1. THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY. As You Like It was first printed, so far as we know, in the folio of 1623, where it occupies pages 185-207 in the division of "Comedies." The earliest notice of it by name is found in the Registers of the Stationers' Company, on a leaf which does not belong to the regular records, but contains miscel laneous entries, notes, etc. Between two of these, the one dated in May, 1600, and the other in June, 1603, occurs the following memorandum :* 4. Augusti As you like yt / a booke Henry the ffift / a booke Euery man in his humour/ a booke The commedie of muche A doo about nothing a booke/ to be staied. All these "books" are stated to be "my lord chamberlens menns plaies," which confirms Malone's opinion that the entry refers to the year 1600. Henry V. and Much Ado About Nothing were duly licensed (the former on the 14th and the latter on the 23d of August) and published that year; and it is not likely that the plays would have been "staied" after the publication of two of them. The prohibition was probably removed soon after it was recorded; and, as Halliwell suggests, the clerk may not have considered it worth the formality of a note in the body of the register. On the other hand, As You Like It is not mentioned by Meres in his enumeration of Shakespeare's plays† in Palladis Tamia, which was published in September, 1598; and it contains a quotation (see iii. 5. 80) from Marlowe's Hero and Leander, the earliest known edition of which appeared in the same year. It may therefore be reasonably concluded, *We print this as Wright gives it. In Halliwell's folio ed. it appears thus: 4 Augusti. As you like yt, a book. Henry the ffift, a book. Every man in his humor, a book. The Commedie of Much Adoo about nothinge, a book. Collier gives it twice (in the introductions to Much Ado and A. Y. L.), but the versions do not agree with each other or with either of the above. The matter is of little importance, and we refer to it only as illustrating one of the minor trials of an editor who cannot refer to original documents, but has to depend on copies made by others. † See the passage in our ed. of M. N. D. p. 9. as nearly all the commentators agree, that As You Like It was written between September, 1598, and August, 1600; probably in the year 1599. II. THE SOURCES OF THE PLOT. Shakespeare was chiefly indebted for the story of the play to a novel by Thomas Lodge, published in 1590 under the title of "Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie, found after his death in his Cell at Silexedra, bequeathed to Philautus sonnes noursed up with their father in England, Fetcht from the Canaries by T. L., gent., Imprinted by T. Orwin for T. G. and John Busbie, 1590."* This book was reprinted in 1592, and eight editions are known to have appeared before 1643. How closely the poet followed the novel may be seen by the extracts from the latter printed in our Notes below. We may add here that Lodge took some of the main incidents of his novel from The Cokes Tale of Gamelyn, which is found in a few of the later manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, but which the best editors of that poet believe to be the production of another writer. III. CRITICAL COMMENTS ON THE PLAY. [From Hazlitt's "Characters of Shakespear's Plays.”†] Shakespear has here converted the forest of Arden into another Arcadia, where they "fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world." It is the most ideal of any of this author's plays. It is a pastoral drama, in which the interest arises more out of the sentiments and characters than out of the actions or situations. It is not what is done, but what is said, that claims our attention. Nursed in solitude, "under the shade of melancholy boughs," the imagination grows soft and delicate, and the wit runs riot in idleness, * We give this as it appears in Halliwell's folio ed. † Characters of Shakespear's Plays, by William Hazlitt, edited by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, 1869), p. 214 fol. like a spoiled child that is never sent to school. Caprice and fancy reign and revel here, and stern necessity is banished to the court. The mild sentiments of humanity are strengthened with thought and leisure; the echo of the cares and noise of the world strikes upon the ear of those "who have felt them knowingly," softened by time and distance. "They hear the tumult, and are still." The very air of the place seems to breathe a spirit of philosophical poetry; to stir the thoughts, to touch the heart with pity, as the drowsy forest rustles to the sighing gale. Never was there such beautiful moralizing, equally free from pedantry or petulance : "And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, There is hardly any of Shakespear's plays that contains a greater number of passages that have been quoted in books of extracts, or a greater number of phrases that have become in a manner proverbial. If we were to give all the striking passages, we should give half the play. We will only recall a few of the most delightful to the reader's recollection. Such are the meeting between Orlando and Adam; the exquisite appeal of Orlando to the humanity of the Duke and his company to supply him with food for the old man, and their answer; the Duke's description of a country life, and the account of Jaques moralizing on the wounded deer; his meeting with Touchstone in the forest, his apology for his own melancholy and his satirical vein, and the well-known speech on the stages of human life; the old song of "Blow, blow, thou winter's wind;" Rosalind's description of the marks of a lover, and of the progress of time with different persons; the picture of the snake wreathed around Oliver's body while the lioness watches her sleeping prey; Touchstone's lecture to the shepherd, his defence of cuckolds, and panegyric on the virtues of “an If." All of these are familiar to the reader there is one passage of equal delicacy and beauty which may have escaped him, and with it we shall close our account of As You Like It. It is Phebe's description of Ganymede, at the end of the third act: "Think not I love him, though I ask for him,” etc. [iii. 5. 108-128]. [From Verplanck's Introduction to the Play.*] This comedy, at once romantic, philosophical, and pictur esque, is in its way one of its author's most peculiar and original works-original, indeed, in everything but the rough materials of the story, and peculiar in all its poetic and dramatic characteristics. In addition to the interest it derives from its varied beauties, it has also that of belonging to a remarkable epoch of Shakespeare's intellectual lifethat of the perfection of his art and taste in that especial walk of poetical comedy of which he had been the inventor, and which was the chief occupation of his genius from the beginning of his career of dramatic authorship, during the brilliant and crowded years of his youth and ripening manhood, until he approached middle life. When he entered upon that dramatic career, he found English tragedy not such certainly as he afterwards made it, in depth of passion or in moral truth, yet fully formed as a part of the national literature, and possessing many productions of great though unequal merits. Even the tragedies of the preceding generation had their share of bold and true conception mixed with their extravagance, and (as Sir Philip Sidney, the stern censurer of their defects, allowed) were full of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases;" while Shakespeare's immediate dramatic predecessors, Peel and Kyd and Greene, were fertile in glowing imagery and invention, and Marlowe had clothed much magnificence of thought and declamatory passion in that flowing and "mighty line" so much admired *The Illustrated Shakespeare, edited by G. C. Verplanck (New York, 1847), vol. ii. p. 5 of A. Y. L. |