As You Like It (Vol. 34) | William Kerrigan (essay date 1994)
William Kerrigan (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: "Female Friends and Fraternal Enemies in As You Like It," in Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature, edited by Valeria Finucci and Regina Schwartz, Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 184-203.
[In the following essay, Kerrigan investigates the psychological underpinnings of As You Like It, including those associated with sibling rivalry, female friendship, and heterosexual love.]
As You Like It is clearly less menacing than the dramas that surround it in the canon, including the comedies yet to come, and I treasure it for just this reason. Beginning with Hamlet, though of course with prior intimations, through to the consummatum est of Timon of Athens, plenty of stage time is given to what Wilson Knight used to call "the Shakespearean hate-theme"—poisoned idealism, anger at ingratitude and trust betrayed, misanthropy, world-hatred,...
[The entire page is 10184 words long]
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