As You Like It

The song is split into three sections interspersed between dialogue in Act II, scene 5 of As You Like It. In the first section, Amiens, a courtier, sings: Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie...

Pastoral literature pits the corruptions of the city against the innocence of a natural setting. The natural world depicted in pastoral literature is not realistic. It is a dream world, a utopic...

William Shakespeare was an English playwright who lived from April 26, 1564 to April 23, 1616. His pastoral comedy, As You Like It, was first published in 1623. It is an account of Rosalind and...

The famous "Seven Ages of Man" speech is spoken by Jaques (pronounced "JAY-kweez") in act 2, scene 7, of Shakespeare's pastoral comedy, As You Like It. Jaques is a contradictory character who is...

Phebe, a shepherdess, makes this statement to Silvius in Act III, scene 5 of the play. The statement applies to Phebe herself, as she tells Silvius, who is madly in love with her, "the time was...

This quotation comes from Jaques's famous speech, beginning "all the world's a stage." The speech describes the so-called "seven ages of man," moving from infancy through youth and adulthood to the...

The meaning of "and then the lover sighing like furnace" in William Shakespeare’s “The Seven Ages of Man” from his comedy As You Like It is that the passion and expression of love can be akin to...

This theme of the seven ages of man dates back to antiquity. In classical literature, though, descriptions of these seven ages were generally encomiastic, praising the virtues appropriate to each...

Pastoral plays were a common genre during the Renaissance period. They idealized country life and presented this world as almost Edenic in its innocence. As such, these stories were less interested...

Rosalind and Celia have grown up together and have formed a strong attachment. Rosalind has the much stronger character. She is more intelligent than Celia and also more self-reliant,...

In the play As You Like It by William Shakespeare, there is a quote which refers to our busy but temporary lives here on earth. The quote reads "they have their exits and entrances, and one man in...

Life is like a drama enacted on a stage. It is not real except to those directly involved. Mostly an "audience" watches us play out our lives interacting with family, co-workers, and friends. When...

Shakespeare employs apostrophe in this poem. Apostrophe is when the speaker addresses someone or something that cannot respond. In this case, the speaker directly addresses the winter wind in the...

The true Duke—Duke Senior—has taken refuge in the forest in the way that the lines of the song sung under the greenwood tree suggest that people should. When Duke Frederick usurps his older...

Oliver is the elder son of Sir Rowland de Boys and elder brother of Orlando. They have another brother, Jacques. Orlando is the youngest son and brother; Jacques is second born. Birth order is...

Shakespeare considers the nature and manifestation of Love in all of his comedies. Love was a big issue in his day, because the idea of marrying someone for love (rather than to create an alliance...

The fact that Jacques recites these lines in "As You Like It" may have no special significance. I suspect that Shakespeare wrote out many short speeches and sololiquies extemporaniously as the...

Although Orlando's defeat of Charles the wrestler has brought him Rosalind's gushing admiration, it's also created one or two problems. His revelation that he's the son of Sir Rowland de Bois has...

Shakespeare apparently was highlighting the fact that he was presenting a play with the ingredients he knew his audiences would like. The play contains ingredients that are still very popular with...

It is early in Act 1, Scene 2 that Touchstone says the line, "The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly" (86-87). What he is saying here is that it is a pity that a...

Orlando is the ideal romantic hero for a play like As You Like It. He makes an excellent match for the heroine Rosalind, because they are both intelligent and strong individuals. Orlando has to...

First of all, Act I, Scene I of As You Like It explains that Rosalind and Celia are cousins. Celia explains that Rosalind's father is her own uncle and that her father is Rosalind's uncle: If my...

One way to answer this question is to compare the outward affect of the characters, and approach the question as a director or actor might. The two characters are sisters, but it is necessary to...

Rosalind is clever, witty, articulate, playful, and affectionate. She is the kind of independent, self-reliant, intelligent, and fun-loving heroine whom Shakespeare was often so effective at creating.

William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It contains the required elements of a traditional romantic comedy, more specifically, a love theme bedeviled by humorous complexities. That being said, there...

There are many poetic devices in this poem by Shakespeare. All the world's a stage, A metaphor comparing the world to a stage. This is the central metaphor of the entire poem, as Shakespeare...

In the beginning of the play, Orlando and Oliver's relationship can only be characterized as hostile. Orlando explains in his opening speech that when their father passed away, their father left a...

Rosalind isn't interested in curing Orlando of his love; she wants to teach him how to be a better, more devoted lover. Orlando, much like Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, loves "by the book," and the...

In the Forest of Arden, Duke Senior and his fellow exiles are living an idyllic life. They spend a lot of time idling—playing music, singing, sometimes dancing, and writing love poems. While...

The answer to this question can be found in Act I scene 2, when Orlando reveals his identity to Duke Frederick after winning the wrestling match against Charles. Note how Duke Frederick responds to...

A simile is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two different things using the words "like" or "as." Jacques, the speaker, uses several similes throughout the speech "The Seven Ages...

The speech known as Jaques' "The Seven Ages of Man Speech," at the end of Act 2, Scene 7, contains many different metaphors as well as similes. For starters, the speech itself is an extended...

Adam is a faithful servant to Orlando’s family, as devoted to Orlando as he had been to Sir Rowland de Buys (Orlando's father). His view of the servant’s role differs somewhat from that of Orlando,...

In Act 1, Orlando and Rosalind meet at a wrestling match. After watching Orlando defeat a formidable opponent, Rosalind is impressed and congratulates the young man; she even gives him a chain to...

The theme of disguise is central to As You Like It, as two of the main characters spend most of the play disguised as other people. More generally, the idea of artifice contrasted with authenticity...

In William Shakespeare's play As You Like It, the character Jaques delivers a monologue about the different periods in a man's life, which he refers to as the "seven ages" (that are like the acts...

Oliver dislikes his attractive, talented, and physically stronger younger brother Orlando. When Orlando comes to him demanding the thousand crowns he is owed as his inheritance, becoming physically...

“The Seven Ages of Man” develops a theme of the futility of age milestones. It is well known to Shakespearean and Greek philosophy scholars that these age milestones correspond to the Greek concept...

The contrast between court and country in As You Like It is a stark one. The country, in the shape of the Forest of Arden, is a place of banishment for good people. They are typically victims of...

Personification is the attribution of human characteristics to non-human things. An example of personification occurs in character Jaques’s soliloquy in Act II, Scene 7 of As You Like It lines 18...

Gold is desirable and tempting to robbers. We would not want to walk around in a strange place carrying lots of gold—especially waving it out in the open—for fear of the gold attracting dangerous...

One thing Oliver says at the end of the opening scene is that he actually doesn't know why he "hates nothing more than" Orlando (I.i.166). Oliver further goes on to describe Orlando's virtues, such...

One of the things that made Shakespeare a great writer was his ability to create realistic characters that reflected people's needs, desires, and conflicts. He took as much care with minor...

The theme of town life versus country life in As You Like It is first shown in its controversial oppositional form, but the conclusion unifies the opposing forces and puts the two in balance...

The simile that Shakespeare uses here is entirely appropriate in that a furnace is a place of extreme heat, as is the heart of a young man overburdened with love. The lover's heart is burning with...

Orlando's and Oliver's reconciliation in Act IV, Scene III of As You Like It may be revelatory of some of their character strengths and weaknesses. At the time of the reconciliation, we learn that...