Home > Shakespearean Criticism > As You Like It (Vol. 90) - Linda Woodbridge (essay date 2004)
As You Like It (Vol. 90) - Linda Woodbridge (essay date 2004)
Linda Woodbridge (essay date 2004)
SOURCE: Woodbridge, Linda. “County Matters: As You Like It and the Pastoral-Bashing Impulse.” In Re-Visions of Shakespeare: Essays in Honor of Robert Ornstein, edited by Evelyn Gajowski, pp. 189-214. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004.
[In the following essay, Woodbridge attempts to rescue the genre of pastoralism from critical and cultural malignity, demonstrating how it serves as a viable romantic antithesis to the intrigue and manipulation of the court in As You Like It.]
Audiences delight in As You Like It, but critics often get twitchy about it, which seems odd. The play after all features cross-dressing, the biggest female speaking role in all of Shakespeare, an intriguingly intimate friendship between two women, an exploited agricultural laborer, and a set speech on animal rights—one would think that this comedy offered satisfactions for gender theorists, feminists,...
[The entire page is 10911 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
- Introduction
- Criticism: Overviews And General Studies
- Criticism: Character Studies
-
Criticism: Production Reviews
- Ben Brantley (review date 9 August 1999)
- Brendan Lemon (review date 16 August 1999)
- Alastair Macaulay (review date 3 April 2000)
- Ian Shuttleworth (review date 5 January 2001)
- Patrick Carnegy (review date 29 March 2003)
- Katherine Duncan-Jones (review date 4 April 2003)
- Alastair Macaulay (review date 20 August 2003)
- Criticism: Themes
- Further Reading
- Copyright
