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Pre-order. Available 01 Oct 2026
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Description

Shakespeare's popular pastoral romance, As You Like It, features disguised lovers, exiled brothers, multiple marriage plots, a wrestling bout and the famous Forest of Arden. Friendships are formed and lovers are reunited in a play that explores the intersection of love, 'play' and deception. Rosalind's unique performance of gender, both as herself and in disguise as Ganymede, provides the pivot on which the play turns, leading us into the magic of the forest where music, dancing and masques showcase the talents of the King's Men company who performed As You Like It in the late Elizabethan period. From the lovers, Rosalind and Orlando, to Jaques, the melancholy cynic, and Touchstone, the sly jester, this joyous comedy contains well-loved characters who take on new resonances in a contemporary edition which explores the play's rich global afterlives.

The Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series As You Like It provides:
- A critical introduction to the play's textual, cultural and performance history
- An edition attuned to the late Elizabethan culture which produced the play
- Detailed on-the-page notes explaining language, character and performance
- A clear page layout with an easy-to-read font and single-column notes
- Images of relevant productions, paintings and texts

The Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series includes a new edition of every Shakespeare play, the poems and sonnets. Each volume is edited afresh by a leading scholar specialising in cutting-edge research on performance, gender, sexuality and race. These editions cover everything you need to know as a student, teacher, researcher, theatre-maker and performer of Shakespeare's works today.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations
General editors' preface
How to use this edition
Acknowledgements

Introduction
- As You Like It now
- The play then
- Date and Repertory context
- Special Features of the Play
- External repertory connections
- Building blocks of the play
- Performance History
- Rationale of this edition
- The Text

AS YOU LIKE IT

Appendix: The Music for As You Like It

Abbreviations and references

Index

Product details

The Arden Shakespeare
Published 01 Oct 2026
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Extent 384
ISBN 9781350144439
Imprint The Arden Shakespeare
Illustrations 20 b/w
Series The Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English dra…

Volume Editor

Tom Bishop

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