As You Like It

by William Shakespeare

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Paperback

Published June 7, 1993

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[John Matthew IV · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is what you would expect. The play is presented with lots of notes and there's an informative introduction.

I loved the essay on Rosalind, Your very, very Rosalind.

p. 1: As You Like It is certainly the most light-hearted of Shakespeare's comedies, though it has its complexities. It also has in Rosalind the longest of all his female roles, and in the lines beginning "All the world's a stage" one of his two best-known speeches.

p. 19: In the wider world of the play, Arden is the place where Nature works its change on those who come there--some, like the exiled Duke and lords, Rosalind, Celia, and Orlando, seeking refuge, others like Oliver and Duke Frederick, intent on evil.

p. 20: He used the last "if" in a play with more "if"s than any other play by Shakespeare.

p. 20: Like Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Viola in Twelfth Night and Innogen in Cymberline, Rosalind takes on male dress for protection.

p. 26: [Touchstone] is the first of Shakespeare's wise fools who are allowed to say what they like.

p. 31: Hazlitt considered Jaques "the only purely contemplative character in Shakespeare ... his only passion is thought."

p. 41: Arden is a fabulous forest where extraordinary things happen. There is no map for it.

p. 49: For I must tell you friendly in your ear,/Sell when you can; you are not for all markets. (3.5.60-61)

p. 55: hoyden: a boisterous girl (dictionary.com)

p. 57: Helen Faucit letter to Robert Browning: "To me As You Like It seems to be essentially as much a love-poem as Romeo and Juliet, with this difference, that it deals with happy love."

p. 59: lachrymose: tearful or given to weeping (dictionary.com)

p. 63-65: In his autobiography [Michael] Redgrave says that the best advice he can give any Orlando is to fall in love with his Rosalind.

p. 66-67: History of all-male productions

p. 82: The truth is that, more than any other of the comedies, As You Like It belongs to its main character.

Act 2, Scene 7, 139-166

JAQUES 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,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.


Act 3, Scene 2, Line 185-187:
CELIA O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful
wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that
out of all whooping!

Act 4, Scene 3, Lines 178-179: Celia's final speech

Act 5, Scene 4, Lines 66-79:

TOUCHSTONE Upon a lie seven times removed.—Bear
your body more seeming, Audrey.—As thus, sir: I
did dislike the cut of a certain courtier’s beard. He
sent me word if I said his beard was not cut well, he
was in the mind it was. This is called the Retort
Courteous. If I sent him word again it was not well
cut, he would send me word he cut it to please
himself. This is called the Quip Modest. If again it
was not well cut, he disabled my judgment. This is
called the Reply Churlish. If again it was not well
cut, he would answer I spake not true. This is called
the Reproof Valiant. If again it was not well cut, he
would say I lie. This is called the Countercheck
Quarrelsome, and so to the Lie Circumstantial,
and the Lie Direct.

[Barry Welsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the fantastic audiobook directed by Barry Creyton. Recommended.