PREFACE.

WITH regard to the origin and date of this most delightful and popular of Shakespeare's Comedies there is but little uncertainty. The registers of the Stationers' Company contain the following entry among others which are found on two leaves at the beginning of vol. C:—

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.

These are all under the head of 'my lord chamberlens menns plaies.'

The year is not given, but the date of the previous entry is 27 May 1600, and that of the following 23 January 1603, and as the other plays mentioned in the entry were printed in 1600 and 1601, it may be fairly conjectured that the year to be supplied is 1600. The play was probably written in the course of the same year. It is not mentioned by Meres in the list of Shakespeare's plays which he gives in Palladis Tamia, and it contains a quotation (iii. 5. 80) from Marlowe's Hero and Leander, which was first published in the year 1598. Now Meres's book was entered at Stationers' Hall on the 7th of September 1598, and therefore between that date and 4 August 1600, we have to put the three plays Henry V, Much Ado about Nothing, and As You Like It, which are all mentioned in the memorandum made under the latter date, while apparently they were not published when Meres wrote. Again,

1

whereas of the other plays, Every Man in his Humour and Henry V are entered again on 14 August, and Much Ado about Nothing on 23 August 1600, there is no corresponding entry for As You Like It, which so far as is known did not appear in print till the publication of the first folio in 1623. In the case of the other three plays the difficulty which caused them to be stayed was speedily removed, and we can only conjectus e that As You Like It was not subsequently entered because the announcement of its publication may have been premature and the play may not have been ready. Of internal evidence from the play itself there is nothing decisive. See notes on iv. 1. 134, and iii. 2. 326. There may possibly be a reference in v. 2. 63 (By my life, I do; which I tender dearly, though I say I am a magician') to the severe statute against witchcraft which was passed in the first year of James the First's reign. Again in iv. 1. 164 ('by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous') we might imagine the Act to restrain the Abuses of Players (3 James I. chap. 21, quoted in notes to the Merchant of Venice, i. 2. 99) to be pointed at. But both these would give dates too late, and they may easily have been added at some subsequent representation of the play, which was mainly composed, as I think, in the year 1600, and after the other plays which are mentioned with it in the entry at Stationers' Hall. I am inclined to conjecture that the stay of publication of As You Like It may have been due to the fact that the play was not completed, because even in the form in which it has come down to us there are marks of hasty work, which seem to indicate that it was hurriedly finished. For instance the name of Jaques is given to the second son of Sir Rowland de Boys at the beginning of the play, and then when he really appears in the last scene he is called in the folios 'Second Brother' to avoid confounding him with the melancholy Jaques. Again, in the first Act there is a certain confusion between Celia and Rosalind which is not all due to the printer, and gives me the impression that Shakespeare himself, writing in haste, may not have clearly distinguished

between the daughter and niece of the usurping Duke. I refer especially to i. 2. 74, 75, which stands thus in the first folio:

'Clo. One that old Fredericke your Father loues.

Ros. My Fathers loue is enough to honor him,' &c.

Theobald was the first to see that the last speaker must be Celia and not Rosalind, while Capell proposed to substitute 'Ferdinand' for 'Frederick' in the Clown's speech, supposing the former to be the name of Rosalind's father. It may be said of course that this is a printer's blunder, and I cannot assert that it may not have been. But it would be too hard upon the printer to attribute to him the slip in i. 2. 255, where the first folio reads, in Le Beau's answer to Orlando's enquiry which of the two was daughter of the Duke,

'But yet indeede the taller is his daughter,'

when it is evident from the next scene that Rosalind is the taller, for she says, as a justification of her assuming male attire (i. 3. 112),

'Because that I am more than common tall.'

Again, Orlando's rapturous exclamation 'O heavenly Rosalind!' comes in rather oddly. His familiarity with her name, which has not been mentioned in his presence, is certainly not quite consistent with his making the enquiry of Le Beau which shewed that up to that time he had known nothing about her. Nor is Touchstone, the motley-minded gentleman, one that had been a courtier, whose dry humour had a piquancy even for the worn-out Jaques, at all what we are prepared to expect from the early description of him as 'the clownish fool,' or 'the roynish clown.' I scarcely know whether to attribute to the printer or to the author's rapidity of composition the substitution of 'Juno' for 'Venus' in i. 3. 72. But it must be admitted that in the last scene of all there is a good deal which, to say the least of it, is not in Shakespeare's best manner, and conveys the impression that the play was finished without much care.

The title 'As You Like It,' as well as the main incidents,

were taken from a novel by Thomas Lodge,1 which was first printed in 1590. Another edition appeared in 1592, and from the reprint of this in Mr. Collier's Shakespeare's Library (2 vols., 1843) all the quotations in the present volume have been made. The title is, 'Rosalynde. Euphues golden Legacie, found after his death in his Cell at Silexedra. Bequeathed to Philautus Sonnes, nursed vp with their Father in England. Fetcht from the Canaries by T. L. Gent.' The writer who signs himself in full 'Thomas Lodge' in the Dedication of his book to Lord Hunsdon, professes to have written it to beguile the time during a voyage to 'the Ilands of Terceras and the Canaries' with Captain Clarke. In the same Dedication he calls himself a soldier and a scholar. 'To the Gentlemen Readers,' he says, 'Heere you may perhaps finde some leaves of Venus mirtle, but hewen down by a souldier with his curtlaxe, not boght with the allurement of a filed tongue. To bee briefe, gentlemen, roome for a souldier and a sailer, that gives you the fruits of his labors that he wrote in the ocean, when everie line was wet with a surge, and every humorous passion countercheckt with a storme. If you like it, so; and yet I will bee yours in duetie, if you be mine in favour.' It can scarcely be doubted that the words I have printed in italic suggested the title of the play, the incidents of which so closely follow the course of the novel, and therefore it is only necessary to mention Tieck's theory that it was intended as an answer on the part of Shakespeare to a piece of bombast in the Epilogue to Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels:

'I'll only speak what I have heard him say,

"By

'tis good, and if you like't you may."

He further suggests that Ben Jonson as Asper in Every Man out of his Humour, criticises Shakespeare's comedy, and that

1 Lodge's novel is itself to some extent taken from the Tale of Gamelyn, which is put in some editions of Chaucer in the gap left by the unfinished Cook's Tale.

the latter may have adopted the title of As You Like It as a kind of mocking reply. Capell argued from the use of the word 'pantaloon' which he found in The Travels of Three English Brothers, a piece which was printed in 1607, that this was about the date of our play. But the evidence from the Stationers' Hall Registers is conclusive against this.

I shall now give in full the chief passages from Lodge's novel, with the references to the corresponding portions of the play. These will shew that Shakespeare not only followed the plot but adopted also the phraseology of his predecessor. The story introduces us to Sir John of Bordeaux, a valiant knight of Malta, who in the prime of his youth had fought sundry battles against the Turks. On his deathbed he summoned his three sons and divided his estate between them, in a speech of great length, filled with quaintnesses and good advice.

، First, therefore, unto thee Saladyne, the eldest, and therefore the chiefest piller of my house, wherein should bee ingraved as wel the excellency of thy fathers qualities, as the essentiall fortune of his proportion, to thee I give foureteene ploughlands, with all my mannor houses and richest plate. Next, unto Fernandine I bequeath twelve ploughlands. But, unto Rosader, the youngest, I give my horse, my armour, and my launce with sixteene ploughlands; for if the inwarde thoughts be discovered by outward shadows, Rosader wil exceed you all in bountie and honour.' Saladyne, Fernandine, and Rosader, are the Oliver, Jaques, and Orlando of the play, and Sir John Bordeaux becomes Sir Rowland de Boys. After the old knight's death, Saladyne, in a lengthy soliloquy, considers with himself how he may lay hands on the portions of his brothers, who are both under age. His father's last wishes being only verbal and not expressed in writing were to be disregarded, and he then proposes to deal with his brothers, beginning with the younger. In this way we are introduced to the state of things revealed by Orlando in the opening scene.

Act I, Scene 1. 'Let him know litle, so shall he not be