Seven Ages

Comedy · c. 1599

Shakespeare’s As You Like It

Rosalind, banished from a usurper’s court, escapes to the Forest of Arden disguised as a young man — and, meeting the lovesick Orlando, offers to “cure” him by letting him woo her in her disguise.

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By the Seven Ages editors2 min read

The plot then largely stops so that conversation, song, and love in every register can happen instead.

Rosalind is the largest female role in the canon and the best company in it. Add the melancholy Jaques (“All the world’s a stage”) and Touchstone the fool, and you get the canon’s most purely pleasurable play about love as improvisation.

As You Like It on screen

1As You Like It (1936)

Film · dir. Paul Czinner

Laurence Olivier as Orlando

2As You Like It (2006)

Film · dir. Kenneth Branagh

Set in Meiji-era Japan

Reading As You Like It this year?

Mark it in your record when you finish — one seat, kept for decades.

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