The Complete As You Like It: An Annotated Edition of the Shakespeare Play

As You Like It could be termed the archetypal Shakespearean romantic comedy: the lovers retreat to the Forest of Arden, where all their problems are resolved satisfactorily, and all ends in marriage (four marriages, in fact). However, the romance of the play is ameliorated somewhat by the pragmatism of Rosalind who says, “Men have died from time to / time and worms have eaten then, but not for love” (IV.i.94-5). There is an air of melancholy in Jaques, who says, “I can suck / melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs” (II.v.11-12). This is also the play in which Shakespeare delimits the seven ages of man (II.vii.142-69), an archetype relevant yet today, despite Americans’ hesitancy to accept it as other than melancholy.