Book Description
The Arden Shakespeare is the established edition of Shakespeare's work. Justly celebrated for its authoritative scholarship and invaluable commentary, Arden guides you a richer understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare's plays. This edition of As You Like It provides, a clear and authoritative text, detailed notes and commentary on the same page as the text, a full introduction discussing the critical and historical background to the play and appendices presenting sources and relevant extracts.


The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Five-act comedy by William Shakespeare, written and performed about 1599 and first published in the Folio of 1623. Shakespeare based the play on Rosalynde (1590), a prose romance by Thomas Lodge. The play has two principal settings: the court that Frederick has usurped from his brother, the rightful Duke, and the Forest of Arden, where the Duke and his followers (including the disgruntled Lord Jaques and the jester Touchstone) are living. Rosalind, the Duke's daughter, who is still at court, falls in love with Orlando. The latter's hateful brother, Oliver, causes him to flee to Arden also. Frederick, upon learning that Orlando's father was the Duke's friend, banishes Rosalind. She assumes the guise of a young man (Ganymede) and pursues Orlando, promising him a cure for lovesickness by means of a feigned courtship. Oliver appears at the forest court intending to kill Orlando, but the latter saves his brother from a lioness and elicits his remorse. Oliver then falls in love with Celia, Rosalind's disguised cousin who has accompanied her. Revelation of the girls' true identities precipitates a mass wedding ceremony. Word arrives that Frederick has repented, and the Duke's exile ends. The play is considered to be one of Shakespeare's "great" or "middle" comedies. Like Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labours Lost, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, it contains a journey to a natural environment, where the constraints of everyday life are released and the characters are free to remake themselves, untrammeled by society's forms.


From the Publisher
This wisely funny comedy, which contains some of Shakespeare's loveliest poetry, contrasts a country's world of envy and rivalry with a forest's world of compassion and harmony. In the Forest of Arden, the banished young heroine, Rosalind, disguised as a gentleman farmer, encounters an extraordinary assemblage of characters, including a fool, a malcontent traveler, her own banished father, and the banished young man she loves. Romantic happiness triumphs, even as we laugh at the excesses of love, at the ways of court and countryside, indeed, at everything, in this masterpiece of comic writing,

ANNOTATION

A scene by scene summary in modern prose.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Shakespeare's As You Like It can appear bright or sombre in performance: a feast of language and a delight for comic actors; or a risk-taking exploration of gender roles. This edition offers an account of what makes the play both innocent and dangerous, mapping the complexities of its setting (a no-man's-land related to both France and England) and giving an ample commentary on its language and an analytical account of performance.

SYNOPSIS

Each Edition Includes:
• Comprehensive explanatory notes
• Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
• Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
• Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
• An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography

FROM THE CRITICS

AudioFile