Season Select: As You Like It

As You Like It

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Laura Rook

Fast Facts

Playing: Hill Theatre | June 6 - October 4
Featuring: Jazzyln Luckett Aderele, David Alan Anderson, David Daniel, Rasell Holt, Gavin Lawrence, Elizabeth Ledo, Jaylon Muchison, Samantha Newcomb and James Ridge
Genre: Shakespeare Comedy
Last Seen at APT: 2018
Go If You Liked: A Midsummer Night's Dream (2025), Love's Labours Lost (2022), Twelfth Night (2019)

About As You Like It

Welcome to the Forest of Arden, William Shakespeare’s beloved playground for love, mild duplicity and fleeing the troubles of the outside world. Speaking of the world, we have As You Like It to thank for that famous “All the World’s a Stage” line. The backstory of such a well-known quote may surprise you.

As You Like It is largely believed to have been written in 1599 and finds itself grouped with the much more severe Henry V and Julius Caesar at the end of the 16th century. During this period, Shakespeare’s acting troupe, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, were in the process of finding a new artistic home following a dispute with the landlord. In a cunning and rather theatrical act, the players narrowly avoided eviction by deconstructing their own theater building and moving it piece by piece across the Thames River to a new site in Southwark, a little over two miles away.

When the theater re-opened in 1599, it was christened “The Globe” and had a new motto (the Elizabethan mission statement, if you will): “totus mundus agit histrionem,” translating to “all the world plays like an actor,” or “the whole world is a playhouse.” While the specific semantics of this translation are still debated, the connection to Jacques’s famous opening soliloquy line is unanimously acknowledged.

Historians believe Julius Caesar has the distinction of being the play to open The Globe, but Henry V, like As You Like It, has its own meta moment built into the play. “Or may we cram within this wooden O” the prologue reads, referencing the signature circular style of The Globe.

As with many of his monumental plays, Shakespeare found inspiration for As You Like It in the work of his contemporaries, in this case, Thomas Lodge. Lodge was a writer of poetry as well as some medical texts. His most popular dramatic work, Rosalynde; or, Eupheus Golden Legacy, is thought to have been published in 1590 following Lodge's swashbuckling side-quest to the Canary Islands. The novel follows the banished Rosalynde as she disguises herself as a man and flees to the woods. You may recognize some similarities between the source material and Shakespeare's adaptation.

Beyond dramaturgical connections to days of old, As You Like It continues to be a truly adored play well into the 21st century. Its cast of yearning, love-sick creatures prevail in the hearts of audiences everywhere in this story of identity, loyalty, love and nature. Oh, and the occasional wrestling match for good measure.