As You Like It
➔ First Performed : 1599-1600
➔ First Printed: 1623
➔ Source: Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde
➔ Setting of the Play: Forest of Arden
➔ Central Theme:
➔ Literary Genre: Comedy
Characters of As You Like It
- Duke Fredrick – Duke Senior’s Younger brother and his usurper, also father of Celia
- Duke Senior –
- Adam – A faithful servant to Orlando
- Audrey – A country girl
- Celia – Rosalind’s cousin
- Jaques – a discontented and melancholic lord
- Orlando De Boys – the youngest son
- Phebe – a proud shepherdess
- Rosalind – Duke senior’s daughter
- Charles – a wrestler
- Amiens – an attending lord and musician
- Silvius – a shepherd
- Corin – an elderly shepherd
- William – a country man
- Sir Oliver Martext – a curate
- Touchstone – a court fool or jester
Quotes and Lines from As You Like It
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”
“Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.”
“I pray you, do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine.”
“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish’d and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too.”
“Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”
“Sweet are the uses of adversity
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
“Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.”
“Time travels at different speeds for different people. I can tell you who time strolls for, who it trots for, who it gallops for, and who it stops cold for.”
“Men are April when they woo, December when they wed..”
“Master, go on, and I will follow thee
To the last gasp with truth and loyalty.”
“Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note,
Unto the sweet bird’s throat;
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.”
“My affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.”
“Truly thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.”
“We that are true lovers run into strange capers.”
“You and you are sure together,
As the winter to foul weather.”
“If it be true that good wine needs no bush,
’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue;
yet to good wine they do use good bushes,
and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues.”
“Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
“The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.”
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
“For I must tell you friendly in your ear,
Sell when you can, you are not for all markets.”
“Whoever loved that
loved not at first sight.”
“I will no longer endure it, though yet I know no wise remedy how to avoid it.”
“time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let time try”
As You Like It Question and Answers
1.’Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly’ These words occur in ……..
(a) Hamlet
(b) King Lear
(c) Twelfth Night
(d) As You Like It
Ans. d
2. Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It disguises herself as :
(a) Aliena
(b) Silvius
(c) Ganymede
(d) Jacques
Ans. c
3. Who utters the words “O coz, coz, coz, my
pretty little coz. That thou didst know how
thumany fathom deep I am in love !” in ‘As You
Like it’?
(a) Celia
(c) Orlando
(b) Phebe
(d) Rosalind
Ans. d
4. In the Epilogue Rosalind before bidding farewell makes a last appeal to :
(a) Jacques to be happy
(b) her father to live in Arden
(c) the ‘women’ in the audience to like the play
(d) Ganymede not to trouble Orlando
Ans. c
5. In which play of Shakespeare is there a tribute to Marlowe as the ‘dead shepherd’ ?
(a) Twelfth Night
(b) Measure for Measure
(c) As You Like It
(d) The Tempest
Ans. c
6. In ‘As You Like It’ who said to whom the following?
“All the world is a stage.”
(a) Touchstone to Celia
(b) Rosalind to Orlando
(c) Jacques to Duke Senior
(d) Adam to Duke Fredrick
Ans. c
7. Who, in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”, ‘can suck melancholy out of a song”?
(a) Touchstone
(b) Celia
(c) Jaques
(d) Duke Senior
Ans. c
8. Rosalind is the daughter of Duke Senior. Name Celia’s father.
(a) Oliver
(b) Jaques
(c) Orlando
(d) Frederick
Ans. d
9. “Under the greenwood tree who loves to lie with me”. This song has been sung by
(a) Amiens
(b) Phebe
(c) Silvius
(d) Jaques
Ans. a
10. In which play of Shakespeare does Adam appear?
(a) Merry Wives of Windsor
(b) As You Like It
(c) Twelfth Night
(d) Tempest
Ans. b
