Lyrical one moment, melancholy or satiric the next, and unabashedly comic and absurd elsewhere, As You Like It counts among Shakespeare’s finest romantic comedies. Its boldly implausible plot delivers a whole procession of love-struck men, a resourceful heroine in disguise, sexual ambiguity, sceptical philosophising, and, eventually, a flurry of marriages. That ironic mixture of pastoral artifice, romantic ardour and quizzical reflection has kept the play perennially popular on stage; one recent production was praised as ‘fresh, funny, sexy and, when it matters, deeply touching’. This Wordsworth Edition carries an exclusive Introduction and Notes by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex, and belongs to the Wordsworth Classics’ Shakespeare Series, used in the workshops of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Every volume in the series has been freshly edited by Watts, whom Edward Said described as ‘a man for whom the enjoyment and enrichment of friends and students is the main consideration in what he does’.
ISBN 13: 9781853260599
Author: William Shakespeare
