As You like It
As You like It
Rosalind flees her uncle's court in disguise, escaping into the Forest of Arden where freedom tastes like air and love arrives wearing the wrong face. Disguised as a young man called Ganymede, she watches her beloved Orlando stumble through the woods, pining for a woman he thinks is somewhere else entirely. What follows is Shakespeare's most playful meditation on love and identity: she persuades him to pretend that she (as Ganymede) is his Rosalind, rehearsing their courtship in the space between performance and truth. Around them, the forest swells with exiles, poets, fools, and a melancholy lord named Jaques who famously declares that all the world's a stage. The play pivots on a delicious contradiction - Rosalind is a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, and we are asked to consider what any of that has to do with what we feel. It is comedy, certainly, but comedy sharp enough to draw blood.
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“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.””
— William Shakespeare
“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.””
— William Shakespeare
“Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.””
— William Shakespeare
“I pray you, do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine.””
— William Shakespeare
“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is soordinary that the whippers are in love too.””
— William Shakespeare
“And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.””
— William Shakespeare
“Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.””
— William Shakespeare
“Sweet are the uses of adversity,Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;And this our life, exempt from public haunt,Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,Sermons in stones, and good in everything.””
— William Shakespeare
“No sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage...””
— William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare, William. As You like It. Lex, lex-books.com/book/as-you-like-it-1e87b164-5c54-4a23-92a4-5a5694a12c76.Shakespeare, W. (n.d.). As You like It. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/as-you-like-it-1e87b164-5c54-4a23-92a4-5a5694a12c76Shakespeare, William. As You like It. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/as-you-like-it-1e87b164-5c54-4a23-92a4-5a5694a12c76.
