======================================================================
= As_You_Like_It =
======================================================================
Introduction
======================================================================
'As You Like It' is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed
to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in
1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance
at Wilton House in 1603 (the house having been a focus for literary
activity under Mary Sidney for much of the later 16th century) has
been suggested as a possibility.
'As You Like It' follows its heroine Rosalind as she flees persecution
in her uncle's court, accompanied by her cousin Celia to find safety
and, eventually, love, in the Forest of Arden. In the forest, they
encounter a variety of memorable characters, notably the melancholy
traveller Jaques, who speaks one of Shakespeare's most famous speeches
("All the world's a stage") and provides a sharp contrast to the other
characters in the play, always observing and disputing the hardships
of life in the country.
Historically, critical response has varied, with some critics finding
the play a work of great merit and some finding it to be of lesser
quality than other Shakespearean works.
The play has been adapted for radio, film, and musical theatre.
Characters
======================================================================
Main characters:
'Court of Duke Frederick:'
* Duke Frederick, Duke Senior's younger brother and his usurper, also
Celia's father
* Rosalind, Duke Senior's daughter
* Celia, Duke Frederick's daughter and Rosalind's cousin
* Touchstone, a court fool or jester
* Le Beau, a courtier
* Charles, a wrestler
* Lords and ladies in Duke Frederick's court
'Household of Old Sir Rowland de Boys ('of the woods'):'
* Oliver de Boys, the eldest son and heir
* Jacques de Boys, the second son, announces Frederick's change of
heart
* Orlando de Boys, the youngest son
* Adam, a faithful old servant who follows Orlando into exile
* Dennis, the servant who announces Charles's arrival in Oliver's
orchard
'Exiled court of Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden:'
* Duke Senior, Duke Frederick's older brother and Rosalind's father
* Amiens, an attending lord and musician
* Jaques
* Lords in Duke Senior's forest court
'Country folk in the Forest of Arden:'
* Phebe, a proud shepherdess
* Silvius, a shepherd
* Audrey, a country girl
* Corin, an elderly shepherd
* William, a country man
* Sir Oliver Martext, a curate
Other characters:
* Hymen, officiates over the weddings in the end; god of marriage, as
appearing in a masque
* Pages and musicians
Locations
======================================================================
The play unfolds in a duchy which is presented as being in France,
initially within the refined setting of court. The majority of the
action transpires in the "Forest of Arden," a location that transcends
singular identity and geography.
However, while that name evokes the Ardennes, a forested region
spanning parts of southeast Belgium, western Luxembourg, and
northeastern France, it also conjures the English Forest of Arden.
This 'great forest once extended across a wide band of Middle England,
as far as the River Trent in the north and the River Severn in the
south': it thus included much of Warwickshire, and parts of
Shropshire, Staffordshire, the West Midlands, and Worcestershire.
The term 'forest' did not necessarily denote continuous woodland ...
but a large predominantly wooded area with many clearings and areas of
cultivation'.
The English Arden, defined by the Roman roads of Icknield Street
(west), the Salt Road (south), Fosse Way (east), and Watling Street
(north), includes the Arden region of Warwickshire, near Shakespeare's
birthplace, and the ancestral home of his mother's family, whose
surname was Arden.
The ancient extent of Arden within the Roman roads as follows: in the
West by the Icknield Street, in the South by the Salt Road (the modern
Alcester to Stratford Road), in the East by the Fosse Way, and in the
North by the Watling Street. It includes Arden, Warwickshire, near
Shakespeare's home town, which was the ancestral origin of his
mother's family--whose surname was Arden.
Synopsis
======================================================================
Frederick has usurped the duchy and exiled his older brother, Duke
Senior. Duke Senior's daughter, Rosalind, has been permitted to remain
at court because she is the closest friend of Frederick's only child,
Celia. Orlando, a young gentleman of the kingdom who at first sight
has fallen in love with Rosalind, is forced to flee his home after
being persecuted by his older brother, Oliver. Frederick becomes angry
and banishes Rosalind from court. Celia and Rosalind decide to flee
together accompanied by the court fool, Touchstone, with Rosalind
disguised as a young man and Celia disguised as a poor girl.
Rosalind, now disguised as Ganymede ("Jove's own page"), and Celia,
now disguised as Aliena (Latin for "stranger"), arrive in the Arcadian
Forest of Arden, where the exiled Duke now lives with some supporters,
including "the melancholy Jaques", a malcontent figure, who is
introduced weeping over the slaughter of a deer. "Ganymede" and
"Aliena" do not immediately encounter the Duke and his companions.
Instead, they meet Corin, an impoverished tenant, and offer to buy his
master's crude cottage.
Orlando and his servant Adam, meanwhile, find the Duke and his men and
are soon living with them and posting simplistic love poems for
Rosalind on the trees. It has been said that the role of Adam was
played by Shakespeare, though this story is also said to be without
foundation. Rosalind, also in love with Orlando, meets him as Ganymede
and pretends to counsel him to cure him of being in love. Ganymede
says that "he" will take Rosalind's place and that "he" and Orlando
can act out their relationship.
The shepherdess, Phebe, with whom Silvius is in love, has fallen in
love with Ganymede (Rosalind in disguise), though "Ganymede"
continually shows that "he" is not interested in Phebe. Touchstone,
meanwhile, has fallen in love with the dull-witted shepherdess Audrey,
and tries to woo her, but eventually is forced to be married first.
William, another shepherd, attempts to marry Audrey as well, but is
stopped by Touchstone, who threatens to kill him "a hundred and fifty
ways".
Finally, Silvius, Phebe, Ganymede, and Orlando are brought together in
an argument with each other over who will get whom. Ganymede says he
will solve the problem, having Orlando promise to marry Rosalind, and
Phebe promise to marry Silvius if she cannot marry Ganymede.
Orlando sees Oliver in the forest and rescues him from a lioness,
causing Oliver to repent for mistreating Orlando. Oliver meets Aliena
(Celia's false identity) and falls in love with her, and they agree to
marry. Orlando and Rosalind, Oliver and Celia, Silvius and Phebe, and
Touchstone and Audrey are all married in the final scene, after which
they discover that Frederick has also repented his faults, deciding to
restore his legitimate brother to the dukedom and adopt a religious
life. Jaques, ever melancholic, declines their invitation to return to
the court, preferring to stay in the forest and to adopt a religious
life as well. Finally Rosalind speaks an epilogue, commending the play
to both men and women in the audience.
Date and text
======================================================================
The direct and immediate source of 'As You Like It' is Thomas Lodge's
'Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie', written 1586-87 and first
published in 1590. Lodge's story is based upon "The Tale of Gamelyn".
'As You Like It' was first printed in the collected edition of
Shakespeare's plays, known as the First Folio, during 1623. No copy of
it in Quarto exists, for the play is mentioned by the printers of the
First Folio among those which "are not formerly entered to other men".
By means of evidences, external and internal, the date of composition
of the play has been approximately fixed at a period between the end
of 1598 and the middle of 1599.
A local tradition holds that the play may have been written in the
Kenilworth area, at Rowington. Billsley Manor, now a hotel, claims the
play was written in a room there, although the authority for this is
modern and originates in a claim in the 1976 book 'Folklore of
Warwickshire' by Roy Palmer.
External evidence
===================
'As You Like It' was entered into the Register of the Stationers'
Company on 4 August 1600 as a work which was "to be stayed", i.e., not
published till the Stationers' Company were satisfied that the
publisher in whose name the work was entered was the undisputed owner
of the copyright. Thomas Morley's 'First Book of Ayres', published in
London in 1600 contains a musical setting for the song "It was a lover
and his lass" from 'As You Like It'. This evidence implies that the
play was in existence in some shape or other before 1600.
It seems likely this play was written after 1598, since Francis Meres
did not mention it in his 'Palladis Tamia'. Although twelve plays are
listed in 'Palladis Tamia', it was an incomplete inventory of
Shakespeare's plays to that date (1598). The new Globe Theatre opened
some time in the summer of 1599, and tradition has it that the new
playhouse's motto was 'Totus mundus agit histrionem'--"all the Globe's
a stage"--an echo of Jaques' famous line "All the world's a stage"
(II.7). This evidence posits September 1598 to September 1599 as the
time frame within which the play was likely written.
Internal evidence
===================
In act III, vi, Phebe refers to the famous line "Whoever loved that
loved not at first sight" taken from Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander',
which was published in 1598. This line, however, dates from 1593 when
Marlowe was killed, and the poem was likely circulated in unfinished
form before being completed by George Chapman. It is suggested in
Michael Wood's 'In Search of Shakespeare' that the words of
Touchstone, "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's
good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a
man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room", allude to
Marlowe's assassination. According to the inquest into his death,
Marlowe had been killed in a brawl following an argument over the
"reckoning" of a bill in a room in a house in Deptford, owned by the
widow Eleanor Bull in 1593. The 1598 posthumous publication of 'Hero
and Leander' would have revived interest in his work and the
circumstances of his death. These words in act IV, i, in Rosalind's
speech, "I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain", may
refer to an alabaster image of Diana which was set up in Cheapside in
1598. However, it should be remembered Diana is mentioned by
Shakespeare in at least ten other plays, and is often depicted in myth
and art as at her bath. Diana was a literary epithet for Queen
Elizabeth I during her reign, along with Cynthia, Phoebe, Astraea, and
the Virgin Mary. Certain anachronisms exist as well, such as the minor
character Sir Oliver Martext's possible reference to the Marprelate
Controversy which transpired between 1588 and 1589. On the basis of
these references, it seems that 'As You Like It' may have been
composed in 1599-1600, but it remains impossible to say with any
certainty.
Analysis and criticism
======================================================================
Though the play is consistently one of Shakespeare's most frequently
performed comedies, scholars have long disputed over its merits.
George Bernard Shaw complained that 'As You Like It' is lacking in the
high artistry of which Shakespeare was capable. Shaw liked to think
that Shakespeare wrote the play as a mere crowdpleaser, and signalled
his own middling opinion of the work by calling it 'As You Like
It'--as if the playwright did not agree. Tolstoy objected to the
immorality of the characters and Touchstone's constant clowning. Other
critics have found great literary value in the work. Harold Bloom has
written that Rosalind is among Shakespeare's greatest and most fully
realised female characters.
The elaborate gender reversals in the story are of particular interest
to modern critics interested in gender studies. Through four acts of
the play, Rosalind, who in Shakespeare's day would have been played by
a boy, finds it necessary to disguise herself as a boy, whereupon the
rustic Phebe, also played by a boy, becomes infatuated with this
"Ganymede", a name with homoerotic overtones. In fact, the epilogue,
spoken by Rosalind to the audience, states rather explicitly that she
(or at least the actor playing her) is not a woman. In several scenes,
"Ganymede" impersonates Rosalind, so a boy actor would have been
playing a girl disguised as a boy impersonating a girl.
Setting
=========
Arden is the name of a large forest which conceptually incorporated
Shakespeare's home town of Stratford-upon-Avon and a large area
besides currently roughly corresponding to the modern West Midlands.
Shakespeare likely also had in mind the French Arden Wood, featured in
'Orlando Innamorato', especially since the two Orlando epics, 'Orlando
Innamorato' and 'Orlando Furioso', have other connections with the
play.
In the Orlando mythos, Arden Wood is the location of Merlin's
Fountain, a magic fountain causing anyone who drinks from it to fall
out of love. Many editions keep Shakespeare's "Arden" spelling, partly
because the pastoral mode depicts a fantastical world in which
geographical details are irrelevant, and also because Shakespeare
wrote in a time of non-standardised spelling.
The Oxford Shakespeare edition proceeds on the basis that there is
confusion between the two Ardens, and assumes that "Arden" is an
anglicisation of the forested Ardennes region of France, where Lodge
set his tale, and alters the spelling to reflect this.
The Arden edition of Shakespeare makes the suggestion that the name
"Arden" comes from a combination of the classical region of Arcadia
and the biblical garden of Eden, as there is a strong interplay of
classical and Christian belief systems and philosophies within the
play. Arden was also the maiden name of Shakespeare's mother and her
family home is located within the Forest of Arden.
Court life and country life
=============================
The play begins in a courtly setting, where fighting, usurpation,
betrayal and general disharmony are exhibited.
Most of the play is then a celebration of life in the country, where
after intensifying disorder, harmony is recovered.
The inhabitants of Duke Frederick's court suffer the perils of
arbitrary injustice and even threats of death; the courtiers who
followed the old duke into forced exile in the "desert city" of the
forest are, by contrast, experiencing liberty but at the expense of
some easily borne discomfort. (Act II, i). A passage between
Touchstone, the court jester, and shepherd Corin establishes the
contentment to be found in country life, compared with the perfumed,
mannered life at court. (Act III, I). At the end of the play the
usurping duke and the exiled courtier Jaques both elect to remain
within the forest.
Usurpation and injustice are significant themes of this play. The new
Duke Frederick usurps his older brother Duke Senior, while Oliver
parallels this behavior by treating his younger brother Orlando so
ungenerously as to compel him to seek his fortune elsewhere. Both Duke
Senior and Orlando take refuge in the forest, where justice is
restored "through nature".
Recovery of harmony
=====================
The ultimate recovery of harmony is marked with four weddings and a
dance of harmony for eight presided over by Hymen, before most of the
exiled court are able to return to the court and their previous
stations are recovered.
Love
======
Love is the central theme of 'As You Like It', like other romantic
comedies of Shakespeare. Following the tradition of a romantic comedy,
'As You Like It' is a tale of love manifested in its varied forms. In
many of the love-stories, it is love at first sight. This principle of
"love at first sight" is seen in the love-stories of Rosalind and
Orlando, Celia and Oliver, as well as Phebe and Ganymede. The
love-story of Audrey and Touchstone is a parody of romantic love.
Another form of love is between women, as in Rosalind and Celia's deep
bond.
Forgiveness
=============
The play highlights the theme of usurpation and injustice on the
property of others. However, it ends happily with reconciliation and
forgiveness. Duke Frederick is converted by a hermit and he restores
the dukedom to Duke Senior who, in his turn, restores the forest to
the deer. Oliver also undergoes a change of heart and learns to love
Orlando. Thus, the play ends on a note of rejoicing and merry-making.
Envy
======
In this play, the universal globe, inhabited by ordinary mortals, is
shown at the end as the audience liked it: happy and reconciled by
love. However, the text can be seen as a pretext. "This wide and
universal theatre present more woeful pageants" (II, vii, 137-138).
The comedy in fact establishes a respite from the so-called War Stage.
"Are not these woods more free from peril than the envious court?"
(II, i, 3-4).
From Oliver's description (IV, iii, 98-120), a golden green snake is
instead seen by Orlando threateningly approaching the open mouth of "a
wretched ragged man", tightening around his neck, "but suddenly seeing
Orlando, it unlinked itself and with glides did slip away into a bush"
(IV, iii, 106, 110-113). It can be deduced that with the appearance of
the actor on stage, envy suddenly disappears. He who had fought like a
Hercules, a hero not by chance invoked by Rosalind ("Now Hercules be
thy speed", I, ii, 204-210), just before the challenge with "Charles,
the wrestler", in allusion to the figure of the insign of Globe
Theatre, which accompanied the presumed inscription: "Totus Mundus
Agit Histrionem".
Gender
========
Gender poses as one of the play's integral themes. While disguised as
Ganymede, Rosalind also presents a calculated perception of affection
that is "disruptive of [the] social norms" and "independent of
conventional gender signs" that dictate women's behavior as
irrational. In her book 'As She Likes It: Shakespeare's Unruly Women',
Penny Gay analyzes Rosalind's character in the framework of these
gender conventions that ascribe femininity with qualities such as
"graciousness, warmth ... [and] tenderness". However, Rosalind's
demanding tone in her expression of emotions towards Orlando
contradicts these conventions. Her disobedience to these features of
femininity proves a "deconstruction of gender roles", since Rosalind
believes that "the wiser [the woman is], the waywarder" she is. By
claiming that women who are wild are smarter than those who are not,
Rosalind refutes the perception of women as passive in their pursuit
of men.
Religious allegory
====================
University of Wisconsin professor Richard Knowles, the editor of the
1977 New Variorum edition of this play, in his article "Myth and Type
in 'As You Like It'", pointed out that the play contains mythological
references in particular to Eden and to Hercules.
Music and songs
=================
'As You Like It' is known as a musical comedy because of the number of
songs in the play. There are more songs in it than in any other play
of Shakespeare. These songs and music are incorporated in the action
that takes place in the forest of Arden, as shown below:
* "Under the Greenwood tree": It summarises the views of Duke Senior
on the advantages of country life over the amenities of the court.
Amiens sings this song.
* "Blow, blow, thou winter wind": This song is sung by Amiens. It
states that physical suffering caused by frost and winter winds is
preferable to the inner suffering caused by man's ingratitude.
* "What shall he have that killed the deer": It is another song which
adds a lively spectacle and some forest-colouring to contrast with
love-talk in the adjoining scenes. it highlights the pastoral
atmosphere.
* "It was a lover and his lass": It serves as a prelude to the wedding
ceremony. It praises spring time and is intended to announce the
rebirth of nature and the theme of moral regeneration in human life.
Thomas Morley is known to have set the lyrics of this song to music in
the form of a lute song.
Use of prose
==============
Shakespeare uses prose for about 55% of the text, with the remainder
in verse. Shaw affirms that as used here the prose, "brief [and]
sure", drives the meaning and is part of the play's appeal, whereas
some of its verse he regards only as ornament. The dramatic convention
of the time required the courtly characters to use verse, and the
country characters prose, but in 'As You Like It' this convention is
deliberately overturned. For example, Rosalind, although the daughter
of a Duke and thinking and behaving in high poetic style, actually
speaks in prose as this is the "natural and suitable" way of
expressing the directness of her character, and the love scenes
between Rosalind and Orlando are in prose (III, ii, 277). In a
deliberate contrast, Silvius describes his love for Phebe in verse
(II, iv, 20). As a mood of a character changes, he or she may change
from one form of expression to the other in mid-scene. In a
metafictional touch, Jaques cuts off a prose dialogue with Rosalind
because Orlando enters, using verse: "Nay then, God be wi' you, an you
talk in blank verse" (IV, i, 29). The defiance of convention is
continued when the epilogue is given in prose.
All the world's a stage
=========================
Act II, Scene VII, Line 139, features one of Shakespeare's most famous
monologues, spoken by Jaques, which begins:
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
The arresting imagery and figures of speech in the monologue develop
the central metaphor: a person's lifespan is a play in seven acts.
These acts, or "seven ages", begin with "the infant/Mewling and puking
in the nurse's arms" and work through six further vivid verbal
sketches, culminating in "second childishness and mere oblivion,/Sans
teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything".
Pastoral mode
===============
The main theme of pastoral comedy is love in all its guises in a
rustic setting, the genuine love embodied by Rosalind contrasted with
the sentimentalised affectations of Orlando, and the improbable
happenings that set the urban courtiers wandering to find exile,
solace or freedom in a woodland setting are no more unrealistic than
the string of chance encounters in the forest which provoke witty
banter and which require no subtleties of plotting and character
development. The main action of the first act is no more than a
wrestling match, and the action throughout is often interrupted by a
song. At the end, Hymen himself arrives to bless the wedding
festivities.
William Shakespeare's play 'As You Like It' clearly falls into the
Pastoral Romance genre; but Shakespeare does not merely use the genre,
he develops it. Shakespeare also used the Pastoral genre in 'As You
Like It' to 'cast a critical eye on social practices that produce
injustice and unhappiness, and to make fun of anti-social, foolish and
self-destructive behaviour', most obviously through the theme of love,
culminating in a rejection of the notion of the traditional Petrarchan
lovers.
The stock characters in conventional situations were familiar material
for Shakespeare and his audience; it is the light repartee and the
breadth of the subjects that provide opportunities for wit that put a
fresh stamp on the proceedings. At the centre the optimism of Rosalind
is contrasted with the misogynistic melancholy of Jaques. Shakespeare
would take up some of the themes more seriously later: the usurper
Duke and the Duke in exile provide themes for 'Measure for Measure'
and 'The Tempest'.
The play, turning upon chance encounters in the forest and several
entangled love affairs in a serene pastoral setting, has been found,
by many directors, to be especially effective staged outdoors in a
park or similar site.
Performance history
======================================================================
There is no certain record of any performance before the Restoration.
Evidence suggests that the premiere may have taken place at Richmond
Palace on 20 Feb 1599, enacted by the Lord Chamberlain's Men.
Another performance may possibly have taken place at Wilton House in
Wiltshire, the country seat of the Earls of Pembroke, where Mary
Sidney is understood to have been running a kind of literary salon,
her son William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, hosted James I and his
Court at Wilton House from October to December 1603, while Jacobean
London was suffering an epidemic of bubonic plague. The King's Men
were paid £30 to come to Wilton House and perform for the King and
Court on 2 December 1603. A Herbert family tradition holds that the
play acted that night was 'As You Like It'.
During the English Restoration, the King's Company was assigned the
play by royal warrant in 1669. It is known to have been acted at Drury
Lane in 1723, in an adapted form called 'Love in a Forest;' Colley
Cibber played Jaques. Another Drury Lane production seventeen years
later returned to the Shakespearean text (1740).
Notable recent productions of 'As You Like It' include the following
examples:
* The 1936 Old Vic Theatre production starring Edith Evans and the
1961 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre production starring Vanessa
Redgrave.
* The longest-running Broadway production starred Katharine Hepburn as
Rosalind, Cloris Leachman as Celia, William Prince as Orlando, and
Ernest Thesiger as Jaques, and was directed by Michael Benthall. It
ran for 145 performances in 1950.
* Another notable production was at the 2005 Stratford Festival in
Stratford, Ontario, which was set in the 1960s and featured
Shakespeare's lyrics set to music written by Barenaked Ladies.
* In 2014, theatre critic Michael Billington said his favourite
production of the play was Cheek by Jowl's 1991 production, directed
by Declan Donnellan.
* In 2023 a company which cast Rose Ayling-Ellis, who has a hearing
impairment, as Celia performed the play at @sohoplace. This was the
subject of a documentary on experiences of living with hearing
impairment.
* Shakespeare's Globe staged the play in 2023, in an adaption that was
noted for its LBGT/queer presentation of the play.
Music and dance
=================
Thomas Morley () composed music for "It was a lover and his lass"; he
lived in the same parish as Shakespeare, and at times composed music
for Shakespeare's plays.
Roger Quilter set "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind" for voice and piano
(1905) in his 3 Shakespeare songs Op. 6
Florence Wickham wrote the music and lyrics for her opera 'Rosalind',
based on 'As You Like It', which premiered at the open air Rockridge
Theater in Carmel, New York, in August 1938.
In 1942, Gerald Finzi included a setting of "It was a lover and his
lass" (V, iii) in his song cycle on Shakespearean texts 'Let Us
Garlands Bring'.
Cleo Laine sang a jazz setting of "It was a lover and his lass" on her
1964 album "Shakespeare... and all that Jazz". The composer is
credited as "Young".
Donovan set "Under the Greenwood Tree" to music and recorded it for 'A
Gift from a Flower to a Garden' in 1968.
Hans Werner Henze, in the first part of his sonata 'Royal Winter
Music', which portraits Shakespearean characters, included
"Touchstone, Audrey and William" as its 5th movement, in 1976.
John Rutter composed a setting of "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind" for
chorus in 1992.
In 2005, the Barenaked Ladies wrote and released a full album for the
play. It was recorded for and exclusively released at the Stratford
Shakespeare Festival.
Michael John Trotta composed a setting of "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter
Wind" for choir in 2013.
Rush's drummer and composer Neil Peart incorporated the passage "All
the world's indeed a stage / And we are merely players / Performers
and portrayers / Each another's audience / Outside the gilded cage"
into the lyrics for "Limelight" from their 1981 progressive rock album
'Moving Pictures'.
In 2017 The Public Theater's Public Works program presented a musical
adaptation of 'As You Like It', with original music and lyrics by
Shaina Taub.
In 2018 Vancouver's Bard on the Beach introduced a musical adaptation
of 'As You Like It', with songs by The Beatles performed by the cast.
The production "broke Bard box office records" and toured several
other cities, returning to Vancouver in 2023.
Pakistani-American composer set "Blow, Blow thou Winter Wind" to music
for voice, clarinet and piano as the middle song of his 'Three Songs
of Longing". (1974/2020)
Radio
=======
On 1 March 2015, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a new production directed by
Sally Avens with music composed by actor and singer Johnny Flynn of
the folk rock band Johnny Flynn and The Sussex Wit. The production
included Pippa Nixon as Rosalind, Luke Norris as Orlando, Adrian
Scarborough as Touchstone, William Houston as Jaques, Ellie Kendrick
as Celia and Jude Akuwudike as Corin.
Film
======
'As You Like It' was Laurence Olivier's first Shakespeare film.
Olivier, however, served only in an acting capacity (performing the
role of Orlando), rather than producing or directing the film. J. M.
Barrie, author of Peter Pan, wrote the treatment.
Made in England and released in 1936, 'As You Like It' also starred
director Paul Czinner's wife Elisabeth Bergner, who played Rosalind
with a thick German accent. Although it is much less "Hollywoody" than
the versions of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and 'Romeo and Juliet'
made at about the same time, and although its cast was made up
entirely of Shakespearean actors, it was not considered a success by
either Olivier or the critics. Still, it's a visual delight with
eccentric characters in an enchanting forest rife with animals: sheep,
goats, peacocks, storks, a huge snake and skulking lioness.
Helen Mirren starred as Rosalind in the 1978 BBC videotaped version of
'As You Like It', directed by Basil Coleman.
In 1992, Christine Edzard made another film adaptation of the play. It
features James Fox, Cyril Cusack, Andrew Tiernan, Griff Rhys Jones,
and Ewen Bremner. The action is transposed to a modern and bleak urban
world.
A film version of 'As You Like It', set in 19th-century Japan, was
released in 2006, directed by Kenneth Branagh. It stars Bryce Dallas
Howard, David Oyelowo, Romola Garai, Alfred Molina, Kevin Kline, and
Brian Blessed. Although it was actually made for cinemas, it was
released to theatres only in Europe, and had its U.S. premiere on HBO
in 2007. Although it was not a made-for-television film, Kevin Kline
won a Screen Actors Guild award for Best Performance by a Male Actor
in a Television Movie or Miniseries for his performance as Jaques.
In 2022 CBeebies filmed a version of the play adapted for children.
Other musical work
====================
The 1902 Broadway musical 'Tommy Rot' used an embedded narrative
device where there was a play within a play; in this case the story
taking place during a production of 'As You Like It'. 'The Seven
Doors of Danny', by Ricky Horscraft and John McCullough is based on
the "Seven Ages of Man" element of the "All the world's a stage"
speech and was premiered in April 2016.
Visual Arts
=============
The artist Salvador Dalí worked up and published costume and set
designs for the play when it was directed by Luchino Visconti at
the Teatro Eliseo in Rome in 1948.
Numerous other artists have been inspired to paint the play,
including:
*John William Waterhouse
*Daniel Maclise
*Francis Hayman
*Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale
*Margaret Gillies
*William Hodges
*John Pettie
*Robert Smirke
*John Collier
*Walter Deverell
*William Hamilton
See also
======================================================================
* List of idioms attributed to Shakespeare
References
======================================================================
Sources
*
External links
======================================================================
*
*
* [
http://www.swipespeare.com/as-you-like-it.html#.UvpkzmRdXV4 Modern
translation]
*
*
* [
http://www.maximumedge.com/shakespeare/asyoulikeit.htm
MaximumEdge.com] - scene-indexed, searchable version of the play
* [
https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/Texts/AYL.html 'As You
Like It'], edited by David Bevington, as well as original-spelling
texts, facsimiles of the 1623 Folio text, and other resources,
internetshakespeare.uvic.ca, University of Victoria
*
*
*
* [
https://www.imdb.com/find?q=As+You+Like+It&tt=on List of 'As
You Like It' movies], IMDb
*
[
https://www.varsitytutors.com/englishteacher/as-you-like-it-lesson-plans
Lesson plans for 'As You Like It'], varsitytutors.com
* [
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/eng366/lectures/Ayl.htm "Variations
on a Theme of Love"] introduction to the play and pastoral comedy as
a genre
*
[
https://digital.library.illinois.edu/collections/810eac30-e3fb-012f-c5b6-0019b9e633c5-e/items?q=as+you+like+it
Costume and set designs] by the Motley Theatre Design Group for the
1949 production at The Old Vic and the 1957 production at the Royal
Shakespeare Theatre
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_You_Like_It
