INTRODUCTION.

I. HISTORY OF THE PLAY.

We have no reason to suppose that Shakespeare ever read As You Like It in print. Our earliest known text is that of the First Folio, the famous Folio of 1623, a collection of Shakespeare's published and unpublished dramas, issued seven years after his death by his loyal comrades and fellowplayers, "old stuttering” Heminge and the popular comedian Condell; glad so to have "done an office to the dead, . . . without ambition either of self-profit or fame; only to keep the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive as was our Shakespeare." It is worth noting here that to these men, after a lapse of nearly three hundred years, the compunction of Shakespeare lovers has at last, this summer of 1896, erected a memorial monument. It stands in the churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, London, and bears the inscription: "To the memory of John Heminge and Henry Condell, fellow-actors and personal friends of Shakespeare. They lived many years in this parish, and are buried here. To their disinterested affection the world owes all that it calls Shakespeare. They alone collected his dramatic writings regardless of pecuniary loss, and without the hope of any

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profit gave them to the world. They thus merited the gratitude of mankind."

An effort was made, apparently about 1600, to print this comedy as one of the cheap playbooks, usually pirated editions, known to Shakespeare students as the quartos. Against these "stolne and surreptitious copies," whose hasty and careless publication not only deformed the text, but tended to sate public curiosity regarding new plays, and so slacken the flow of pennies into the box-office, the theatrical companies of the day, especially that to which Shakespeare belonged, and which consequently suffered most, loudly protested. Among the more unscrupulous stationers, or publishers, was one James Roberts, who, in the year 1600, brought out quartos of The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer-Night's Dream. Dr. Furness surmises (see Variorum, article on Text) that it was some connection of Roberts with the attempt on As You Like It, which led to the order "to be staied." These words are written in the Stationers' Registers against the name of this play, with three others, Henry V., Much Ado About Nothing, and Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour, grouped together under the mere date Aug. 4, between entries of May, 1600, and June, 1603. Henry V. was duly licensed Aug. 14, 1600, and printed in what is apparently a garbled and curtailed form. Much Ado About Nothing waited for sanction only until Aug. 23; and Every Man in His Humour was published the following year. But in the case of As You Like It, the "staying," from whatever cause it proceeded, apparently remained in force. For nearly a quarter of a century the precious play was tossed about in manuscript, taking its chances of being "by shifting and change of companies negligently lost." As finally printed in the First Folio, however,

the text is singularly free from corruption. Later editors have had little to do except insert or amplify stage directions, correct a few more or less obvious misprints, revise the Elizabethan punctuation, mend here and there a halting line, piece out one or two broken passages (notably II., vii., 55), and fret themselves fruitlessly over ducdame. There are, moreover, some three or four slight errors in the play, probably chargeable to haste or Arden carelessness on Shakespeare's part. Had he forgotten the name of the "Second Brother" when he dubbed the cynic of the forest Jaques ? And again (I., ii., 79) does he confuse the names of the two dukes, or was the compositor at fault in printing Ros. for Cel.? Juno's Swans for Venus's Swans (I., iii., 75) is a venial slip in a poet who made no pretensions to pedantry; but that Shakespeare should lose sight of his two princesses, and even for a moment think Celia the taller (I., ii., 267), is so incredible that many editors would again throw the blame on the printer, and read lesser or smaller.

The later folios substantially reprinted the play from the first text; although the Second Folio ventured upon a few slight alterations, in two or three instances for the better, in as many more for the worse.

The exact date at which this comedy was written cannot be ascertained. As a later limit, there is the mention of As you like yt | a booke in the Stationers' Registers, Aug. 4, 1600. As an earlier limit of a negative sort, we have the famous list of six Shakespearian comedies and six Shakespearian tragedies given by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia (Treasury of Wit), entered in the Stationers' Registers Sept. 7, 1598. As You Like It does not appear in this list, probably because it was not then in existence, possibly because it was still so new

a play that Meres had not chanced to see it. In partial confirmation of this partial evidence that the play was written later than the summer of 1598, we have a welcome allusion (III., v., 80–81) to Marlowe :

"Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might.
Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight?"

The "saw "is quoted from Marlowe's rich and passionate poem, Hero and Leander, published in the spring or early summer of 1598, five years after the author's death. It is more than likely that Shakespeare had known his rival's work in manuscript; but the playhouse audience, apparently expected to recognize and respond to the allusion, probably had the printed poem in mind as a fresh enjoyment.

In general, we may be sure that this play, the crown of Shakespeare's golden achievement in romantic comedy, was written in his buoyant prime of manhood, while as yet the sunshine of his spirit was all but cloudless. The era of dramatic hesitation and experiment lay behind him. His mastery of historical drama, as of romantic comedy, was secured. The great, dark task of tragedy, destined to open out into ideal visions of peace and pardon, waited him beyond. It was "in happy hour" that Shakespeare turned

"his merry note

Unto the sweet bird's throat"

of the forest of Arden.

Of the delight elicited by the play in Shakespeare's own time, of the volleys of applause that must have answered Rosalind's farewell "curtsy," no echo has come down. There is a tradition, however, that the poet himself took the part of