As You Like It William Shakespeare

Compare the relations between older and younger men in the following extracts; pay close attention to the use of dramatic language and the opportunities offered by the text for different emphases in production: 1 Henry IV, 2.4.109-62 (Bevington...

In a romantic forest setting, rich with the songs of birds, the fragrance of fresh spring flowers, and the leafy hum of trees whistling in the wind, one young man courts another. A lady clings to her childhood friend with a desperate and erotic...

Rosalind's literal significance in Shakespeare's "As You Like It" is grounded in her motivation in acting as Ganymede, for it is her sole perspective that elucidates the reader of the biases of society's gender roles. The necessity for Rosalind to...

In the epilogue of As You Like It, Rosalind discusses the nature of real and performed gender identity in a final bid to resolve the gender confusion extant throughout the play. The events leading up to the epilogue make such resolution necessary,...

Northrop Frye and C. L. Barber's "green world" and "misrule" theories are very much evident in William Shakespeare's As You Like It (ASYI). Frye discusses his "green world" theory in his books Anatomy of Criticism, in 1957, and A Natural...

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It, feminine homoeroticism emerges as an interplay of passive and aggressive opposition. Women take the sphere of romantic love -- one sphere to which they have access in the midst of an...

Explore the ways in which Shakespeare uses metatheatre in his plays

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

~ Jacques, As You Like It, Act II,...

Pastoralism as a literary device thrives on the juxtaposition of city life and country life. Pastoralists often stress that the burdens of the city can be alleviated and clarified by a trip into the country's therapeutic environment. A sense of...

"Cleanse the foul body of th'infected world / If they will patiently receive my medicine" (Shakespeare 304). William Shakespeare addresses an ailment known as melancholy through the character Jaques in As You Like It. In this quote, Jaques blames...

In the pastoral setting of the Forest of Arden in William Shakespeare's As You Like It, the characters are physically removed from society, and thus from the political, economic, and sexual rules that govern social life. If Arden is a paradise,...

In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Jaques is a static, melancholy character who continually prefers to remain removed from the imprudence of love, wishing he could speak his mind without reprehension. In contrast to most of the other characters, who...

Cross-dressing on the early modern stage was a highly exploited theatrical device. It subverted the traditional conceptions of gender, evoking a recurring sense of dramatic irony. Jean E. Howard explains that “behavioural differences” and “...

According to Patrick Swinden in An Introduction to Shakespeare's Comedies, a comedy does not demand the 'the degree of concentration and belief' required by tragedy. As a result, an audience of a play 'is amusedly aware that it's all a play, a...

Although some Shakespearean plays carve out a more passive, male-defined role for women, such as that which is exemplified through Ophelia’s obedience to Polonius in Hamlet, the comedies of As You Like It and Twelfth Night explore women’s...

Throughout the span of the comedies, Shakespeare allows his female characters to establish a greater amount of independence and freedom than they would have actually been allowed for the time period. This freedom is not necessarily a feminist...

In the many plays of William Shakespeare there are certain themes woven within the plotlines that are consistently considered, ruminated upon, and revisited. These highly debated subjects focus on the nature of humans and must have been issues...

“In the latter part of the 19th century, Japan opened up for trade with the West. Merchant adventurers arrived from all over the world, many of them English. Some traded in silk and rice and lived in enclaves around the 'treaty ports.' They...

From the viewpoint of our world today, Shakespeare’s era seems about as conservatively-minded as a society could get. Shakespeare completely demolishes this notion, with his progressive suggestions of a normalcy in homosexuality and transgenderism...

William Shakespeare is an author who is known best for his tragedies, such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar: plays in which the heroes lose. However, Shakespeare also wrote comedies, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of...

In many of Shakespeare’s comedies, we see people from all social ranks being portrayed – from the highest of nobles, to the lowest of servants. In cases of male friendship, there is a common pattern to see friendship develop through master-servant...

Shakespeare’s As You Like It is made up of two distinct forms of dialogue: prose and verse. Shakespeare’s verse is rhythmic and poetic, while his prose is simple and does not have a distinct beat. Although Shakespeare’s choice of prose or verse...

In Shakespeare’s play King Lear, King Lear tells his daughter Cordelia that, “Nothing will come of nothing”(Shakespeare 1.1.99). This idea of nothingness plays a major role in Shakespeare’s King Lear and As You Like It. King Lear is a tragedy that...

William Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ deals with falsity on multiple levels, primarily as incurred by love, and inherent within women. As women are false, and love makes one act in a way that is false, love itself is feminized, linked...