WILLIAM VOLUME V AS YOU LIKE IT WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY GEORGE P. BAKER Copyright, 1907 BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS Entered at Stationers' Hall, London THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 66 Within the decade 1590-1600 "As You Like It" is unusual, because it is, roughly speaking, a pastoral play. In the strict sense of the word pastoral," a play dealing wholly with the loves of shepherds and shepherdesses, and filled with details of their habits and sports, at least as conventionally represented in fiction, no specimen surely given on the public stage before 1600 survives. George Peele in his Arraignment of Paris (1581?), in the sub-plot of Colin and Thestylis, breaks the way, but for the strictly pastoral play we must turn |