AS YOU LIKE IT
by William Shakespeare
(1599-1600)
Opening suggests a dark
world, not a comedy
 Begins at a corrupt and suspicious
court
 Two warring brothers, one is
lovable (Orlando) and the other
“altogether misprised” (Oliver)
 Their enmnity is mirrored by the
usurpation of Duke Senior by his
brother Duke Frederick
 The “good” brothers are banished
to the forest
Shakespeare’s comedies
often begin this way
 Ultimately, we are guided to the play’s
heroine ROSALIND
 The play’s action concerns itself with
‘coupling’ (four couples are wed at the end of
the play)
 One of the happiest of comedies
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•
•
•
Brothers are reconciled
Legitimacy and prosperity is restored
The evil convert
Each lover is appropriately matched
Significance of setting
 Play’s action is set in the Forest
of Arden in Warwichshire
 Shakespeare’s mother’s name
was Arden
 The play suggests both French
and English characters and
places…seemingly nowhere
and everywhere
 A magical place where
anything can happen
Your If is the only
peacemaker…
 Rosalind invites Orlando to imagine his life IF he had
not met “your very very Rosalind”
 She poses and solves a complex set of riddles at the
climax
 IF
 IF I CAN
 IF I COULD
 IF EVER I MARRY WOMAN
 IF EVER I SATISFIED MAN
 IF WHAT PLEASES YOU CONTENTS YOU
Villains are miraculously changed
 Oliver tells Celia “Twas I. But
‘tis not I.”
 Like Eden, Arden is not wholly
safe
 Arden is cold and people must
hunt for food
 Lions and snakes threaten
sudden death
 It is threatened with invasion
from the usurping Duke
Setting is pastoral
 Except for Corin, nobody
seems to work
 All can find plenty of time to
sing, philosophize and fall in
love
 It is not, however, an
alternative to civilization. It is
“nature” as opposed to
“culture”
 Perhaps Shakespeare is
Act One, The Wresling Match
A 19th century painting
parodying the pastoral
excesses of writers like Philip
Sidney in works such as
ARCADIA (1590)
 It is not simply a play, it is a
play about how people write
about love
Sources for the play
 Thomas Lodge wrote ROSALYNDE,
EUPHUES’ GOLDEN LEGACIE in 1590
and Shakespeare borrows freely from its
characters and plot
 He excises a bloody battle between the
feuding dukes and replaces it with
Frederick’s conversion and retirement
 He invents the characters of Jacques,
Touchstone and Audrey
 John Lyly wrote EUPHUES, THE
ANATOMY OF WIT (1579)
 The previously mentioned ARCADIA (1590)
A musical world
 Play contains more songs than
any other Shakespeare play
 Most famous is “It was a lover
and his lass” (V.3)
 The song was arranged and
published by Thomas Morley
in 1600
Lovers grow up
 Rosalind and Orlando escape the
gloom, confinement and danger of court
by escaping to the forest…and growing
up
 This requires Rosalind and Orlando;
Celia and Oliver to move from the
family they were born into to the family
one starts and presides over “from
one’s father to one’s child’s father” (1.3)
 As with Ophelia (Hamlet), Cordelia
Shakespeare’s Globe
Theatre Production, 2010
(King Lear) and Desdemona (Othello),
Rosalind’s relationship with her father is
changed
Celia and Rosalind
 As both separate from their father’s;
they also outgrow their friendship
 The threat to marriage is not only
Rosalind’s attachment to Celia, but
also Orlando’s attachment to
Ganymede (the homo-erotic theme
described by some)
 Further expressed by Rosalind taking
on the identity of Ganymede (Jove’s
cupbearer and “lover”)
Disguises
 Rosalind as Ganymede
 Celia “darkens” her face to be seen as
less “fair”
 Ganymede seems to relish being a
man…as a woman, she could not buy
property, but as a man she buys a
“cottage, pasture and flock”
 Rosalind’s disguise seems to enhance her
confidence while doing the opposite to
Celia
 Still Rosalind does woo Orlando, not girl to
boy, but man to man
 Perhaps these disguises are simply
pragmatic since boys played the female
roles in Elizabethan theatre
Four couples
Rosalind and Orlando
Marriage offers a different kind of ending, as well as a
different kind of beginning for four couples
Four couples
Celia and Oliver
Four couples
Audrey and Touchstone
Four couples
Phebe and Silvius
Marriage offers a different kind of ending, as well
as a different kind of beginning, for each of the
four couples
All the world’s a stage…
 Jacques speech from Act Two, scene 7 is
rightly one of the most famous in all of
Shakespeare
 Of the SEVEN AGES, only one really relates
to the action of the play…
And then the lover
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow
Jacques (and Adam) help to put the marriages
into perspective
First printed edition
 Folio edition, 1623
 Production was
entered into the
Stationers Register by
the Lord Chamberlain’s
Men as one of four
plays “to be staied”
(withheld from
publication)
AS YOU LIKE IT on film
'As You Like It' at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (2010)
149 min
Directed by Thea Sharrock
Michael Benz
Philip Bird
Sophie Duval
Naomi Frederick
Brendan Hughes
Jack Laskey
Trevor Martin
Tim McMullan
Jamie Parker
Laura Rogers
Dominic Rowan
Silvius
Duke Senior
Audrey
Rosalind
Duke Frederick
Orlando de Boys
Adam
Jacques
Oliver de Boys
Celia
Touchstone
As You Like It (2006)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Bryce Dallas Howard
David Oyelowo
Richard Briers
Patrick Doyle
Romola Garai
Adrian Lester
Alfred Molina
Kevin Kline
Janet McTeer
Brian Blessed
Rosalind
Orlando De Boys
Adam
Amiens
Celia
Oliver De Boys
Touchstone
Jaques
Audrey
Duke Senior &
Duke Frederick
AS YOU LIKE IT (1992)
Directed by Christine Edzard
Hiding out in an industrial
wasteland from the murderous
wrath of a regional ruler, a woman,
disguised as a boy, gives wooing
lessons to the edgy lad who
proclaims he loves her.
As You Like It (1987 - BBC)
Director: Basil Coleman
Helen Mirren
Brian Stirner
Richard Pasco
Angharad Rees
James Bolam
Clive Francis
Richard Easton
Tony Church
Rosalind
Orlando
Jaques
Celia
Touchstone
Oliver
Duke Frederick
Duke Senior
1936 Film
Director: Paul Czinner
Writers: William Shakespeare (play)
J.M. Barrie (treatment)
Robert Cullen (scenario)
Carl Mayer (adaptation)
Cast:
Henry Ainley
Exiled Duke
Elisabeth Bergner
Rosalind
Felix Aylmer
Duke Frederick
Laurence Olivier
Orlando
Leon Quartermaine
Jacques
Other adaptations
AS YOU LIKE IT (Williamstown Theatre Festival) 1999
Gwyneth Paltrow starred in a modern setting
against a background of modern jazz
ALL SHOOK UP (Broadway musical) 2004
The songs of Elvis Presley and source material
from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and As You
Like It.
AS YOU LIKE IT (India, West Bengal, 2012)
Director: Suprio Chakrabarty
QAdaptation: Kanchan Amin