AS YOU LIKE IT(ISBN=9780553212907)

　　Amazon.co.uk Review
　　As You Like It has long been admired as one of Shakespeare's most exuberant early comedies, complete with one of the Bard's funniest and toughest heroines, Rosalind. Based on Thomas Lodge's Elizabethan novel Rosalynde, As You Like It follows the discontented Orlando as he is exiled from the tyrannical French court of Duke Frederick. By chance Frederick also banishes Rosalind, daughter of the usurped Duke Senior. The play then moves to the Forest of Arden, where chaos and misrule ensue, as Rosalind cross dresses "all points like a man", disguised as the saucy Ganymede and encourages the naive Orlando to "woo me, woo me, for now I am in a holiday humour". Meanwhile her clown Touchstone causes hilarity and havoc amongst the exiled lords and the pastoral inhabitants of the forest. The play concludes with Rosalind's extraordinary "unmasking" Epilogue addressed to the audience, where she offers to "kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me".

　　This wisely funny comedy, which contains some of Shakespeare’s loveliest poetry, contrasts a court’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.
　　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

Introduction
As You Like It On Stage
As You Like It On Screen
The Playhouse
AS YOU LIKE IT
Date and Text
Textual Notes
Shakespeare's Sources
Further Reading
Memorable Lines