As You Like It (Vol. 34) | Wolfgang Iser (essay date 1983)
Wolfgang Iser (essay date 1983)
SOURCE: "The Dramatization of Double Meaning in Shakespeare's As You Like It," in Theatre Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3, October, 1983, pp. 307-32.
[In the following essay, Iser explores the dramatic representations of language in As You Like It, in terms of themes of doubling—double meanings, doublings of character through disguise, and doubled worlds.]
I
As You Like It is a dramatic adaptation of a well-known pastoral romance, and as such it testifies to the irresistible wave of shepherds that engulfed the literary scene of the Renaissance.1 The pastoral world embraced all genres of the age, and changed the system of genres by introducing a new one in the shape of the pastoral romance, which broke down the boundaries within which the eclogue had been confined. But even the traditional form of the eclogue had not used its shep-herds merely to depict rustic...
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