As You Like It [Annotated]

by William Shakespeare, Penny Gay, Peter Reynolds

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 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. There are no certain dates of performance until the 17th century, but it may have been performed in 1599 or 1603. 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.

This new annotated edition includes several never-before-seen features,
•The original editor’s preface that accompanied the original printing.
•Easily navigable Table of Contents

191 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 5, 2025

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".