As You Like It Signet Classics

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. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.