As You Like It

In a French duchy, the old Duke has been usurped by his younger brother, Frederick. A young man named Orlando is mistreated by his elder brother, against their dead father's wishes. Rosalind, the old Duke's daughter, has been allowed to remain in court only because she is the closest friend of Celia, Duke Frederick's daughter. When Rosalind is banished from court, she flees to the Forest of Arden with Celia and Touchstone, the court fool; meanwhile, Orlando also escapes to the forest, fleeing his brother. In the Forest of Arden, the old Duke holds court with exiled supporters, including the melancholy Jaques. There, Rosalind disguises herself as Ganymede and offers advice to a group of would-be lovers: Orlando, who has taken to posting love poems dedicated to Rosalind on trees, and Silvius and Phebe, two young shepherds. Shakespeare is thought to have written As You Like It around 1599; while stylistic analysis has not conclusively established its place in the canon, it was certainly completed by August 1600 and was published in the First Folio in 1623. The play includes a number of Shakespeare's most famous speeches, including Jaques' monologue, "All the world's a stage." This Standard Ebooks edition is based on William George Clark and William Aldis Wright's 1887 Victoria edition, which is taken from the Globe edition. Perfect for readers who love Shakespeare's wit and romantic comedies filled with mistaken identities and clever wordplay! This enchanting pastoral romance combines humor, love, and wisdom as characters discover themselves in the magical Forest of Arden. A timeless masterpiece that proves "all the world's a stage" in the most delightful way possible. The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)