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    As You Like It
    As You Like It
    As You Like It
    Ebook181 pages2 hours

    As You Like It

    By William Shakespeare

    4/5

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    Unjustly deposed by his younger brother, the rightful duke retreats to the Forest of Arden and forms a utopia with his loyal followers while his daughter remains at court as a companion to her cousin. When forbidden romance enters their lives, the girls assume disguises and flee to the forest, where they encounter a magical world of friendly outlaws and wise fools. Both a lighthearted comedy and a deeper exploration of social and literary issues, this play features a memorable cast of characters and some of Shakespeare's finest poetry.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMar 27, 2012
    ISBN9780486112800
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare is the world's greatest ever playwright. Born in 1564, he split his time between Stratford-upon-Avon and London, where he worked as a playwright, poet and actor. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two, leaving three children—Susanna, Hamnet and Judith. The rest is silence.

    Read more from William Shakespeare

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    Reviews for As You Like It

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Given as part of the course-work for BADA Summer 1999 in Oxford. The (very useful and well-researched) introduction is almost as long as the play itself! Loads of footnotes to help comprehension for the lay-reader.
    • 5/5
      So great! Absolutely love it!
    • 3/5
      I haven't either read or seen this play.
    • 5/5
      I've been made aware that modernists like to write fiction that is basically plot-free, where the point is to entertain with beautiful, glorious language, not to excite or inform. One modernist, John Barth, has argued that what he is doing is more reactionary than modern, that he was merely returning to what masters like Cervantes and Rabelais did. Or, in this case, Shakespeare. He had already written one nearly meta-fictional play, Love's Labour Lost, where witty people did nothing but talk wittily about life. He revised and improved the idea for this play, where a group of people hide in the Forest of Arden and do little but discourse of love and life. I loved it all, but especially the typically plucky heroine and the two polar opposite clowns.
    • 3/5
      More of Shakespear's drag king fetish; to hetero audiences, light entertainment only notable as the source of the "all the world's a stage" quote.
    • 4/5
      Fabulous language. "All the world's a stage" is just one of many quotable quotes. Very much a fairy tale, but the wonderful Rosalind and the beautiful words of Shakespeare has made it one of my favorite of his comedies thus far.
    • 4/5
      The New Folger Library editions of Shakespeare's works are my favorites. With ample introductory material, long notes at the end, and short language notes on the lefthand pages to match the text on the right, they are easy to read whether you need to check the notes or not.
    • 4/5
      The New Folger Library editions of Shakespeare's works are my favorites. With ample introductory material, long notes at the end, and short language notes on the lefthand pages to match the text on the right, they are easy to read whether you need to check the notes or not.
    • 4/5
      I struggled with the language
    • 4/5
      I recently ordered this L.A. Theater Works audio production for work and couldn't resist the temptation of having James Marsters reading Shakespeare in my ears. The production is excellent and while the physical comedy that comes with cross-dressing is obviously missing, the actors do an excellent job of conveying the comedy using just their voices. An excellent way to revisit the Bard.
    • 4/5
      This is a great collection, worthy of a place in the library of any Shakespeare-phile. Rather than just being a glorified book of excerpts, or one of those tacky dimestore books that collect some basic "love" quotes from the Sonnets, 'Shakespeare As You'd Like It' is more like a compendium of phrases and speeches from the Bard's work. The breadth of the collection should be evidenced by the fact that Kennedy has picked 3000 quotes from 15 plays - that's 200 per play on average. Quotes range from entire speeches to phrases and clever retorts, and includes many that are at first elusive or opaque, which means that even the most pretentious intellectual will find some new material to add to their repertoire. Whether you're using this to sound intelligent in conversation or just to have a laugh, this is the way to go.

      I'm not sure whether the promised Volume II (to cover the remaining majority of Shakespeare's canon) was ever released, but I hope so. There are a couple of issues here - I sometimes take argument with Kennedy's footnotes, which I don't think are always accurate in their translation - but for the most part this is a collection far more worthy than you might think at face value.
    • 3/5
      I liked this play, which I had thought was something else when I first started it! I found the comedy to be of the milder type of making me smile rather than laugh but still fun. There are several famous speeches, most memorable being the one about the seven stages of life.
    • 2/5
      I fear I'm really not a Shakespeare fan: I can never 'get into' his plays. I certainly didn't 'get into' As You Like It. Studying it, so perhaps I'll come to appreciate it more.
    • 4/5
      I liked "As You Like It" quite a bit. It has similarities to other works by Shakespeare -- characters in disguise and falling in love at the first glance. But it's also very charming and a nice little story, making for a fun read. Lots of familiar quotes in this one too!
    • 5/5
      “As you Like It” is a beloved Shakespeare play. it is easier to follow and understand as some his other works. There is the reintroduction of Rosalind and Orlando, who are deeply in love, but Orland does not recognize her because she is a boy. The story tells of a series of marriages and infidelities and mixed with love. In the story Rosalinda is so realistic when dressed as a boy because of he exile, that a young shepherdess is a bit taken with him/her). As usual, this volume is filled with quotes we will recognize and more than a bit of tongue and cheek humor. It is a light play for Shakespeare, and very enjoyable. This is a good piece for young people to read if they are not familiar with Shakespeare. There are also fairly good video productions of the play.I have the Pelican library of Shakespeare books and find them extremely easy to follow. With the introductions and foot notes well developed, it makes the reading more enjoyable and understandable for me personally.
    • 4/5
      A strange play, but a very lovable one.Why strange, you ask? Let me catalog its oddities. Both of the villains undergo sudden changes of heart ... offstage. Both leading couples fall in love ... on their first meeting. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s other comedy set primarily in a forest, such happenings are explained as the results of magic, the maneuverings of mischievous fairies. The only supernatural figure in As You Like It is Hymen, who, in one of the play’s oddest turns, appears at the end to explain everything and bless the four marriages. It’s unclear exactly why he is needed; Rosalind seems to have orchestrated everything perfectly up until then.And why lovable? In a word: its heroine. Rosalind is the true gem of the piece, and is probably the closest Shakespeare came to writing a female role comparable Hamlet, although of course this is in a completely different genre.* She has more lines than any other woman in the canon, but it’s not sheer quantity that makes her material so winning. She’s charming in a quicksilver fashion, and it’s clear from her scenes with Orlando that she enjoys make-believe playacting. But lest you think she is a mere trickster, I must stress has wonderful moments of vulnerability, too.As far as Shakespeare’s young swains go, Orlando comes off pretty well. He doesn’t threaten to rape the woman who loves him (a la Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), he isn’t an opportunistic adventurer (as Bassanio is in The Merchant of Venice), and he doesn’t listen to slurs against his lady (unlike Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing). He writes awful poetry, it’s true, but in prose he is almost as witty as his beloved Rosalind, and I picture him as having an easy smile and laugh. Of the other characters, Jacques is the standout—a melancholic personality who cannot find a place in the play’s the happy ending.I’ve watched two video versions of this play, each very different from the other. The 1978 BBC adaptation looks as if an enterprising child filmed it in his backyard using a camcorder, somehow enlisting the aid of some of Britain’s finest actors. Richard Pasco steals the show as an unkempt and bleary-eyed Jacques—I really didn’t understand the character until I watched his performance—while Helen Mirren makes a statuesque Rosalind and roguish Ganymede. I didn’t care for the more recent Kenneth Branagh film when I first saw it on account of its Japanese setting, but now that I’ve studied the play in an academic environment and noticed just how strongly the theme of usurpation figures in the plot, I understand what he was going for. And I like how he tries to smooth out the creases of this admittedly problematic play; for instance, he actually stages the lion attack, making Oliver’s reformation a bit more believable.Read As You Like It and go on a holiday in a verdant wonderland. Ignore some of the oddities and focus on your guide, one of Shakespeare’s greatest heroines.* Looking at Wikipedia’s chronology, I see that As You Like It and Hamlet may have been written back-to-back, so perhaps the similarity is not coincidental. Shakespeare must have had fabulous at his disposal during this period, considering the virtuosic parts he wrote for them!
    • 5/5
      As You Like It follows Rosalind, the daughter of a Duke, as she escapes persecution in her Uncle’s court with her cousin Celia. They take refuge in the forest, waiting for a time when Rosalind’s father gains power. Before leaving however, she has just enough time to fall in love with Orlando, who fortunately ends up in the same forest. I loved this one; it reminded me so much of The Tempest. There are two brothers who, just like in The Tempest, are both Dukes. Their daughters are central to the plot, falling in love for the first time, just as Miranda does in The Tempest. The play includes so many of Shakespeare’s finest elements. There are women pretending to be men, women falling in love with those “men” and men confiding their love to those “men” without knowing who they really are. Confused? Don’t be, it’s all good fun. In one section a young man goes on and on about how he’s in love. He tells the older man who is his companion that there’s no way he could possibly understand, because he’s so old. I love how Shakespeare often pokes fun at the naïveté of the young. They believe no one has ever gone through what I’m going through right now. The play also includes the famous “All the world’s a stage” passage. I love reading one of his plays for the first time and stumbling upon one of those wonderful lines. It’s always a treat. I read this just after finishing Othello and it complemented the tragedy so well. It provided the comedic balance, cross dressing, falling in love, and mistaken identities that I craved after reading such a downer. “Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.”
    • 3/5
      I think I read this at University...but the fact I can't remember it speaks volumes. I'm currently teaching this and found it quick and easy to read. But Shakespeare was never meant to be read was he? I'd like to see this of course. It would be hilarious. Hopefully soon somewhere in Sydney there will be a production and I look forward to it.I was particurly interested in The Forest of Arden representing how primal and animal selves, the natural world where still a heirachy exists. Shakespeare obviously writing in a Christian country steeped in Pagan lore and practice. A man so far ahead of his time with gender awareness and commentary on social status and abuse of power. Got to love the big William.
    • 4/5
      Orlando's older brother, Oliver, has been trying to kill him, and his newest idea is to have a wrestler take him out. But then Orlando not only wins but catches the eye of the daughter of the banished Duke, with consequences Oliver could never have foreseen.Though I have all of Shakespeare's plays on my "life list" of books I would like to read, I only moved this one in particular up the list because I saw it performed when I was in London a couple of weeks ago. It's a very interesting experience reading a play that I have once seen performed, and it really brings home the fact that plays are meant to be seen rather than read. Overall, while I enjoyed reading the original and imagining the possibilities of alternative interpretations of lines, they're certainly lacking in the personality that the actor/actress brings to the role. Some of the lines that seem confusing reading just make more sense with actions to go with them. It was also interesting to note that while the production really showed me how bawdy some of the lines were, the notes in the play that I read were generally unhelpful in this area (which, depending on your point of view, could be a good thing). I probably wouldn't read the play again, but I would watch another performance
    • 3/5
      Nice little comedy with lots of mistaken/disguised identities and love interests, which we later saw played in King’s Park. Not 'great' literature, but a good romp. Contains the "all the world's a stage" line. Read January 2008.
    • 4/5
      I'm not going to go into the complicated plot on this one, but it's the one with Rosalind and Orlando, where Rosalind, for her own mysterious reasons, pretends to be a boy and flirts with Orlando, who is extremely dense, and never figures out that she is a girl.Forget about whether this is believable or not. (It's not.) In fact, the whole plot is pretty darn farfetched. It is, however, funny in some places and thoughtful in other places. Like all Shakespeare, it's much better on stage than on paper, but it was still a fun read.What I really enjoyed about the edition I read is that it had photos from the Royal Shakespeare Academy and others of the play, including a very young Alan Rickman as Jaques and a ludicrously costumed Kenneth Branagh as Touchstone. Very funny!
    • 3/5
      This has some really cute lines, especially from Touchstone, but it is not one of Shakespear's best works in my opinion. Although it probably would be much better to see on stage rather than to read.
    • 5/5
      This is a comedy with many different characters such asOrlando, Rosalind, Toushstone, Jaques, Phoebe, and Silvius. This play is composed of many clever personalities, including a boy named Oliver who will not share his father’s recently inherited wealth with his brother Orlando. Other characters include Duke Senior, usurped of his throne, Rosalind, Touchstone, and Jaques.
    • 5/5
      Fun. Rosalind plays the romantics well and Shakespeare made a happy ending even beyond what was necessary. Jaques, Act II: "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."
    • 5/5
      My favorite Shakespeare play of all--for the humor and for Shakespeare's heroine, Rosalind

    Book preview

    As You Like It - William Shakespeare

    At Dover Publications we’re committed to producing books in an earth-friendly manner and to helping our customers make greener choices.

    Manufacturing books in the United States ensures compliance with strict environmental laws and eliminates the need for international freight shipping, a major contributor to global air pollution. And printing on recycled paper helps minimize our consumption of trees, water and fossil fuels. The text of this book was printed on paper made with 10% post-consumer waste and the cover was printed on paper made with 10% post-consumer waste. At Dover, we use Environmental Defense’s Paper Calculator to measure the benefits of these choices, including: the number of trees saved, gallons of water conserved, as well as air emissions and solid waste eliminated.

    Please visit the product page for As You Like It at www.doverpublications.com to see a detailed account of the environmental savings we’ve achieved over the life of this book.

    DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

    GENERAL EDITOR: PAUL NEGRI

    EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: SUSAN L. RATTINER

    Copyright

    Copyright © 1998 by Dover Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

    Theatrical Rights

    This Dover Thrift Edition may be used in its entirety, in adaptation or in any other way for theatrical productions, professional and amateur, in the United States, without fee, permission, or acknowledgment. (This may not apply outside of the United States, as copyright conditions may vary.)

    Bibliographical Note

    This Dover edition, first published in 1998, contains the unabridged text of As You Like It as published in Volume V of The Caxton Edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Caxton Publishing Company, London, n.d. The Note was prepared specially for this edition, and explanatory footnotes from the Caxton edition have been revised.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

    As you like it / William Shakespeare. p. cm.—(Dover thrift editions)

    9780486112800

    I. Title. II. Series.

    PR2803.A1 1998

    822.3’3—dc21

    98-24631

    CIP

    Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

    40432307

    www.doverpublications.com

    Note

    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564—1616) was born in Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, England. He later moved to London to write for the theater. Shakespeare, joining an acting company known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men around 1594, received a share of the profits of his company’s new playhouse. Averaging two plays per year, Shakespeare was also an actor, portraying such characters as the Ghost in Hamlet and Adam in As You Like It. Only eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays were published during his lifetime. These plays, sold directly to theater companies, were often printed in quartos, or single-play editions without the author’s approval.

    As You Like It, one of Shakespeare’s great comedies, was first published in 1623 in the collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays known as the First Folio. Written sometime between 1599 and 1600, the play is based on Rosalynde (1590), a pastoral romance by Thomas Lodge. Shakespeare changed Lodge’s euphuistic story into a satire involving disguises, mistaken identity, and love. With the addition of several new characters, such as Jaques, William, Touchstone, and Audrey, Shakespeare imbues the story with realism and humor. Similar in style to his earlier play, Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598), As You Like It focuses on the dramatic elements of characterization and dialogue. The play’s woodland setting is established almost at once, allowing the audience to appreciate the charms of nature and the outdoors.

    Written specifically for performance, the plays of William Shakespeare drew popular audiences both in his own day and to the present day. As a playwright, Shakespeare was able to accurately gauge the dramatic import of a scene and fill it with memorable prose and verse. His literary mastery remains unequaled; his plays are performed continually around the world.

    Table of Contents

    Title Page

    Copyright Page

    Note

    Dramatis Personæ1

    ACT I.

    ACT II.

    ACT III.

    ACT IV.

    ACT V.

    EPILOGUE

    DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

    Dramatis Personæ¹

    DUKE, living in banishment.

    FREDERICK, his brother, and usurper of his dominions.

    LE BEAU, a courtier attending upon Frederick.

    CHARLES, wrestler to Frederick.

    Touchstone, a clown.

    SIR OLIVER MARTEXT, a vicar.

    William, a country fellow, in love with Audrey.

    A person representing Hymen.

    ROSALIND, daughter to the banished Duke.

    CELIA, daughter to Frederick.

    PHEBE, a shepherdess.

    AUDREY, a country wench.

    Lords, pages, and attendants, &c.

    SCENE — Oliver’s house; Duke Frederick’s court; and the Forest of Arden

    ¹This play, which was first printed in the First Folio in 1623, is there divided into acts and scenes. There is no list of Dramatis PersonŒ. This was supplied for the first time in Rowe’s edition of 1709.

    ACT I.

    SCENE I. Orchard of Oliver’s House.

    Enter ORLANDO and ADAM

    ORLANDO. As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion: bequeathed me¹ by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques² he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly hired: but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth; for the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me his countenance³ seems to take from me: he lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and, as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my education.⁴ 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, though yet I know no wise remedy how to avoid it.

    ADAM. Yonder comes my master, your brother.

    ORL. Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up.

    Enter OLIVER

    OLI. Now, sir! what make you here?

    ORL. Nothing: I am not taught to make any thing.

    OLI. What mar you then, sir?

    ORL. Marry, sir, I am helping you to mar that which God made, a poor unworthy brother of yours, with idleness. ⁵

    OLI. Marry, sir, be better employed, and be naught awhile.⁵

    ORL. Shall I keep your hogs and eat husks with them? What prodigal portion have I spent, that I should come to such penury?

    OLI. Know you where you are, sir?

    ORL. O, sir, very well; here in your orchard.

    OLI. Know you before whom, sir?

    ORL. Ay, better than him I am before knows me. I know you are my eldest brother; and, in the gentle condition of blood, you should so know me. The courtesy of nations allows you my better, in that you are the firstborn; but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us: I have as much of my father in me as you; albeit, I confess, your coming before me is nearer to his reverence ⁶

    OLI. What, boy!

    ORL. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this.⁷

    OLI. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain?

    ORL. I am no villain; I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys; he was my father, and he is thrice a villain that says such a father begot villains. Wert thou not my brother, I would not take this hand from thy throat till this other had pulled out thy tongue for saying so: thou hast railed on thyself.

    ADAM. Sweet masters, be patient: for your father’s remembrance, be at accord.

    OLI. Let me go, I say.

    ORL. I will not, till I please: you shall hear me. My father charged you in his will to give me good education: you have trained me like a peasant, obscuring and hiding from me all gentleman-like qualities. The spirit of my father grows strong in me, and I will no longer endure it: therefore allow me such exercises as may become a gentleman, or give me the poor allottery my father left me by testament; with that I will go buy my fortunes.

    OLI. And what wilt thou do? beg, when that is spent? Well, sir, get you in: I will not long be troubled with you; you shall have some part of your will: I pray you, leave me.

    ORL. I will no further offend you than becomes me for my good.

    OLI. Get you with him, you old dog.

    ADAM. Is old dog my reward?? Most true, I have lost my teeth in your service. God be with my old master! he would not have spoke such a word.

    [Exeunt ORLANDO and ADAM.

    OLI. Is it even so? begin you to grow upon me? I will physic your rankness, and yet give no thousand crowns neither. Holla, Dennis!

    Enter DENNIS

    DEN. Calls your worship?

    OLI. Was not Charles, the Duke’s wrestler, here to speak with me?

    DEN. So please you, he is here at the door and importunes access to you.

    OLI. Call him in. [Exit DENNIS.] ’T will be a good way; and to-morrow the wrestling is.

    Enter CHARLES

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