As You Like It

Description:

Elizabethan drama’s richest decade culminated in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Likely written in 1598, the play also stands as one of Shakespeare’s last and greatest romantic comedies, free of the darker, more decadent overtones of his other late comedy, Twelfth Night. Rosalind, the ebullient heroine of As You Like It, is largely responsible for the style and spirit of this mature work. Shrewd in intellect and unmatchable in speech, Rosalind nevertheless seeks out an ideal lover in the person of Orlando; to him she directs her memorable wooing, disguised (and thus emboldened) as the boy Ganymede. Both lovers are exiles in the Forest of Arden, a “golden world” where identities and relationships can prosper. The setting reminds us that As You Like It is Shakespeare’s lone example of a pastoral drama. From beginning to the end, then, in the court and in the forest, the characters of As You Like It keep telling stories to each other, enlarging the imaginative world of the play beyond the visible stage, both in space and in time. VIVA MODERN CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS presents the best current criticism on the most widely read and studied poems, novels and dramas of the Western world, from Oedipus Rex and the Iliad to such modern and contemporary works as William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Don Delillo’s White Noise.

Target Audience:

Students of Literature, English Departments & Libraries.