As You like It
1623
Rosalind's wit burns through every scene. When her uncle Duke Frederick banishes her from court, she doesn't merely flee - she transforms. Disguised as a shepherd boy named Ganymede, she retreats to the Forest of Arden with her cousin Celia and the Fool Touchstone, where the exiled Duke Senior has carved out a rough paradise among the trees. There she finds Orlando, the youngest son denied his inheritance by brutal primogeniture law, and what follows is a delicious game of love conducted through layers of performance and disguise. Shakespeare uses pastoral comedy to devastating effect. The court is corrupt and claustrophobic; Arden is chaotic but freeing. The cross-dressing isn't theatrical gimmick - it's power. Rosalind controls her own courtship, demanding Orlando declare his love to a boy he believes is a boy. Meanwhile, the melancholy Jaques delivers the immortal 'All the world's a stage' speech, observing everything with wry despair. The play endures because it understands that love is performance, that exile can be liberation, and that to know ourselves we might need to become someone else first.
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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-e2046859-c2ac-4458-8fb9-ebf23996e550.Shakespeare, W. (1623). As You like It. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/as-you-like-it-e2046859-c2ac-4458-8fb9-ebf23996e550Shakespeare, William. As You like It. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/as-you-like-it-e2046859-c2ac-4458-8fb9-ebf23996e550.
