INTRODUCTION.

I. HISTORY OF THE PLAY.

Texts.

§1. AS YOU LIKE IT was first printed in the collected edition of Shakespeare's plays known as the First Folio, 1623. No Quarto exists, or in all likelihood ever existed, for the play is mentioned by the printers of the First Folio among those which "are not formerly entred to other men". Various points in the text, especially the form of the stage-directions, make it probable that the play was originally printed from an acting copy.

Stage History.

§2. Though it was probably put on the boards as early as 1600, no actual performance is recorded during Shakespeare's lifetime, or for long after his death. But Oldys has preserved a tradition that Shakespeare himself acted in the play, in the part of Adam. A younger brother of Shakespeare's, according to Oldys, was alive after the Restoration. In his youth he had often gone up to London to see Shakespeare act, and in his old age was naturally much questioned for reminiscences of his brother, 'especially in his dramatic character. But all that could be recollected from him of his brother Will in that station" (ie. as an actor) "was the faint, general, and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung a song." This description applies accurately to the entrance of Orlando with Adam at the end of the second act.

After the Restoration several of Shakespeare's plays were revived, in somewhat mangled forms; but As You Like It was not among them. Our usual authorities, at least, say nothing of any such revival; and, as will be seen, there is positive evidence to the contrary. It was not till 1723 that Charles Johnson produced an adaptation of it

Chas. Johnson's
adaptation,
1723.

at Drury Lane, with the title of Love in a Forest. In his Prologue Johnson says:

In Honour to his Name and this learn'd Age,

Once more your much-lov'd Shakespeare treads the Stage";

and declares that his whole ambition is

The Scene from Time and Error to restore,

And give the Stage from Shakespeare one play more ".

Evidently, then, Johnson's was the first revival, at least in that generation. To suit the taste of that learn'd Age, Johnson cuts out the purely comic and pastoral characters, introduces the burlesque of Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night's Dream, makes Oliver kill himself, and marries Celia to Jaques, who, to fit him for playing the cynic in love, is furnished with Benedick's speeches from Much Ado. This atrocious medley had a run of a week.

More thorough-going, and even more atrocious, is The Modern Receipt, or a Cure for Love, published by one J. C. in 1739. J. C.' follows Johnson in his omissions: his additions are all his own. He too marries Celia to Jaques, and their love-making bulks more largely in the play than does the wooing of Orlando and Rosalind.

In 1740 As You Like It was restored to the boards, with English Quin as Jaques and Mrs. Pritchard as Rosalind, Performances. and ran for twenty-five nights. Since then its popularity has rarely flagged. Eighteenth-century critics mention the Jaques of Quin and Sheridan, the Touchstone of Macklin and King, and the Rosalind of Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Pritchard, and Peg Woffington. But the great Rosalind of the century was Mrs. Jordan, who first took the part in 1789. She made Rosalind a mere tomboy-"a tousell'd hoyden"

is Mr. Verity's phrase-but her smile was irresistible. Mrs. Siddons (1785) was the first to bring out the dignity and womanliness of Rosalind, a side of her character to which later actresses have not failed to do justice. In the present century we have the revival by Macready, and the Jaques of Kemble and Hermann Vezin, and the Rosalind of Helen Faucit (Lady Martin) and Miss Rehan of to-day. Lady Martin was perhaps the most famous Rosalind of the English stage. She has written about Rosalind as well as acted her; and readers can still enjoy her tender and vivid conception of the part in the most delightful of her essays.1

German and

tations.

The play has long been a favourite in Germany. Vincke2 mentions as many as seven adaptations between 1848 and 1870. All these adaptations take the French Adapform of compression, a compression chiefly exercised upon the forest scenes; and exhibit a feeling, as Vincke puts it, that the superstructure is too airy for the massive pedestal. There may be some force in this from a theatregoer's point of view; but to a reader, at any rate to an English reader, it seems to betray a certain obtuseness as to the real theme and interest of the play. Perhaps the wit suffers

in translation.

In France there is George Sand's famous adaptation (1856). In her Comme Il Vous Plaira, Jaques is the real hero, and ultimately marries Celia, while Audrey at the last moment throws over Touchstone for William. Here, too, the forest scenes are curtailed. Indeed the whole tone of the play is altered, and the centre of interest quite displaced.

II. DATE OF COMPOSITION.

§3. External evidence consists of references to the play in record which we can date, and gives a limit (1) External before which it must have been written.

Evidence.

(1) As You Like It is entered in the Stationers' Registers,

1 Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters.

2 "Wie es euch gefällt" auf der Bühne: Jahrbuch, vol. 13, p. 186.

under date August 4th, 1600,1 as a book "to be stayed" (i.e. not printed).

(2) In Thomas Morley's First Booke of Ayres, printed at London in 1600, one of the songs of this play (“It was a lover and his lass", act v. sc. 3) is set to music. Morley does not claim the words of his songs; he must have borrowed this from Shakespeare, unless, indeed, they both took it from some older source. But this particular song corresponds, both in its position and in its sentiments, to Corydon's song in Lodge's novel-“A blithe and bonny country lass". This seems to settle the question of authorship, and with it the upper limit of the date.

(3) Negatively, too, external evidence gives a lower limit. As You Like It is not included in the list of Shakespeare's plays in Meres's Treasury of Wit (1598). Hence, on external evidence alone, the date of composition is fixed to the years 1598-1600; and, as Henry V. and Much Ado were probably both written during these years, and before As You Like It, we are practically confined to 1600.

§4. References in the play to events which we can date (2) Evidence give a limit after which it must have been of Allusion. written. The allusions in As You Like It generally go to confirm the results of the external evidence. Thus (1) the line "Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?" (iii. 5. 81) is a quotation from Marlowe's Hero and Leander, which was published in 1598. (2) The expression "like one another as halfpence are” (iii. 2. 323) refers to the halfpence of Elizabeth, in use till 1601. (3) The simile "like Diana in the fountain" (iv. 1. 134) may have been suggested by a statue of that goddess set up in West Cheap in 1596 and in ruins by 1603.

But there remain two troublesome references. (4) When Rosalind (iv. 1. 165) swears “by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous", she has been thought to refer to a statute of 1605 to restrain the abuses of Players. (5) Again, in v. 2. 55,

1 The year is not actually given, but is safely inferred from the preceding entry, and from the fact that Much Ado and Henry V., which are 'stayed' along with As You Like It, were published in August, 1600.