Critical Insights: As You Like It

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This exciting new addition to the Critical Insights series explores Shakespeare’s seventeenth-century pastoral comedy, As You Like It. The play’s themes, characters, and language are examined through historical, political, and social contexts. Essays explore the critical evaluation and adaptation of the play over the centuries, challenging readers to rediscover Shakespeare’s work through a new lens.

Themes examined in this volume include the relationship between humans and nature, the sanctity of marriage, privilege, family, and governance, to name a few. The various ways the work has been interpreted into modern theater performances and film are explored as well.

In the introductory essay, volume editor Robert C. Evans summarizes the essays contained in this volume and provides guidance for readers in pinpointing particular topics of interest.

The four Critical Context essays include:

• Shakespeare’s Employment of the Convention of Self-Addressed Speech in As You Like It: An Empirical Investigation
• Recent Critical Approaches to Shakespeare’s As You Like It
• Lost and Found in the Forest of Arden
• Introductions to Important Recent Editions of Shakespeare’s As You Like It: A Comparative Approach

The Critical Context essays are followed by ten Critical Readings essays which include: 

• Wrestling with the World: Physical and Verbal Struggle in As You Like It
• Insults and Teasing in Shakespeare’s As You Like It
• Time and Timelessness in Shakespeare’s As You Like It 
• “What marriage is”: De Praesenti Vows in Shakespeare’s As You Like It
• “The courtesy of nations allows you my better”: The Household and Civil Governance in As You Like It
• Shakespeare’s Socratic Rosalind
• Many Parts: Performance and Identity in As You Like It
• Cynicism Subverted in the “All the world’s a stage” Scene of As You Like It: Shakespeare’s Design and Post-Renaissance Adaptations
• “All the World’s a Stage”: Examining Seven Filmed Versions of Shakespeare’s Famous “Seven Ages of Man” Speech
• Critical Responses to Kenneth Branagh’s Filmed Version of Shakespeare’s As You Like It

Each essay in Critical Insights: As You Like It includes a list of Works Cited and detailed endnotes. In the final section, Resources, a Chronology of William Shakespeare’s Life is provided followed by a Bibliography. Finally, this section closes with an About the Editor section, Contributors, and a detailed Index.

The Critical Insights Series distills the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world’s most studied literature. Edited and written by some of academia’s most distinguished literary scholars, Critical Insights: As You Like it provides authoritative, in-depth scholarship that students and researchers will rely on for years. This volume is destined to become a valuable purchase for all.