Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von As You Like It
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love quick talk, romantic comedy and stories where people change when they leave home. It also suits first-time readers of Shakespeare.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
As You Like It is a comedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written around the turn of the 1600s and first printed in the First Folio of 1623. It draws on a prose romance by Thomas Lodge called Rosalynde. Shakespeare keeps the outline of that tale but adds new characters, above all the sharp-tongued fool Touchstone and the gloomy thinker Jaques.
The play moves from a harsh court to a green forest, and it asks what happens to people when they leave the places where power sits. Two families are broken by greed. A young woman puts on a boy's clothes and finds she can speak more freely than ever before. You get a plot full of banter, songs, mistaken identity and love in many shapes, from the foolish to the truly tender. Let us begin where the trouble begins, with a usurped duke and a mistreated younger son.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1Two brothers wronged, two families split
- 2A wrestling match changes two lives
- 3The Forest of Arden offers shelter and strange company
- 4Rosalind in disguise teaches Orlando about love
- 5Love makes everyone a little foolish
- 6Talk, song and the world as a stage
Punkt 1 von 6
Two brothers wronged, two families split
The play opens with trouble in two households. Orlando is the youngest son of the late Sir Rowland de Boys. His father left him a fair share, but his eldest brother Oliver has kept him at home like a farm hand. Orlando has no schooling, no money and no rank to match his birth, and he says so out loud.
At the same time, a larger wrong has taken place at court. Duke Frederick has seized the dukedom from his elder brother, Duke Senior, and driven him into exile. Senior now lives in the Forest of Arden with a band of loyal lords, where they hunt deer and live like the outlaws of old English tales. The two stories mirror each other. In both, an elder brother is wronged by a younger one or by a brother who holds power, and in both, someone good has been pushed out into the wild.
Yet one person has been allowed to stay at court. She is Rosalind, daughter of the banished Duke Senior. Frederick keeps her because his own daughter Celia loves her so much that she cannot bear to be parted from her. The two girls are cousins, but they speak like sisters, and they tease each other with great ease.
This first movement sets up the question that drives the play. Where does a person belong when family, land and law have all failed them? The court is a place of fear, where every smile may hide a plot. Shakespeare shows that world quickly, so that the forest, when we reach it, feels like a deep breath after a held one.
Punkt 2 von 6
A wrestling match changes two lives
At court, a wrestling match is planned. Charles, the Duke's champion, has already broken the bones of several challengers. Oliver, eager to be rid of his brother, tells Charles that Orlando is a sly and dangerous fellow, and hopes the champion will finish him. Orlando enters the ring knowing he may be hurt, and he does not care much whether he lives.
Rosalind and Celia watch, and they feel pity. They try to talk Orlando out of the fight, but he answers them with a modest courtesy that moves Rosalind. She sees a young man who is brave, polite and sad, and who carries himself better than his poor clothes suggest. The match goes forward, and Orlando shows a strength that surprises everyone in the hall.
Then comes the moment that matters most. Rosalind gives Orlando a chain from her neck, and she finds that she can hardly speak. Both of them fall in love at first sight, and both are struck dumb by it. Shakespeare plays this scene with a light touch, and the silence is funny and sweet at once.
But the court is not a safe place for kindness. Duke Frederick, always suspicious, turns on Rosalind and orders her to leave on pain of death. He claims that people pity her, and that she steals the praise that should belong to his own daughter. Celia refuses to let her cousin go alone and decides to flee with her. They take Touchstone, the court fool, as their companion, and set out toward Arden.
Punkt 3 von 6
The Forest of Arden offers shelter and strange company
For the road, Rosalind makes a clever choice. A tall young woman is an easy target for thieves, so she dresses as a young man and calls herself Ganymede. Celia becomes a poor shepherd girl named Aliena. This disguise is practical at first, but it quickly becomes something more, because Rosalind finds a new voice inside it.
Orlando has also run for his life. He learns that Oliver means to burn him in his own lodging, and he escapes with Adam, an old servant who offers his small savings. Adam is worn out by the long walk, and Orlando, who has nothing, carries him. This small scene shows the tenderness beneath Orlando's roughness.
In the forest they meet Duke Senior, who has made peace with his lot. He sees a moral lesson in every hard thing, and he says that adversity has its uses. His court of exiles is gentle, musical and a little idle. Among them is Jaques, a melancholy lord who loves sadness the way others love wine, and who mocks the whole world from the shade of a tree.
Arden is not a perfect place. The winter wind is cold, the food is scarce, and the deer that the lords hunt are creatures Jaques pities. Still, the forest gives people room to say what they truly feel. Courtiers become poets, a fool becomes a lover, and a daughter of a duke herds sheep. Shakespeare uses the place to loosen every rule that held people tight at court.
Punkt 4 von 6
Rosalind in disguise teaches Orlando about love
The forest is also full of love, and most of it is a little silly. A young shepherd named Silvius adores a proud shepherdess named Phoebe, who scorns him. Touchstone, the fool, takes a fancy to a plain goatherd named Audrey and treats courtship as a joke he half believes. Each pair shows a different view of desire, from worship to cold mockery to earthy appetite.
Orlando, meanwhile, is writing love poems to Rosalind and hanging them on the trees. They are earnest, and not very good. Ganymede finds them and reads them with delight and with teasing, because the boy in front of the audience is the very woman the poems praise. Rosalind cannot bring herself to say who she is, and she enjoys her power too much.
So she makes Orlando an offer. Ganymede will pretend to be Rosalind, and Orlando must woo this pretend Rosalind every day. The cure, says Ganymede, will be that Orlando gets over his lovesickness. In truth, Rosalind wants to test him, and to hear all he has to say.
These scenes are the heart of the play. Rosalind talks rings around Orlando, and she tells him that lovers are not as faithful as poems claim. Yet she gives him chances to prove her wrong. Phoebe, to make matters worse, falls for Ganymede instead of Silvius, so the tangle of wanting grows tighter. The comedy comes from watching clever people hide, and from watching honest people try to see through them.
Punkt 5 von 6
Love makes everyone a little foolish
One theme runs under every scene, and it is that love changes how people behave. Each lover in Arden is slightly ridiculous. Orlando writes bad verse, Silvius begs for scraps of kindness, and Phoebe is caught by a person who does not exist. Shakespeare laughs at them all, but gently, since he also shows how much they feel.
A second theme is freedom. At court, Rosalind is a daughter, a niece and a danger to someone's power. In Arden, dressed as Ganymede, she may tease a man, argue with a shepherdess and lead a conversation. Gender is a costume in this play, and the costume lets her speak truths that her own skirts could not carry. In the theatre of Shakespeare's day, a boy actor played Rosalind, so a boy played a girl who plays a boy who plays a girl. The joke is layered, and it makes us ask what is real in love and what is performance.
A third theme is the contrast between court and country. The play does not claim that the forest is simple or pure. Touchstone mocks the shepherds' rustic ways, and Jaques mocks everyone, including himself. But Arden gives people time, and time reveals character. Those who were cruel at court, such as Oliver and Frederick, face a test that the forest sets for them.
The play also cares about family. Brothers harm each other, cousins protect each other, and a father waits in exile. Shakespeare asks whether blood alone makes a family, or whether loyalty does. The answer arrives through the many small kindnesses of the forest, and we must watch for them as the story moves on.
Punkt 6 von 6
Talk, song and the world as a stage
Shakespeare tells this story mostly through conversation. Rosalind and Celia trade quick jokes, Touchstone ties words into knots, and Jaques delivers long speeches about folly. Much of the play is in prose, and the plain speech makes the wit feel natural. Verse appears when feelings rise, and when characters want to sound grand or foolish.
Song is another tool. Amiens, a lord in Duke Senior's company, sings of the greenwood and of the winter wind. These songs give the forest a mood, a kind of music that stands against the hard talk of the court. Even the silly love poems are part of this sound, since the play likes to show how people use words to hide and to reveal.
The most quoted passage belongs to Jaques. In one long speech he compares the world to a stage and a human life to a play in seven ages. It is bleak and funny at once, and it is not the play's final word. Right after it, an old man arrives, and the Duke treats him with kindness. Shakespeare lets the gloomy view be heard, then lets the action answer it.
Watch also for the structure of pairs. Two brothers, two dukes, two cousins, and several couples all echo one another. Shakespeare builds his comedy like a mirror hall, and each reflection makes the others clearer. You will hear how the jokes carry the serious things.
Kurz gesagt
As You Like It follows two wronged families who flee from a harsh court into the Forest of Arden. There, Rosalind puts on a boy's clothes, meets the man she loves, and teaches him through play what love requires. Around them, shepherds, a fool and a gloomy lord show love as worship, as joke and as appetite.
What you keep from the play is a sense that freedom and love are made by talking, testing and laughing, and that a change of place can let a person become truer. When you read, watch how Rosalind controls every conversation, and how the songs and jokes carry the weight of the story.
Follow Rosalind into the Forest of Arden and watch her, as Ganymede, test Orlando's heart in the long wooing scenes.
Who’s who
- Rosalind
- Duke Senior's witty daughter and Celia's cousin disguises herself as Ganymede while exploring Orlando's love.
- Orlando
- Sir Rowland de Boys's youngest son loves Rosalind and suffers mistreatment from his elder brother Oliver.
- Celia
- Duke Frederick's daughter is Rosalind's devoted cousin, accompanying her into exile disguised as Aliena.
- Touchstone
- The court fool accompanies Rosalind and Celia to Arden and takes a fancy to Audrey.
- Jaques
- A melancholy lord accompanying Duke Senior observes his forest companions with sharp, often gloomy humour.
- Duke Senior
- Rosalind's father is the rightful duke, living in Arden after his brother seized power.
- Oliver
- Orlando's envious elder brother denies him education and opportunity while plotting against him.
- Phoebe
- A proud shepherdess rejects Silvius's devotion and feels attracted to Rosalind's assumed identity, Ganymede.
- Duke Frederick
- Celia's father has usurped his brother Duke Senior's position and rules the court.
- Silvius
- A young shepherd devoted to Phoebe pursues her despite her disdain for him.
- Audrey
- A plain goatherd in Arden attracts Touchstone, whose courtly wit contrasts with her simplicity.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 24,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 1 h 35 min
- Listening time2 h 35 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary; paperback, hardcover and large print at cost
- LanguagesEnglish and 11 other languages
Questions about As You Like It
What is As You Like It about?
It tells of Rosalind, banished from her uncle's court, who flees to the Forest of Arden dressed as a boy. There she meets Orlando, who loves her, and many other lovers, and tests how real love should be.
Who is Ganymede in As You Like It?
Ganymede is the name Rosalind takes when she disguises herself as a young man in the forest. Her cousin Celia calls herself Aliena. Rosalind uses the disguise to speak freely and to test Orlando.
What does all the world's a stage mean?
It is the opening of a speech by Jaques, who compares human life to a play. People enter, play many parts across seven ages, and exit. It is a bleak view of how life passes.
When was As You Like It written and is it a true story?
It is fiction, written around 1599 or 1600 and first printed in the First Folio of 1623. Shakespeare based it on Thomas Lodge's prose romance Rosalynde, published in 1590.
Is As You Like It hard to read?
It is one of the easier Shakespeare plays to follow. Much of it is witty prose, the plot is clear, and the disguise and love stories are easy to enjoy.