As You Like It

by Shakespeare, William; Brissenden, Alan

• ISBN13: 9780192819550
• ISBN10: 0192819550
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-04-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

With its witty heroine Rosalind, who has the longest role of Shakespeare's female characters, As You Like It is Shakespeare's most light-hearted and most performed comedy. This edition includes numerous illustrations of productions and reassesses both its textual and performance history, showing how interpretations have changed since the first recorded production in 1740. It also examines Shakespeare's sources and elucidates the central themes of love, pastoral, and doubleness, and provides detailed annotations investigating the play's allusive and often bawdy language.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. vi
Preface	p. vii
List of abbreviations and conventions	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Journeys	p. 1
Plays within the play	p. 8
Theatrical genres	p. 11
Pastoral	p. 17
Counter-pastoral	p. 19
The condition of the country	p. 21
Politics	p. 25
'Between you and the women the play may please'	p. 30
Gender	p. 32
Nuptials	p. 41
Stage history	p. 43
Date and occasion	p. 62
Sources	p. 64
Note on the text	p. 67
List of characters	p. 70
The Play	p. 73
Textual analysis	p. 199
Appendixes
Extracts from Shakespeare's principal source, Lodge's Rosalind	p. 204
The songs	p. 218
Reading list	p. 219
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.