As You Like It (Bantam Classics)
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
This wisely funny comedy, which contains some of Shakespeare’s loveliest poetry, contrasts a court’s world of envy and rivalry with a forest’s world of compassion and harmony. In the Forest of Arden, the banished young heroine, Rosalind, disguised as a gentleman farmer, encounters an extraordinary assemblage of characters, including a fool, a malcontent traveler, her own banished father, and the banished young man she loves. Romantic happiness triumphs, even as we laugh at the excesses of love, at the ways of court and countryside, indeed, at everything, in this masterpiece of comic writing.
Each Edition Includes:
• Comprehensive explanatory notes
• Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
• Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
• Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
• An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography
The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Five-act comedy by William Shakespeare, written and performed about 1599 and first published in the Folio of 1623. Shakespeare based the play on Rosalynde (1590), a prose romance by Thomas Lodge. The play has two principal settings: the court that Frederick has usurped from his brother, the rightful Duke, and the Forest of Arden, where the Duke and his followers (including the disgruntled Lord Jaques and the jester Touchstone) are living. Rosalind, the Duke's daughter, who is still at court, falls in love with Orlando. The latter's hateful brother, Oliver, causes him to flee to Arden also. Frederick, upon learning that Orlando's father was the Duke's friend, banishes Rosalind. She assumes the guise of a young man (Ganymede) and pursues Orlando, promising him a cure for lovesickness by means of a feigned courtship. Oliver appears at the forest court intending to kill Orlando, but the latter saves his brother from a lioness and elicits his remorse. Oliver then falls in love with Celia, Rosalind's disguised cousin who has accompanied her. Revelation of the girls' true identities precipitates a mass wedding ceremony. Word arrives that Frederick has repented, and the Duke's exile ends. The play is considered to be one of Shakespeare's "great" or "middle" comedies. Like Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labours Lost, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, it contains a journey to a natural environment, where the constraints of everyday life are released and the characters are free to remake themselves, untrammeled by society's forms.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
As You Like It (Bantam Classics)
As You Like It (Bantam Classics),William Shakespeare,David Bevington,David Scott Kastan,Bantam Classics,0553212907,Classics,English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh,General,Literary Collections,Literature: Classics,Plays / Drama,Shakespeare,Drama / British & Irish,Drama texts, plays
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