As You Like It in a location called the Forest of Arden. This may be intended as the Ardennes, a forested region covering an area located in southeast Belgium, western Luxembourg and northeastern France, or Arden, Warwickshire, near Shakespeare's home town, which was the ancestral origin of his mother's family—who incidentally were called "Arden". Frederick has usurped the duchy and exiled his older brother, Duke Senior. Duke Senior's daughter, Rosalind, has been permitted to remain at court because she is the closest friend and cousin of Frederick's only child, Celia. Orlando, a young gentleman of the kingdom who at first sight has fallen in
As You Like It Ayres", published in London in 1600 contains a musical setting for the song "It was a lover and his lass" from "As You Like It". This evidence implies that the play was in existence in some shape or other before 1600. It seems likely this play was written after 1598, since Francis Meres did not mention it in his "Palladis Tamia". Although twelve plays are listed in "Palladis Tamia", it was an incomplete inventory of Shakespeare's plays to that date (1598). The new Globe Theatre opened some time in the summer of 1599, and tradition has it that the new