Overview

From the Royal Shakespeare Company a fresh new edition of Shakespeare's journey into the Forest of Arden. This edition includes an introduction to As You Like It by award-winning scholar Jonathan Bate, the text of the play with clear and authoritative explanatory notes on each page, a helpful scene-by-scene analysis and key facts about the play, an introduction to Shakespeare's career and the Elizabethan theatre  and a rich exploration of approaches to staging the play featuring photographs of key productions. This unique edition presents a historical overview of As You Like It in performance, recommends film versions, takes a detailed look at specific productions and includes interviews with two leading directors and a well-known Shakespearean actor - Dominic Cooke, Michael Boyd and Naomi Frederick - so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible, a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made 'our contemporary' four centuries after his death.