As You Like It, William Shakespeare
As You Like It, William Shakespeare
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As You Like It

Author: William Shakespeare

Narrator: Edward James Beesley

Unabridged: 3 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/23/2021

Categories: Fiction, Drama


Synopsis

“All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances;And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages.”As You Like It follows the lives of men and women who have been banished from their home after ruler, Duke Senior, was usurped by his younger brother. Duke Senior’s companions begin living in the forest outside of the duchy, where they encounter a man named Orlando, who has been secretly in love with the Duke’s daughter Rosalind.Orlando journeys to win Rosalind’s heart, while not knowing where Rosalind actually is in the aftermath of the usurpation. Rosalind, her best friend (who is also the daughter of the Duke’s younger brother), and the court’s jester have also resigned to the forest, but are fully disguised to keep their identities hidden. They encounter interesting characters of all sorts, such as a melancholy man named Jacques, a shepherdess who accidentally falls in love with Rosalind’s male disguise, and many more.Obviously, this play is centered on a cast that keeps secrets, subtly deceives one another, dons disguises of all sorts, and above all else desires to find true love in the forest. This play is well known for the cast of entertaining characters, as well as being the origin of some of Shakespeare’s most well-known passages.

About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lisa of Troy on August 24, 2024

Yep, I’m going to spar with dead authors in this review. What else is new? As You Like It has a complex storyline involving two sets of brothers at odds with each other slapped together with a bit of politics and romance. The play has some of the most iconic lines in literature and has some laugh-out-......more

Goodreads review by Bill on May 30, 2019

As in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Hamlet" and "Antony and Cleopatra," Shakespeare in "As You Like It" is able to join disparate elements in unusual proportion into a unified whole of tone and mood which may be rationalized but never completely explained. What I love about this play is the way in w......more

Goodreads review by Henry on July 07, 2024

Orlando, the youngest, and most loved son of the late Sir Rowland de Boys, ( set in France in the 16th Century) is being mistreated by his older brother Oliver, the middle son Jaques, is away at school, since Oliver inherited most of the rich estate, and money, he has the power of the purse to do an......more

Goodreads review by Sean Barrs on August 21, 2018

I was at Shakespeare’s Globe in London yesterday watching this play and it was fab! I then came home and read it (got to love the literary life!) The best thing about the performance was the fact that Orlando was played by a woman who was less that five feet tall and Rosalind was played by a man was......more

Goodreads review by James on August 22, 2017

Book Review 3 of 5 stars to As You Like It, a pastoral comedy and play written by William Shakespeare around 1599. Rosalind falls for Orlando for many reasons in Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. Since Orlando is such a small man compared to Charles the wrestler, when Orlando beats Charle......more