As You Like It (Oxford World's Classics)

AS YOU LIKE IT presents itself as a comedy but more substantially a spiritual meditation of one's conversion to goodness. While the play retains conventionalities that resonate in his other comedies, Shakespeare had obviously nudged the play to a direction that is redolent of a religious overtone. The main plot concerns Rosalind, a woman who disguises as a man but pretends to be the woman she actually is so she can woo the man by teaching him to court her. A streak of melancholy runs through the play from the beginning when Orlando is bitter at his brother Oliver who has deprived him of a genteel education and retains him at home. The melodrama of the brothers presages a possible tragedy as Oliver proposes to burn the lodging where Orlando customarily lives and with Orlando in it.

Diversion away from the city and court somewhat mitigates the tension. Far away in the fairyland-like Forest of Arden (allusive to Eden) resides a banished duke whose crown and lands his brother Frederick has usurped. Duke Senior, in his landmark opening speech in Act 2, which introduces the allegorical Arden, duly expounds the pastoral philosophy. He articulates the monologue so well that the phrases become proverbial and the speech a sermon. Most of the actions then occur in Arden and in which almost all of the characters converge. Arden in a way represents a religious ideal and a converging ground for everyone to renew their identity and spirituality.

As Orlando flees from his villainous brother, Rosalind's venomous uncle Duke Frederick banishes her from the court to be with her father. Rosalind enters Arden disguised as a young man Ganymede and teaches Orlando about wooing. Whereas the woodlands of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM are genuinely magical and populated by fairies, the Forest of Arden is like a fictitious realm that represents an ideal in which social values, love, marriage, and identity are renewed and re-examined.

Shakespeare contrived to make a tale of redemption or some sort of a moral lesson out of AS YOU LIKE IT, preaching the ideal pastoral philosophy through the de-emphasizing of the plot. The story does not seem to matter as much as the underlying moral theme Shakespeare determined to convey. While Rosalind plays a leading part of the play and peremptorily takes charge of the play's situation (which facetiously involves entangled love among multiple parties), she extorts the necessary promises from all concerned and ties the right knots. Her preponderating overshadows Orlando despite the initial stress on his manliness and valor.

AS YOU LIKE IT is predominantly in prose: the opening scene that delineates Orlando's pent-up agony proceeds in verses so does the scene in which the usurping Duke dismisses Orlando and that in which he banishes Rosalind. The scenes involving the banished Duke, who delivers a tirade on pastoral philosophy in Arden, are all written in prose. It is not a coincidence, but rather a meticulous choice that the sober and solemn parts of the play are penned in prose.

Variation of theme that manifests in different plays again surface in AS YOU LIKE IT. Rosalind, whose disguise is already a Shakespearean convention, in teaching Orlando how to woo, speaks about the caprice of human heart, the failure of lovers' to keep in pace with emotions, and the conflict between impulse, feeling, and truth.

AS YOU LIKE IT could be easily one of the most canonical plays in the repertory owing to the fact that readers can lay claim to the text on their own behalf. The endless possibilities to interpret the play also ironically invite misleading account from focusing on only selected features. The famous line "sweet are the uses of adversity" cunningly sums up how in most comedies a near tragic crisis at which disaster or happiness may ensue could be overcome by such overriding force of goodwill.

With AS YOU LIKE IT, I am a little over halfway through in my ongoing traversal of Shakespeare's plays (following approximate chronological order of their creation). Of the plays I have read so far, I enjoyed AS YOU LIKE IT the most. I have not yet reached "Hamlet", "King Lear", and "Macbeth", and I am prepared to find them deeper and more substantial than AS YOU LIKE IT, but I don't expect to "enjoy" them as much. AS YOU LIKE IT is such a thoroughly happy and humane play. There are two villains, but by the end of the play they have undergone a "conversion". Those they mistreated suffer no lasting harm; indeed, by play's end each has achieved his or her heart's desire. There is comedy and scintillating repartee, but there also is wisdom. Four marriages occur at the finale, yet because it is such a mature and worldly-wise play it avoids the unreality of a happily-ever-after fairy tale. Plus, it features Rosalind.

Rosalind is the most well-adjusted, clear-headed, and captivating woman I have encountered in drama. One might discount that statement given the only moderate scope of my literary experience, but then there is this from Harold Bloom: "she [is] the most remarkable and persuasive representation of a woman in all of Western literature."

Two other characters also stand out. One is Touchstone, the motley fool, with his mordant, self-deprecating wit. The other is the melancholic Jaques, who is rather enigmatic but is given some of the best lines. For example, "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." Or, "All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players", which begins a speech that surveys the seven ages of man, from infancy, "mewling and puking in the nurse's arms", to the decrepitudes of old age, "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

I drafted a couple paragraphs summarizing what happens in AS YOU LIKE IT, but I am omitting them because I don't think they would entice anyone to read the play. In truth, the plot is rather thin and inconsequential. Why one would want to read the play -- and why I want to re-read it, making AS YOU LIKE IT only the second of the plays so far that I have marked down for re-reading -- is for the language, the good-natured humanity, and Rosalind.

Out of all the great Shakespeare's plays, "As You Like It" is undoubtedly... the fluffiest. This is cotton candy. Fortunately, cotton candy isn't too bad as long as you don't eat too much of it. And while the ending is excessively tidy, "As You Like It" is a charming little play with the full array of Shakespearean tropes -- transvestitism, love triangles, and mass confusion.

Backstory: The cruel Duke has deposed his far nicer brother, and the ex-Duke has run off into the Forest of Arden. At the same time, a young man named Orlando has been cast out by his cruel brother Oliver.

Then the Duke decides to exile his niece Rosalind, despite the pleas of his daughter Celia. So Rosalind (disguised as a boy), Celia and the jester Touchstone run away into the Forest of Arden the following night, and soon encounter the exiled Duke and his followers. So does Orlando and his faithful servant Adam.

Because of a previous meeting, Rosalind and Orlando are already in love. But not only does he not recognize her, but because she's disguised as a boy she's attracted the amorous intentions of a local shepherdess. And to make matters even more complex, Touchstone is in a love triangle of his own, and Oliver has stumbled into Arden as well. Is everything going to end well?

The biggest problem with "As You Like It" is the fact that the ending is just a little too tidy -- while it's plausible that the romantic tangles would be smoothed out, there's an conveniently-timed twist that stretches believability to the point of snapping. Fortunately, the rest of it is a pleasantly fluffy little story filled with Shakespeare's sparkliest, sunniest storytelling.

Shakespeare's plot floats along in a heady cloud of sunlit forests, poems pinned to trees and languid outlaws who hang around singing all day. His lines are filled with clever, sometimes bawdy jokes ("praised be the gods for thy foulness! sluttishness may come hereafter") and some nicely evocative imagery ("Between the pale complexion of true love/And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain").

The funniest parts involve the love quadrangle between Rosalind, Phebe, Orlando and Silvius, as well as Orlando's wretched poetry and Touchstone's mockery of them ("Winter garments must be lined,/So must slender Rosalind").

And it has a likable cast of characters, most of whom are amiable and likable (although I'm still not sure why Orlando and the ex-Duke don't recognize Rosalind!). Celia and Rosalind are fun and sprightly heroines, Orlando is an endearing underdog (if a rotten poet), and there's also the sharp-tongued Touchstone, dour Jacques, and the rather beyotchy Phebe.

"As You Like It" is a puffy little wisp of a play, compared to Shakespeare's other works -- but it's still a nice little romantic diversion. Think of it as an Elizabethan romantic comedy.

One of William Shakespeare's comedy 'As You like it' has a lesson that a good will must be a praiseworthy thing and villainous intention is something always discouraged by the justice. It is something that we were able to learn from the fables and parents during the childhood. Duke Senior who living in banishment done by Duke Fredrick who is rascal in this comedy, and Duke Senior's daughter Rosalind disguied as a Ganymede searching for her father shows intriguing scene for the readers. True problem is that, Duke Fredrick's daughter Celia escaped with her cousin Rosalind because they are truly the confidant for each other. Therefore, Duke Fredrick displayed sense of resentment toward what his daughter and niece has done, and decide to go to wood to penalize his brother the Duke Senior. However, his attitude experiencing sudden transformation and repentant about his previous behaviors. Duke Fredrick's rapid psychological revolution should be awkward factor in this play. But we as a reader should interpret this as charater's assimilation to the nature. It means that the 'Nature' is place where has an innocent spirit and the castle, where deteriorated by human's negative will. I recommend this masterpiece, becuase there is a lesson implied in this comedy inculcate us that our human's mind has been deteriorated because of dwell in a city and surrounded by various artifact circumstances, it contradict to the 'Nature'
which has a universally respectable tranquility.