This comprehensive guide includes a discussion of the play's textual history, analyses of its various contexts and sources of influence, an examination of its dramatic structure, a detailed plot summary, a discussion of major themes and critical approaches, and a look at major productions from the 16th through the 20th century.

Shakespeare's "As You Like It" continues to captivate audiences some 400 years after it was written. This reference is a comprehensive guide to the play. Beginning with a discussion of the play's textual history, the guide analyzes its various contexts and...

In reshaping Lodge's "Rosalynde" into "As You Like It, " Shakespeare not only undermines the Petrarchan and pastoral traditions of the romance, but also refutes the implicit gender structures upon which such Petrarchanisms are based. In refashioning "The True Chronicle Historie of King Leir" into the tragedy of "King Lear, " Shakespeare does not simply reject the explicit Christian setting and happy ending of "Leir, " but engages and responds to the highly Reformational and Calvinistic assumptions that shape and inform the source play. In rewriting Greene's "Pandosto" into "The Winter's...