Reading Order
As You Like It Reading Order
As You Like It (c. 1599–1600) by William Shakespeare is the most relaxed and pastoral of Shakespeare's comedies — a comedy of identity, disguise, and the relationship between art and nature, set largely in the Forest of Arden (named for Shakespeare's mother's family and loosely based on the Ardennes). Rosalind, daughter of the exiled Duke Senior, flees to the forest with her cousin Celia (who has renounced her father, the usurping Duke Frederick) and her jester Touchstone. Rosalind disguises herself as a young man named Ganymede and encounters Orlando, with whom she has fallen in love, in the forest. She conducts a mock-courtship in which she plays 'Rosalind' to Orlando's lover, allowing both of them to explore love while protected by the artifice of fiction. The play culminates in a masque with the god Hymen presiding over four marriages. As You Like It is the comedy that most fully celebrates the idea of the forest as a space of freedom, play, and self-discovery — the green world against which the court's constraints are measured. Rosalind is one of Shakespeare's greatest comic heroines: witty, psychologically aware, and in control of the plot to a degree unusual in any tradition. Jaques, the melancholy courtier who provides the play's famous 'seven ages of man' speech ('All the world's a stage'), is one of Shakespeare's great character studies in the comedy of self-dramatizing depression.
Where to start
As You Like It (c. 1599–1600) — any good scholarly edition. Best reading order: the Arden Third Series (ed. Juliet Dusinberre) is the standard text; Kenneth Branagh's 2006 film (set in 19th century Japan) is a charming adaptation that demonstrates the play's portability across cultures.
Complete As You Like It Book List
- 1Buy
As You Like It
William Shakespeare (Arden Third Series, ed. Juliet Dusinberre)·2006·The definitive modern scholarly edition — Dusinberre's Arden text has the most comprehensive treatment of the play's feminist dimensions and the Forest of Arden as space of freedom - 2Buy
Twelfth Night
William Shakespeare·1601·The companion romantic comedy — Viola's disguise as Cesario is the most similar to Rosalind's disguise as Ganymede in As You Like It; the two plays are the summit of Shakespeare's romantic comedy and best read together - 3Buy
Orlando Furioso
Ludovico Ariosto·1532·The Italian epic that names Orlando — the Orlando who carves Rosalind's name on trees in As You Like It takes his name from Ariosto's mad knight; reading Ariosto helps understand the romantic epic tradition Shakespeare is both drawing on and gently satirizing - 4Buy
The Magic Flute
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart·1791·The Mozart opera most in the spirit of As You Like It's green world of transformation — the pastoral test of Tamino and Pamina in the trials of Sarastro's temple shares the play's sense of the forest as a space of purification and self-discovery - 5Buy
A Room with a View
E.M. Forster·1908·The Edwardian novel in the tradition of As You Like It's liberation of characters from social constraint — Lucy Honeychurch's Italian journey, like Rosalind's forest, is the space where social restriction falls away and authentic feeling becomes possible - 6Buy
The Forest of Arden
Noel Purdon·1988·A critical study of the pastoral tradition in As You Like It — essential for understanding how Shakespeare uses the pastoral genre both seriously and ironically; the pastoral tradition from Virgil's Eclogues to Sidney's Arcadia that As You Like It is in dialogue with
As You Like It — Frequently Asked Questions
What is As You Like It about?
As You Like It (c. 1599–1600) by William Shakespeare is a pastoral comedy in the Forest of Arden. Rosalind, daughter of the exiled Duke Senior, is expelled from court by Duke Frederick (who has usurped her father). She disguises herself as a young man named Ganymede and flees to the forest with her cousin Celia and the jester Touchstone. In the forest she encounters Orlando (with whom she fell in love at court) and conducts a mock-courtship in which she plays 'Rosalind' to Orlando's lover. The play ends with a masque in which Hymen presides over four marriages (Rosalind/Orlando, Celia/Oliver, Touchstone/Audrey, Phebe/Silvius) and both usurping and exiled dukes are reconciled. Jaques, the melancholy courtier, gives the famous 'seven ages of man' speech.
What is the 'seven ages of man' speech in As You Like It?
The 'seven ages of man' speech is delivered by Jaques in Act Two, Scene Seven: 'All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances, / And one man in his time plays many parts, / His acts being seven ages.' Jaques proceeds to describe the seven stages of life: the infant, the school-boy, the lover, the soldier, the justice, the old man, and finally second childishness — 'sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.' The speech is one of Shakespeare's most famous set-pieces and one of the most quoted passages in all of English literature. It is characteristically Jaques: brilliant, melancholy, comprehensive, and delivered in a context that undermines it — Orlando enters immediately after with the aged Adam on his back, embodying a humanity that the speech's schematization cannot capture.
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