As You Like It

William Shakespeare

Simon and Schuster, Aug 23, 2011 - Drama - 320 pages

Readers and audiences have long greeted As You Like It with delight. Its characters are brilliant conversationalists, including the princesses Rosalind and Celia and their Fool, Touchstone. Soon after Rosalind and Orlando meet and fall in love, the princesses and Touchstone go into exile in the Forest of Arden, where they find new conversational partners. Duke Frederick, younger brother to Duke Senior, has overthrown his brother and forced him to live homeless in the forest with his courtiers, including the cynical Jaques. Orlando, whose older brother Oliver plotted his death, has fled there, too.

Recent scholars have also grounded the play in the issues of its time. These include primogeniture, passing property from a father to his oldest son. As You Like It depicts intense conflict between brothers, exposing the human suffering that primogeniture entails. Another perspective concerns crossdressing. Most of Orlando’s courtship of Rosalind takes place while Rosalind is disguised as a man, “Ganymede.” At her urging, Orlando pretends that Ganymede is his beloved Rosalind. But as the epilogue reveals, the sixteenth-century actor playing Rosalind was male, following the practice of the time. In other words, a boy played a girl playing a boy pretending to be a girl.

The authoritative edition of As You Like It from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, is now available as an eBook. Features include:

· The exact text of the printed book for easy cross-reference
· Hundreds of hypertext links for instant navigation
· Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
· Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
· Scene-by-scene plot summaries
· A key to famous lines and phrases
· An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
· Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
· An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

Contents

• Editors Preface: ix
• Shakespeares As You Like It: xiii
• As You Like It: xv
• Shakespeares Life: xxviii
• Shakespeares Theater: xxxix
• The Publication of Shakespeares Plays: xlviii
• An Introduction to This Text: lii
• Text of the Play with Commentary: 1
• ACT 1 Scene 1: 7
• ACT 1 Scene 2: 17
• ACT 1 Scene 3: 35
• ACT 2 Scene 1: 49
• ACT 2 Scene 2: 53
• ACT 2 Scene 3: 55
• ACT 2 Scene 4: 61
• ACT 2 Scene 5: 67
• ACT 2 Scene 6: 71
• ACT 2 Scene 7: 73
• ACT 3 Scene 1: 91
• ACT 3 Scene 2: 93
• ACT 3 Scene 3: 117
• ACT 3 Scene 4: 125
• ACT 3 Scene 5: 129
• ACT 4 Scene 1: 141
• ACT 4 Scene 2: 155
• ACT 5 Scene 1: 173
• ACT 5 Scene 2: 177
• ACT 5 Scene 3: 185
• ACT 5 Scene 4: 189
• Longer Notes: 207
• Textual Notes: 223
• A Modern Perspective: 231
• Further Reading: 243
• Key to Famous Lines and Phrases: 261

About the author

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.

Paul Werstine is Professor of English at the Graduate School and at King’s University College at Western University. He is a general editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare and author of Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare and of many papers and articles on the printing and editing of Shakespeare’s plays.

Barbara A. Mowat is Director of Research emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Consulting Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, and author of The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances and of essays on Shakespeare’s plays and their editing.

Bibliographic information

• Title: As You Like It; Folger Shakespeare Library
• Author: William Shakespeare
• Editors: Paul Werstine, Dr. Barbara A. Mowat
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2011
• ISBN: 1439116989, 9781439116982
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: Drama / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Drama / General; Drama / Shakespeare; Performing Arts / Theater / General