As You Like It (Vol. 46) | D. J. Palmer (essay date 1971)
D. J. Palmer (essay date 1971)
SOURCE: "As You Like It and the Idea of Play," in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3, Autumn, 1971, pp. 234-45.
[In the following essay, Palmer analyzes the nature and purpose of play in As You Like It, and contends that "[t]he heart of the comedy might be described as a demonstration of man's natural propensity for play."]
Now in myth and ritual the great instinctive forces of civilized life have their origin: law and order, commerce and profit, craft and art, poetry, wisdom, and science. All are rooted in the primeval soil of play.
(J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 1949)
Here nowe I recke not much, to passe over untouched, how no maner acte, or noble deede was ever attempted, nor any arte or science invented, other, than of...
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