As You Like It | Time

In the first excerpt, Jay L. Halio describes time's two functions in As You Like It. Halio focuses on Rosalind's awareness of time and notes that Rosalind is strongly influenced by time's regenerative power, particularly as it concerns lovers. In the second excerpt, Frederick Turner maintains that the concept of measurable, social time prevalent at Duke Frederick's court is suspended by the holiday atmosphere of Arden, and that time in the forest is a more natural time, governed by the seasons, not the clock. Turner then examines different characters' perspectives of time and examines the idea of musical time in the play's final songs and dances.

Jay L. Halio
[Halio describes time's two functions in As You Like It: first, as a foil whose two extremes—timelessness and time-consciousness—favorably contrast virtuous rustic life in Arden with dissolute court life, and second, as timelessness alone, as a link between life in the present and life in an earlier, less corrupt, generally better time. The critic maintains that Shakespeare perceives the city and court to be ruthless and degenerate, threatening places from which Arden's timeless world is a refuge, a world where past and present...

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