As You Like It

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1. 
   gbeatty Teacher
   College - Freshman

   The play is a comedy for several reasons. First, it is a comedy in the sense of its dramatic form: the good characters end up together, and the lovers marry happily. Second, the mood is rarely darkened; it is easy to believe in a good universe here. Third, though, it is also a comedy in the sense of being funny. Some of the humor ranges is pretty obvious: Touchstone is a clown, and is an open exaggeration and parody. Other elements of humor are somewhat lighter, like the word play between the characters, the puns, and so on.

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   Posted by gbeatty on Tuesday July 1, 2008 at 5:56 PM
   
   

2. 
   amy-lepore Teacher
   High School - 12th Grade

   "As You Like It" has many shared elements with some of Shakespeare's more famous comedies:  the idea of the forest as a magic or transformative space away from restrictive and tyrannical society ("A Midsummer night's dream"); the theme of unrequited love and gender switching from ("Twelfth night"); and the exiled Duke and his playful daughter from ("The Tempest").

   The mood is light, and it is easy to read, even though it may not be as compelling a read as the aforementioned comedies.

   My college professor always asked this question when we were trying to categorized the plays:  Did anyone die?  If the answer is "no," then it is most likely a comedy.  The tragedies and most of the histories record deaths within the text.  The comedies never do...not even "The Taming of the Shrew".

    

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   Posted by amy-lepore on Wednesday July 2, 2008 at 5:12 AM
   
   

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