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This essential guide provides a comprehensive survey of the most important criticism surrounding As You Like It, one of Shakespeare's most popular and engaging comedies, from the earliest appraisals through to twenty-first century scholarship. Dana Aspinall outlines, assesses and explores the key critical issues, including As You Like It and the genre of comedy; Shakespeare's adaptation of sources; gender, love and marriage; and interrogations of power.
Highlighting how critical and scholarly studies of As You Like It continue to enrich our understanding of this complex and popular play, this guide is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of English literature, teachers, researchers, scholars, and lovers of Shakespeare everywhere.
List of contents
Introduction
1. 1709-1800: “To Breed Me Well”: Determinations of Genre and Character
2. 1800-1900: “Dancing Measures”: Arriving at Critical Consensus
3. 1906-1972: “A Great Reckoning”
4. 1948-1980: “Not for All Markets”
5. 1978-Present: “All the World’s a Stage”
6. 1980-Present: “To Mutiny Against This Servitude”
7. 1965-Present: “If I Were a Woman”
8. 1981-Present: “She Phebes me”
Conclusion
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index.
About the author
Dana E. Aspinall is Associate Professor of English at Alma College, USA.
Summary
This essential guide provides a comprehensive survey of the most important criticism surrounding As You Like It, one of Shakespeare’s most popular and engaging comedies, from the earliest appraisals through to 21st century scholarship. Dana Aspinall outlines, assesses and explores the key critical issues, including As You Like It and the genre of comedy; Shakespeare’s adaptation of sources; gender, love and marriage; and interrogations of power.
Highlighting how critical and scholarly studies of As You Like It continue to enrich our understanding of this complex and popular play, this guide is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of English literature, teachers, researchers, scholars, and lovers of Shakespeare everywhere.
Additional text
This erudite but accessible book navigates scholars and undergraduates through the critical reception of As You Like It. Aspinall deftly traces the characters and themes, and the interpretive and performative challenges, that have fascinated audiences for generations.
