Recommendations
Books Like As You Like It
Best books to read after As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Readers who love As You Like It are drawn to its combination of Rosalind as one of Shakespeare's greatest heroines, the forest as a space of freedom and play, Jaques's melancholy and the 'seven ages of man' speech, and the play's sustained examination of what we gain and lose when we leave the constraints of society. They want works that deal with pastoral comedy, gender disguise, and the great tradition of Shakespearean romantic comedy.
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Buy on AmazonTwelfth Night
by William Shakespeare
The companion romantic comedy — Viola/Cesario is the most similar disguise plot to Rosalind/Ganymede in the Shakespeare canon; reading both together reveals the full range of Shakespeare's romantic comedy and the two greatest female protagonists in that tradition.
- 2
Buy on AmazonPride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
The novel most directly in the tradition of Rosalind — Elizabeth Bennet inherits Rosalind's wit, intelligence, and refusal to be subdued by social convention; the romantic comedy tradition from Shakespeare to Austen runs directly through As You Like It.
- 3Buy on Amazon
A Room with a View
by E.M. Forster
The Edwardian novel in the tradition of As You Like It's green world — Lucy Honeychurch's Italian journey and the transformation of her capacity for authentic feeling parallels Rosalind's transformation in the Forest of Arden; both works are about what happens when social constraint falls away.
- 4
Buy on AmazonThe Enchanted April
by Elizabeth von Arnim
The novel in the spirit of As You Like It's transformative green world — four mismatched women rent an Italian castle and find themselves changed by the beauty of the place; shares the play's conviction that beauty and freedom can transform unhappy people.
- 5
Buy on AmazonMuch Ado About Nothing
by William Shakespeare
The companion romantic comedy with Beatrice as the closest parallel to Rosalind — both women are more intelligent than everyone around them, both conduct their love affairs through wit and verbal dexterity; reading both together reveals the range of Shakespeare's comic heroines.
- 6
Buy on AmazonThe Shepherd's Calendar
by Edmund Spenser
The pastoral poem that establishes the literary tradition As You Like It engages with — Spenser's twelve eclogues modelled on Virgil's are the most important English pastoral before Shakespeare; understanding the pastoral tradition makes the play's engagement with and irony toward the genre visible.
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Buy on AmazonOrlando
by Virginia Woolf
The novel that directly names its protagonist after the Orlando of As You Like It and inhabits the same world of gender fluidity — Woolf's poet who changes sex over several centuries is the modernist continuation of the play's exploration of what gender means when the constraints are removed.
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Buy on AmazonThe Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
The unexpected pairing for Jaques's 'seven ages of man' — Stevens's retrospective account of his life's wrong choice inhabits the same meditation on what a life amounts to at its end that Jaques articulates in the forest; both works are about the cost of misidentifying what matters.
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