As You Like It

As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare, probably written and first performed in 1599 and first published in the 1623 First Folio. It makes courtly exile a space for play.

Rosalind is banished by Duke Frederick and flees with her cousin Celia and the fool Touchstone. Disguised as the young man Ganymede, she reaches the Forest of Arden, where Orlando has also escaped an abusive older brother, gaining freedom through an assumed identity.

Orlando covers the trees with verses to Rosalind, while Ganymede offers to cure him of love by impersonating the woman he already loves. Silvius and Phebe, Touchstone and Audrey, and Jaques supply different languages of desire, from ideal devotion to satire.

The forest suspends ordinary rank long enough for affection, loyalty, and self-presentation to be tested before reconciliation restores the court. Rosalind's command of the final arrangements keeps gender and love in performance even as the comedy moves toward marriage.

"As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion,—bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou say'st, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept."