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Registered: ‎06-14-2007
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AS YOU LIKE IT: Act I (wk of 1/4/10 - no spoilers, please)

[ Edited ]

Here's our thread for Act I.  Please avoid spoilers from later in the play, since these Act threads are for those who'd like to comment as they read.





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Registered: ‎10-19-2006
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ConnieK wrote:

If you like to talk about the play as you read it without fearing plot spoilers from later in the play, please feel free to write your comments, questions, observations here. 




As Who Likes It?  Who is the "who" Shakespeare is talking about?  The audience? The reader?  (Not likely in Shakespeare's time, since his plays weren't written to be preserved and read.  But perhaps a possibility today.) Society in general? Polite society?


Here's an interesting bit of information about the title:


As its title declares, this is a play to please all tastes. "For the simple, it provides the stock ingredients of romance....For the more sophisticated, it propounds...a question which is left to us to answer: Is it / better to live in the court or the country?....For the learned and literary this is one of Shakespeare's most allusive plays, uniting old traditions and playing with them lightly...

The title of the play came from a note to his "gentlemen readers" in Thomas Lodge's book, Rosalynde, in which he said, "If you like it, so."... People interpret different lines and actions of the characters as they wish, and we know Shakespeare would not object; it says so right in the title of the play! Actors and Directors have taken this literally, and have made various changes to the script, such as having Phebe gnaw on a turnip or an apple between her lines and having Rosalind kiss the chain before giving it to Orlando....  []

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