With its cross-dressed heroine, gender games and explorations of sexual ambivalence, its Forest of Arden and melancholy Jacques, this book speaks directly to the twenty-first century. It connects the play to the Elizabethan court and its dynamic queen and demonstrates that the play's vital roots in its own time give it new life in ours. List of illustrations ix General editors' preface xii Preface xvi Introduction 1(142) A brief view of the play 1(8) Fictions of gender 9(27) Rosalind and the boy actor 9(4) Later Rosalinds 13(13) Celia 26(5) Orlando 31(3) Phoebe and Audrey 34(2) Date 36(10) The Forest of Arden 46(26) 'Well, this is the Forest of Arden' 46(6) The hunt 52(3) Robin Hood and his merry men 55(3) Staging the Forest of Arden 58(14) Early foresters 72(7) The Earl of Essex 72(5) Thomas Morley 77(2) Realms of gold 79(16) Shakespeare and Thomas Lodge 80(5) Shakespeare and Sidney 85(1) Harington, Ariosto and Rabelais 86(4) Golden worlds 90(5) Pastoral 95(18) Genre: entertainments for Elizabeth 95(2) Corin and Touchstone 97(3) Borderlands: love and politics 100(6) A wise man and a fool: Jaques and Touchstone 106(7) A speaking picture': readers and painters 113(7) Text 120(20) The staying order 120(5) The Folio text: provenance and editorial practices 125(11) Text and performance 136(4) Epilogue: All the world's a stage' 140(3) AS YOU LIKE IT 143(292) Appendix 1: A court epilogue, Shrovetide 1599 349(6) Appendix 2: Casting and doubling 355(13) Appendix 3: Ben Jonson, As You Like It and the War of the Theatres' 368(6) Appendix 4: The Douai manuscript 374(14) Appendix 5: Political after-lives: Veracini's opera Rosalinda (1744) and Charles Johnson's Love in a Forest (1723) 388(5) Abbreviations and references 393(42) Abbreviations used in notes 393(1) Works by and partly by Shakespeare 394(1) Editions of Shakespeare collated 395(3) Other works cited 398(33) Manuscripts 398(1) Other works 399(32) Stage and film productions cited 431(4) Eighteenth-century productions 431(1) Nineteenth-century productions 431(1) Twentieth-century productions 432(1) Twenty-first-century productions 433(2) Index 435