Arden Shakespeare Arden Shakespeare The Arden Shakespeare is a long-running series of scholarly editions of the works of William Shakespeare. It presents fully edited modern-spelling editions of the plays and poems, with lengthy introductions and full commentaries. There have been three distinct series of the Arden Shakespeare over the past century, and the third series has not yet been completed. Arden was the maiden name of Shakespeare's mother, Mary, but the primary reference of the enterprise's title is named after the Forest of Arden, in which Shakespeare's "As You Like It" is set. The first series was published by Methuen. Its first
As You Like It no evidence that the poem was written before "As You Like It". The second suggested source is "The Historie of Orlando Furioso" by Robert Greene, acted about 1592. It is suggested that Shakespeare derived the idea of Orlando's carving his lady's name on barks of trees from this play, but a lover carving love-poems on barks of trees was already in Lodge's tale. "As You Like It" was first printed in the collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, known as the First Folio, during 1623. No copy of it in Quarto exists, for the play is mentioned by the printers of