Cover of As You Like It

As You Like It

  • Free to read
  • 2 hours to read
  • 23 chapters
  • Reading level: 6th grade

"As You Like It" by William Shakespeare is a pastoral comedy written in 1599. When Rosalind flees her uncle's court to escape persecution, she ventures into the Forest of Arden with her cousin Celia, seeking safety and discovering unexpected romance. There they meet an array of memorable characters, including the melancholy Jaques, whose famous observation that "all the world's a stage" captures the play's exploration of love, identity, and life's theatrical nature in a woodland refuge far from courtly intrigue.

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  • Comedy plays
  • Fathers and daughters
  • Exiles
  • Pastoral drama

Read the opening

Act I: Scene I: Orchard of OLIVER'S house

Enter ORLANDO and ADAM

ORLANDO. As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou say'st, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well; and there begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit. For my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly hir'd; but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth; for the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me his countenance seems to take from me. He lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my education. This is it, Adam, that grieves me; and the spirit of my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude. I will no longer endure it, though yet I know no wise remedy how to avoid it.

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Contents

  1. Front Matter
  2. Act I: Scene I: Orchard of OLIVER'S house
  3. Scene II: A lawn before the DUKE'S palace
  4. Scene III: The DUKE's palace
  5. Act II: Scene I: The Forest of Arden
  6. Scene II: The DUKE'S palace
  7. Scene III: Before OLIVER'S house
  8. Scene IV: The Forest of Arden
  9. Scene V: Another Part of the forest
  10. Scene VI: The forest
  11. Scene VII: The forest
  12. Act III: Scene I: The palace
  13. Scene II: The forest
  14. Scene III: The forest
  15. Scene IV: The forest
  16. Scene V: Another Part of the forest
  17. Act IV: Scene I: The forest
  18. Scene II: The forest
  19. Scene III: The forest
  20. Act V: Scene I: The forest
  21. Scene II: The forest
  22. Scene III: The forest
  23. Scene IV: The forest

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About this edition

This free edition of As You Like It by William Shakespeare comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #1786, released 1999-06-01. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer. Genre: Romance, Plays/Films/Dramas, Classics of Literature, British Literature.

Other editions: eBook #1523 (most read), eBook #1121, eBook #2244.

Summary provided by Project Gutenberg (automatically generated).

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