with eyes severe and beard of formal cut” and the sixth age with its “lean and slippered pantaloon”

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

(Jaques—Il.vii.l 65)

(Song) Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude.    (Amiens—Il.vii. 174-176)

In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life.

(Touchstone—IILii. 15-16)

He that wants money, means, and content is without three good friends.                (Corin—III.ii.23-24)

... let us make an honorable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.

(Touchstone—IILii. 159-61)

O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful!

And yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping! (Celia—IILii. 188-190)

Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak. (Rosalind—ni.ii.246-247)

Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might,

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”

(Phebe—III.v.86-7)

Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.          (Rosalind—IV.i.101-102)

For ever and a day.

“Wit, whither wilt?”

(Orlando—IV.i. 138)

(Orlando—IV.i. 159)

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”           (Touchstone—V.i.3-31)

(Song) It was a lover and his lass,

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey-nonny-no . . .

(Pages—V.iii.15-16)

Royal Shakespeare Company, 1980

Susan-Jane Tanner as Audrey, Anthony O’Donnell as Touchstone, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1992

A poor virgin, sir, an ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own.

(Touchstone—V.iv.61-2)

O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book, as you have books for good manners.    (Touchstone—V.iv.89-90)

All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that too, with an If.        (Touchstone—V.iv.95-97)

Much virtue in If.       (Touchstone—V.iv.101-102)

. . . good wine needs no bush . . .

(Rosalind—Epilogue 3-4)

Kate Buffery as Rosalind, Peter de Jersey as Orlando, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1992

Susan Fleetwood as Rosalind, Alan Bowe as Orlando,

Kate Buffery as Rosalind, Samantha Bond as Celia, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1992

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

ABOUT THE PLAY IN OTHER FORMS

The works of Shakespeare have inspired numerous other artistic creations including other plays, ballets, musi­cals, operas, and films. Romeo and Juliet exists as a memo - rable ballet, as do A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of the Shrew, among others. The Boys From Syra­cuse, Kiss Me, Kate, West Side Story and Catch My Soul (Othello) have been successful musical theatre adaptations from Shakespeare. Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, Verdi’s Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff Giannini’s Taming of the Shrew, Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Thomas’ Hamlet, and Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra are just a repre­sentative few of the hundreds of operas inspired by Shakespeare’s plays. From a 1908 silent version of The Taming of the Shrew to Franco Zeffirelli’s wide-screen ver­sions of The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet, many of Shakespeare’s plays have been given film treatment, though often in too literal or stiff a fashion for the big screen.

As You Like It has inspired little in the worlds of opera or ballet. Minor operas were inspired by and named af­ter the character of Rosalind both in the 18th and 20th cen­turies, but no work has achieved any lasting prominence. Overtures and incidental music have occasionally been com­posed for the play. The world of dance has ignored the play. Perhaps this is because the comedy develops a rich panoply of characters without ever producing a great deal of dramatic action. The play also has an unusual number of songs in it, and it may be that such a lyric text offered no challenge or need for translation into operatic or dance terms.

On the other hand, As You Like It was early adapted to film with three silent versions preceding a British sound version (1936), directed by Paul Czinner, featuring Elisabeth Bergner as Rosalind and Laurence Olivier as Orlando. William Walton, more famous for his later scores for Olivier’s Hamlet, Henry V, and Richard III, also com­posed the music for Czinner’s As You Like It. About this early film, one review observed: “Leon Quartermaine’s de­livery of the Seven Ages of Man speech was magnificent. He and Olivier found themselves in a talkie, and made the most of it. . . .”

As You Like It was a part of the BBC television’s inaugural season of the complete “Shakespeare Plays,” tele­cast in Britain in 1978 and in the United States in the spring of 1979. Directed by Basil Coleman, the video production featured Helen Mirren as Rosalind, Brian Stirner as Orlando, Tony Church as Duke Senior, and Richard Pasco as Jaques. As an experiment, the BBC chose to film the play on loca­tion, using Glamis Castle and the surrounding woods of Scotland. This was generally criticized as a mistake, and the BBC in later seasons avoided such a repetition of realistic setting. The production was praised for the high quality of its ensemble acting and the individual work of Mirren and Pasco.

Before Seeing the Play

1.        How does Shakespeare portray the relationship between men and women in this play?

2.        What prompts Rosalind’s love for Orlando? Is it plausible?

3.        An interesting issue in As You Like It is Shakespeare’s juxtaposition of the court and the country. Discuss how he presents and explores this.

4.        If you were Rosalind, how would you have re­sponded to Orlando’s demonstration of love?

5.        What do you think of Phebe? ... Silvius? ... Audrey? ...as characters in the drama? ... as citizens of Arden?

6.        The character of Jaques is a depiction of a melancholy figure. Why do you suppose Shakespeare included him in this comedy?

7.        Disguised as a boy, Rosalind tells us she met her father in the forest but did not reveal herself to him. Why do you suppose Rosalind made this choice?

8.        What do you suppose Shakespeare meant by the title of this play?

9.        Discuss the ways in which As You Like It might be considered a “fairy tale”?

10.      What do you think of Shakespeare’s depiction of women in this play?

After Seeing the Play

1.        Which of the characters do you feel closest to? Why?

2.        Which characters do you find most believable in terms of your own experience?

3.        How are the characters like yourself? How are they different?

4.        What did you find new or revealing in the play after seeing the production that you did not get from a reading of the text?

5.        Did you get a sense of the various locations in which the story takes place? If so, how did the actors, the set, costume, and lighting designers, and the director suggest those places?

6.        If As You Like It were done on TV, how would it be different? What things can be done on stage that can’t be done on TV?

7.        As You Like It is a festive, celebratory play that depicts some of the best possibilities within human behavior. How did this production convey that reality?

A SELECTED READING LIST

About Shakespeare and His Plays

Chute, Marchette. Shakespeare of London. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1949.

An easy-to-read absorbing biography.

Ribner, Irving. William Shakespeare: An Introduction to His Life, Times, and Theatre. Waltham, Massachusetts: Blaisdell Publishing Co., 1969. An overview of Shakespeare. Very readable.

Schoenbaum, Samuel. Shakespeare, the Globe and the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. A richly illustrated look at Shakespeare’s times and his plays taken from the Folger Shakespeare Library traveling exhibit.

About Shakespeare’s Theatre

Beckerman, Bernard. Shakespeare at the Globe, 1599- 1609. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

An informative account of the staging of Shakespeare’s plays in his time.

Hodges, Walter C. The Globe Restored. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1954.

A well illustrated and readable attempt to reconstruct the Globe Theatre.

About As You Like It

Barber, C.L. Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959.

A classic study of “holiday” as a paradigm for Shakespearean comedy.

Kott, Jan. The Gender of Rosalind. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1992.

A contemporary look at the layers of ambiguity in the depiction of Rosalind.

Nevo, Ruth, Comic Transformations in Shakespeare. London & New York: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1980.

An examination of how the play provides a commentary on the nature of comedy.

Reynolds, Peter. As You Like It: A Dramatic Commentary. New York: Penguin Books, 1988.

A brief examination of the play, with several proposed interpretations of it for the stage, including “romantic,” “political,” and “feminist” approaches.

From a production point of view.

Shakespeare, William. As You Like It.

(The Arden Shakespeare, edited by Agnes Latham). London & New York: Methuen, 1967.

Fine introductory material, excellent topic and line notes. Paperback edition.

Van Doren, Mark. Shakespeare. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1953.

Brief but illuminating essays on all the plays.

Webster, Margaret. Shakespeare Without Tears.

New York: McGraw-Hill, 1942.

A lively look at all the plays from a stage director’s point of view.

45 Years of Shakespeare 1950-1994

19

HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY’S

45th ANNUAL SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL

Hofstra University’s Annual Shakespeare Festival began in 1950 with a production of Julius Caesar. Over its 45-year history, the Festival has presented a varied selection of the plays of Shakespeare, lesser-known short plays from the period, musicales, and scenes from Shakespeare’s plays performed by high school groups. In 1994, for the fourth time, As You Like It will be offered, representing one of twenty plays of the Shakespearean canon presented at the Festival. As You Like It was previously performed in 1957, 1968, and 1983.

Since 1951, the second year of the Festival, plays were performed regularly on a 5/6 life-size replica of the Globe stage as reconstructed by John Cranford Adams, later assisted by Irwin Smith. Dr. Adams was President of Hofstra University from 1944 to 1964. The replica was built under the supervision of Donald H. Swinney, designer and technical director in the Department of Drama. The Globe was erected each spring in the Calkins Gymnasium where the Festival was presented in its early years. Since 1958 the Festival has been held in the John Cranford Adams Playhouse. In most years the replica of the Globe has been used as the setting for the Shakespeare Festival, and that will be the case with As You Like It.

HOFSTRA/DRAMA

Hofstra University

Department of Drama and Dance