William Shakespeare's 'As You Like It' [Post-play Analysis & Read-through] (Patreon)

This is our post-play analysis for As You Like It.

You may wish to listen after your first reading of the play, using the lecture as an opportunity to reread. Or you may wish to listen as you make your way through the play in real time.

We have timestamps indicating the topics, with acts and scenes referenced throughout the video, so feel free to digest our discussion in the way that best serves you.

Video Timestamps:

Act One

• 0:00 a tale as old as time
• 1:40 Orlando’s brotherly lament
• 3:30 post- to pre-fall state
• 5:00 AYLI & Hamlet
• 6:00 the fatherly spirit within us
• 8:00 man’s place in the world
• 11:00 knowing a tree by its fruit
• 12:30 “new news at the new court”
• 14:20 fleeting time in the golden world
• 17:00 working day vs holiday
• 17:40 wrestling for supremacy
• 18:30 Shakespeare’s characters’ motivation
• 19:57 meeting Rosalind and Celia
• 20:51 how to be merry in the face of adversity
• 23:22 the sport of falling in love
• 23:58 meeting Touchstone
• 26:30 AYLI as festive celebration
• 27:30 beards and unmuzzled wisdom
• 29:30 having a mouth full of news
• 30:57 the wrestling match
• 33:00 Orlando and Rosalind meet
• 37:00 from father to husband
• 39:00 Rosalind banished
• 40:50 “treason is not inherited”
• 42:10 Rosalind becomes Ganymede
• 44:20 the masquerade of masculinity
• 46:40 liberty or banishment?

Act Two

• 47:00 Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden
• 49:00 the counsel of cold winds
• 50:00 reading the language of nature
• 51:00 “the poor dappled fools”
• 53:00 hunting for the hart/heart
• 54:10 the melancholy Jacques
• 1:00:00 sweating for duty, not meed
• 1:01:50 Ganymede, Aliena & Touchstone in Arden
• 1:02:00 gender reduced to clothing
• 1:03:00 being man and woman in one
• 1:04:00 meeting the shepherds
• 1:06:17 ‘Under the Greenwood tree’
• 1:08:00 Touchstone discourses on time
• 1:10:00 moving from city to countryside
• 1:11:39 ‘All the world’s a stage’

Act Three

• 1:15:50 Orlando’s love poetry
• 1:17:00 Touchstone on the shepherd’s life
• 1:18:50 Rosalind finds the poems
• 1:20:00 Jacques vs Orlando
• 1:21:30 habits and gender
• 1:22:10 Orlando, Ganymede, time & love
• 1:25:00 Ganymede’s discourse on women
• 1:27:00 curing love-sickness
• 1:30:00 Orlando lets Rosalind down
• 1:31:00 Rosalind meets her father
• 1:31:51 Silvius and Phoebe

Acts Four & Five

• 1:32:00 “woo me, woo me…”
• 1:36:00 “men are April when they woo”
• 1:38:00 “you have simply misused our sex”
• 1:39:00 Rosalind receive’s Phoebe’s letter
• 1:40:00 Rosalind learns her sex
• 1:42:00 the bad brother’s conversion
• 1:43:00 Rosalind faints at the sight of blood
• 1:44:00 the couples marry
• 1:46:00 Rosalind’s epilogue

Questions to Consider:

1) 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' Do you agree with this assertion?

2) What do you feel is the function of Shakespearean comedy? Does As You Like It fulfil it?

3) How does Rosalind compare with the other Shakespearean characters you have met? And does she continue to teach us about men and women today?

Bonus - Do let us know your favourite parts of the play and what your experience with As You Like It looked like.

Happy wooing, everybody!