New perspectives on Shakespeare's As you like it

Ce que dit l'éditeur

As You Like It's entry on the Stationers' Register on August 4, 1600, « to be staied » from publication, and its first and late publication in the 1623 First Folio, remain a vexed issue of Shakespearean studies. While this may indicate a successful play which the Lord Chamberlain's Men wanted to keep as their exclusive property, not much is actually known of its performance history during Shakespeare's era. Revived in the 18^th century, the play attracted playgoers seduced by its pastoralism, and the comedy's popularity has never faded since then.

A favourite with audiences and critics alike, As You Like It owes part of its appeal to its seemingly endless capacity for recreation - the play has indeed been seen as a multi-layered dramatic piece teeming with paradoxes and witty statements which all seem to call for challenging, even contradictory, interpretations. Despite the apparent simplicity of its plot, As You Like It offers a whole gamut of emotions and engages with the act of counterfeiting, thereby proposing a multiplicity of mirror games, from its binary and symmetrical structure to its linguistic games and ritual inversions. Yet the comedy's « true delights » (5.4.182) should not overshadow its deep social and political relevance. The Forest of Arden, where the characters flee in the hope of escaping the constraints of court life, is assuredly no paradise. All realise that internal struggles are still rife in the pastoral world, and that deceit and illusion must be used as weapons in order to survive.

This volume intends to shed fresh light on Shakespeare's « green » comedy so as to emphasise its powerful resonances today. Divided into four parts, it first deals with some of the main eco-critical issues at work in the play before examining Shakespeare's reassessment of human nature. The volume then proceeds with the experimental dimension of As You Like It and explores specific issues related to staging and editing. An Epilogue presented as a question-and-answer session provides clarifying remarks on the comedy's rich literary background. With such a variety of approaches, the editors hope to highlight the complexity of this fascinating play while taking stock of the recent critical trends in Shakespearean studies.