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PREFACE

By ISRAEL GOLLancz, M.A.

THE EDITIONS

As You Like It was published for the first time in the First Folio; a Quarto edition was contemplated many years previously, but for some cause or other was "staied," and the play is mentioned among others in 1623, when Jaggard and Blount obtained permission to print the First Folio, as "not formerly entered to other men." The text of the play in the four Folios is substantially the same, though the Second Folio corrects a few typographical and other errors in the first edition.

As You Like It was in all probability produced under circumstances necessitating great haste on the part of the author, and many evidences of this rapidity of composition exist in the text of the play, e. g. (i) in Act I, sc. ii, line 284, Le Beau makes Celia "the taller," which statement seems to contradict Rosalind's description of herself in the next scene (I, iii, 117), “because that I am more than common tall”: (ii) again, in the first Act the second son of Sir Rowland de Boys is referred to as "Jaques," a name subsequently transferred to another and more important character; wherefore when he appears in the last Act he is styled in the Folio merely "second brother": (iii) "old Frederick, your father" (I, ii, 87) seems to refer to the banished duke (“Duke senior"), for to Rosalind, and not to Celia, the words "thy father's love,” etc., are assigned in the Folio; either the ascription is incorrect, or "Frederick” is an error for some other name, perhaps for "Ferdinand,” as has been suggested; attention should also be called to certain slight inaccuracies, e. g. "Juno's swans" (vide Glos

sary); finally, the part of Hymen in the last scene of the play is on the whole unsatisfactory, and is possibly by another hand.

DATE OF COMPOSITION

(i) As You Like It may safely be assigned to the year 1599, for while the play is not mentioned in Meres' Palladis Tamia, 1598, it quotes a line from Marlowe's Hero and Leander, which was printed for the first time in that year -five years after the poet's death-and at once became popular. The quotation is introduced by a touching tribute on Shakespeare's part to the most distinguished of his predecessors:

"Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might,

Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight."-(III. v. 82, 83.) 1 Two editions of Hero and Leander appeared in 1598. The first edition contained only Marlowe's portion of the poem; the second gave the whole poem, "Hero and Leander: Begun by Christopher Marloe and finished by George Chapman. Ut Nectar, Ingenium." The line quoted by Shakespeare occurs in the first sestiad:

"Where both deliberate, the love is slight:

Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?"

There are many quotations from the poem in contemporary literature after 1598; they often help us to fix the date of the composition in which they appear; e. g. the Pilgrimage to Parnassus must have been acted at Cambridge not earlier than Christmas, 1598, for it contains the line "Learning and Poverty must always kiss," also taken from the first sestiad of the poem. No evidence has as yet been discovered tending to show that Hero and Leander circulated while still in MS.

It is at times difficult to resist the temptation of comparing the meeting of Marlowe's lovers and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The passage in Marlowe immediately follows the line quoted in As You Like It; cp.:

"He kneel'd: but unto her devoutly prayed:

Chaste Hero to herself thus softly said,

'Were I the saint he worships, I would hear him.'
These lovers parled by the touch of hands."

Cp. Romeo and Juliet's first meeting, where Romeo ("the pilgrim") comes to "the holy shrine" of Juliet: "palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss," etc. If in this case there is any debt at all, it must be Marlowe's.

(ii) In the Stationers' Registers there is a rough memorandum dated August 4, without any year, seemingly under the head of "my lord chamberlens menns plaies," to the effect that As You Like It, together with Henry the Fifth, Every man In His Humour, and Much Ado about Nothing, are "to be staied." This entry may be assigned to the year 1600, for later on in the same month of that year the three latter plays were entered again; moreover the previous entry bears the date May 27, 1600.

THE SOURCES

1

The plot of As You Like It was in all probability 1 directly derived from a famous novel by Shakespeare's contemporary Thomas Lodge, entitled "Rosalynde, Euphues' Golden Legacie; found after his death in his cell at Silexedra; bequeathed to Philautus' sons nursed up with their father in England: fetcht from the Canaries by T. L. Gent." The first edition of the book appeared in 1590, and many editions were published before the end of the century (cp: Shakespeare's Library, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, Vol. II, where the 1592 edition of the novel is reprinted).

Lodge's Rosalynde is in great part founded upon the old Tale of Gamelyn, formerly erroneously attributed to Chaucer as the Cook's Tale, but evidently it was the poet's intention to work up the old ballad into the Yeoman's Tale; none of the black-letter editions of Chaucer contains the Tale, which was not printed till 1721; Lodge must therefore have read it in manuscript; 2 (cp. The Tale of Gamelyn, ed. by Prof. Skeat, Oxford, 1884). The story of Gamelyn the Outlaw, the prototype of Orlando, belongs to the Robin Hood cycle of ballads, and the hero often ap

1 Some have supposed that there was an older drama intermediate between As You Like It and Lodge's Rosalynde; there is absolutely no evidence to support such a supposition.

2 Harleian MS. 7,334 is possibly the first MS. that includes Gamelyn; it is quite clear in the MS. that the scribe did not intend it to be taken for the Cook's Tale (cp. Ward's Catalogue of British Museum Romances, Vol. I. p. 508).

pears in these under the form of "Gandeleyn," "Gamwell"; Shakespeare himself gives us a hint of this ultimate origin of his story:-"They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England" (I, i, 120-2).1

The Tale of Gamelyn tells how "Sire Johan of Boundys" leaves his possessions to three sons Johan, Ote, and Gamelyn; the eldest neglects the youngest, who endures his ill-treatment for sixteen years. One day he shows his prowess and wins prizes at a wrestling match: he invites all the spectators home. The brothers quarrel after the guests have gone, and Johan has Gamelyn chained as a madman. Adam the Spencer, his father's old retainer, releases him, and they escape together to the woods; Gamelyn becomes a king of the outlaws. Johan, as sheriff of the county, gets possession of Gamelyn again; Ote the second brother bails him out; he returns in time to save his bail; finally he condemns Johan to the gallows.

There is no element of love in the ballad; at the end it is merely stated that Gamelyn wedded "a wyf bothe good and feyr." This perhaps suggested to Lodge a second plot-viz., the story of the exiled King of France, Gerismond; of his daughter Rosalynd's love for the young wrestler; of her departure (disguised as a page called "Ganimede") with Alinda (who changes her name to Aliena) from the Court of the usurper King Torismond; and of the story of Montanus, the lover of Phoebe. The old knight is named by Lodge "Sir John of Bordeaux," and the sons are Saladyne, Fernandine, and Rosader. Adam Spencer is retained from the old Tale.2 The scene is Bor

1 "Arden" has taken the place of "Sherwood"; but this is due to Lodge, who localizes the story; the Tale of Gamelyn, however, gives no place at all. The mere phrase "a many merry men" suggests a reminiscence of Robin Hood ballads on Shakespeare's part. "Robin Hood plays" were not uncommon at the end of the sixteenth century, e. g. George-A-Green, Downfall and Death of Robert, Earl of Hungtington, &c. To the abiding charm of Robin Hood and Maid Marian we owe the latest of pastoral plays, Tennyson's Foresters. 2 This is an old tradition preserved by Oldys and Capell that

deaux and the Forest of Ardennes. A noteworthy point is the attempt made by a band of robbers to seize Aliena; she is rescued by Rosader and Saladyne; this gives some motive for her ready acceptance of the elder brother's suit; the omission of this saving incident by Shakespeare produces the only unsatisfactory element in the whole play. "Nor can it well be worth any man's while," writes Mr. Swinburne, "to say or to hear for the thousandth time that As You Like It would be one of those works which prove, as Landor said long since, the falsehood of the stale axiom that no work of man can be perfect, were it not for that one unlucky slip of the brush which has left so ugly a little smear on one corner of the canvas as the betrothal of Oliver to Celia; though with all reverence for a great name and a noble memory, I can hardly think that matters were much mended in George Sand's adaptation of the play 2 by the transference of her hand to Jaques."

Shakespeare has varied the names of the three sons; of the rightful and usurping kings (Duke Senior and Frederick); Alinda becomes Celia, Montanus is changed to Sylvius. In the novel Alinda and Rosalind go on their travels as lady and page; in the play as sister and brother. The character of Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey, have no prototypes in the original story. Various estimates have been formed of Lodge's Rosalynde; some critics speak of it as "one of the dullest and dreariest of all the obShakespeare himself took the part of Old Adam. The former narrates that a younger brother of the poet recalled in his old age that he had once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, "Wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another to a table, at which he was seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung a song." [N. B.-Shakespeare's brothers predeceased him.]

1 A Study of Shakespeare.

2 Mr. Swinburne alludes to George Sand's Comme Il Vous Plaira; an analysis of which is to be found in the Variorum As You Like It, edited by H. H. Furness.