As You Like It – Annotated Edition by William Shakespeare

Description

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…”

First performed at the dawn of the seventeenth century to inaugurate London’s newly erected Globe Theatre, William Shakespeare’s As You Like It stands as English Renaissance drama’s most sparkling, philosophically daring pastoral comedy. When the tyrannical Duke Frederick banishes his virtuous niece Rosalind from court on pain of death, she flees into the mythical Forest of Arden accompanied by her loyal cousin Celia and the sharp-witted court jester Touchstone. Disguising herself as the swaggering youth “Ganymede,” Rosalind discovers an enchanted realm where displaced outlaws, lovesick shepherds, and cynical philosophers wander beneath the ancient trees.

There, she crosses paths with Orlando, her dispossessed and infatuated suitor, who has been plastering the woodland barks with clumsy Petrarchan love poems. Remaining securely behind her masculine disguise, “Ganymede” proposes a daring game: he will pretend to be Rosalind so that Orlando may woo him daily, allowing her to systematically test his devotion, dismantle courtly romantic clichés, and educate him in emotional honesty.

Through this brilliant, multi-layered masquerade—originally performed by an Elizabethan boy actor playing a princess playing a boy who role-plays a woman—Shakespeare conducts an exhilarating inquiry into gender performance, social power, the therapeutic freedom of wilderness, and the follies of human desire.

The DodaBooks Annotated Experience

Rather than exiling critical commentary to remote endnotes or distracting footnotes, this edition features 76 visible, color-coded annotation cards placed directly beside the spoken dialogue. Every single card pairs a verbatim passage quote with concise literary analysis and a dedicated “In Plain English” translation that instantly clarifies Renaissance idioms, classical myth, legal conceits, and metatheatrical staging devices.

Exclusive Editorial Apparatus Included:

• Authoritative Unabridged Play Text: All 5 acts, 23 scenes, and the famous concluding Epilogue, meticulously formatted in clean theatrical typography with verse lineations.
• Scene-by-Scene Reading Lenses & Recaps: Contextual reading lenses at the head of each scene highlighting dramatic irony and thematic tensions, followed by comprehensive 4-point scene summaries (What Happened, What Changed, What to Remember, Reading Insight).
• 76 Canonical In-Text Annotation Cards: Covering all 15 analytical categories without exception—from Stagecraft & Performance and Dramatic Irony to Language & Rhetoric and Social Context—with zero fabricated quotes.
• Comprehensive 21-Character Dramatis Personae: Analytical character dossiers evaluating status, psychological motivation, and dramatic trajectory for every figure from Rosalind and Orlando to Jaques, Touchstone, and Hymen.
• Maritime, Theatrical & Elizabethan Glossary: Over 200 historically verified terms defined in context, illuminating sixteenth-century theater slang, hawking phrases, court etiquette, and legal vocabulary.
• 30 Tiered Discussion Questions: Structured across a three-level pedagogical ladder (Interpretive Textual Analysis, Comparative Dramaturgy, and Open Philosophical Debate) ideal for reading groups, AP/IB literature classrooms, and university seminars.
• 40-Question Comprehensive Literary Quiz: Rigorous multiple-choice questions testing textual recall, thematic comprehension, and theatrical nuance, accompanied by an exhaustive answer key with analytical rationales.
• Curated Scholarly Further Reading: Twelve foundational critical texts, biographies, and editions annotated with detailed “Why This One” justifications.