As You Like It

As You Like It was believed to be written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in First Folio, 1623.




The Summary of As You Like It
 As You Like It is one of the great comedy plays by William Shakespeare. Rosalind, is one of the most inspiring characters in the play and has more lines than any other females characters. She is the daughter of a banished Duke, Duke Senior. She falls in love with Orlando, the disinherited son of one of the duke's friend. When Rosalind is banished from the court by her uncle, Duke Frederick, She dressed herself as boy and called herself Ganymede. She traveled with her cousin Celia and the jester Touchstone to the forest of Arden, where her father and her friends live in exile. Themes about life and love, including aging, the natural world and death are included in the play. By the end of the play, Rosalind marries Orlando. He and Rosalind, Oliver and Celia, Sylvius and Phoebe, and Touchstone and Audrey are all married. Oliver becomes a gentler and kinder man so the Duke changes his ways and turns to religion and so that the Rosalind's father can rule again.

 Historical Context of As You Like It

Reference: Royal Shakespeare Company
Theatre in 1599.

The fact that As You Like It, along with three other plays of the period, The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Much  Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night, all have female leading parts of a similar and challenging type suggests that Shakespeare had in mind a particularly talented boy actor to play them.

Reference: http://www.likesbooks.com/france1.html

The Renaissance Humanistic movement, spilling in from Europe, had ushered in a new era of interest in learning and the classics; and in the past half century, English writers and poets had, for the first time, begun to try to create literature in their native tongue that could stand up to the greatest works written in Latin, French, or Italian.
In 1599,  William Shakespeare, Thirty five years old at the time, was enjoying his prosperity has one of the most successful people working in the London theatre.
His acting company, called The Lord Chamberlain's Men, had great favor with the Queen, and that very year the troupe was in the process of building its own theatre on the south shore of London's Thames River; the theatre would be called the Globe.

As You Like It was written in 1599, just after Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V and Julius Caesar and just before Hamlet in 1600.

As You Like It contains good and bad rulers - Duke Frederick and Oliver are tyrannous siblings, who take the rights of their nobler kin, Duke Senior and Orlando - but their wickedness comes straight out of fairy tales, and, the nature of their badness left unexplored, it is easy to create a happy ending by simply letting them reform. Shakespeare seems to be more interested in developing characters like Rosalind, Orlando, Touchstone and Jacques, through whom he can explore questions of identity, signs and symbols, self-knowledge and love.

Social Factors

Celia disguises her nobility to become a poor woman Aliena in the forest. She does this in order to protect herself, presumably from those who would try and steal from her. This gives her a freedom she has never enjoyed. Oliver falls for her dressed as Aliena and we know as a result, that his motives are honourable – he is not after her money. This is important in that previously, Oliver’s motives have been questionable.

Celia disguises her nobility when she travels to the forest by transforming to a poor woman and calls herself Aliena. This is is done to protect herself from thieves. this gives her a freedom she always wanted and finally got. The fact that she got banished makes her then feel both sad for leaving, but happy for freedom. Oliver is a good man that tries to find love and not riches. This is proven because of the fact that he fell in love with the Celia when she is dressed as Aliena. This is important because his motives were questionable before.

In the play, cravings for high status and social climb is very great. However, their methods to social climb are not always honest. Touchstone and Audrey on the other hand are referred to as honest people because they are unable to social climb.
Also it seems that whoever got their high status taken away are seen to be quite happy with the fact that the can live in peace without any bother. 

 It seems that Shakespeare was suggesting while writing the play, that because you are considered as high class, it is necessarily shown in your nature or to get higher in a social rank, you need to lie and deceive and so people at the top are the worst kind of people.

However, when Duke Senior is restored to his place of honour at the end of the play, readers are meant to believe that the  court will be a much better place because he witnessed how it was to be in poverty. He is compared to Robin Hood and is considered to be 'of the people.'

Themes

The main theme is the idea that love is a disease that brings suffering to the lover. As You Like It characters express the sufferings caused by their love, but they are all unconvincing and ridiculous.

Reference: http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/asyoulikeit/themes.html

In the play characters lament the suffering caused by their love, but these laments are ridiculous and unconvincing. In the play Orlando's sentiments to Rosalind are found to be so ridiculous. He says in the script that he should "live and die Rosalind's slave". Even the untutored shepherd takes it up on himself to be the tutored lover when he asked Phoebe to notice "the wounds visible/That love's keen arrow make". But his request for attention from Phoebe implies that the love that's enslaved can loosen the chains of love and that every wound made romantically can be healed, otherwise his request for attention would be pointless. 
Generally, As You Like It breaks with the courtly love by tradition by showing love as a force of hapiness and fulfilment and ridicules those who revel in their own suffering.