As You Like It Study Guide

Text of As You Like It (from the University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center):  web version | e-book | Palm

Click here to read Spenser's pastoral poem, The Shepheardes Calender (1579).  

Erik Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development.

Debora Schwartz's As You Like It study questions.

Discussion Questions

• This play is as much a pastoral romance as it is a comedy.  What does the play say about the advantages and disadvantages of country life?
• This play has more songs than any other play by Shakespeare.  How do the songs contribute to the play's mood?
• Acts 2-4 are remarkably lacking in plot.  Why do you think the plot is so weak in the middle part of the play?  What does Shakespeare do here to sustain your interest?
• Who is Jacques, and what is his function in the play?
• Discuss the role of cross-dressing in this play.
• Dover Wilson wrote of Hymen's masque at the end of the play:  "There is no dramatic necessity for this masque-business; the appearance of Hymen is completely unexpected, seeing that what we have been led to anticipate is a magician.  Hymen's words, whether spoken or sung, do not seem to us in the least Shakespearian; and they might all be omitted without loss to the context."  Do you agree or disagree--and why?

Bibliography

Montrose, Louis.  "'The Place of a Brother' in As You Like It:  Social Process and Comic Form.  Shakespeare Quarterly 32 (1981):  28-54.