As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s most popular and well-known comedies. It is beloved for its pastoral setting, its explorations of love, and especially for its complex and wonderful heroine Rosalind. Shakespeare likely wrote the play in 1599 – around the same time he wrote Twelfth Night, another enduring comedy – and it was first published in the First Folio in 1623. The story is inspired by Thomas Lodge’s pastoral romance Rosalynde.
Particularly noteworthy is the play’s place in the canon of pastoral literature. The pastoral mode, which idealized the simple life of shepherds in the bucolic countryside, was popular in Shakespeare’s time. As You Like It is the Shakespeare play...
