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As You Like it Cd (Caedmon Shakespeare) |  | Author: William Shakespeare
Creator: Vanessa Redgrave
Publisher: Caedmon
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $6.49
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Seller: bookshop2
Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 1279600
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: CD-ROM
Number Of Items: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4
ISBN: 0694516651
Dewey Decimal Number: 822
EAN: 9780694516650
ASIN: 0694516651
Publication Date: November 1, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
All the world's a stage... - Jaques
The complete play in five acts. A Shakespeare Recording Society Production.
As You Like It is quintessential Shakespearean comedy, complete with a loquacious clown, lovers, disguises, rifts and reconciliation's, and all within the atmospheric confines of the enchanted Forest of Arden. As the title suggests, As You Like It is a play in which everyone gets their way, where sinners are redeemed and where love holds sway over all. And because it is Shakespeare, even so light a comedy contains a wealth of keen observations about humanity in general, and in particular about the age-old tension between so-called civilized society and the state of nature from which it evolved. No less poetically-accomplished than Shakespeare's' more serious works, As You Like It is a stimulating literary pleasure from start to finish.
Book Description
John Dover Wilson's New Shakespeare, published between 1921 and 1966, became the classic Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's plays and poems until the 1980s. The series, long since out-of-print, is now reissued. Each work contains a lengthy and lively introduction, main text, and substantial notes and glossary.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 24
 Lost In The Forest January 11, 2009
Bill Slocum (Norwalk, CT USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Was William Shakespeare having his groundlings on? Was this the 16th century equivalent of flicking a lit cigarette into the crowd?
"As You Like It" is praised as one of Shakespeare's most engaging, optimistic plays, about escaping the workaday world and finding love and magic amid the fertile groves of the Forest of Arden. Yet it is shackled by a plot dodgier than "Titus Andronicus"; a cast of colorless, miserable characters; and a presentation of romantic life that could have only been written by a middle-aged man stuck in the mother of loveless marriages.
I have no idea if Shakespeare's marriage was a happy one or not, or if George Bernard Shaw was right in his suggestion "As You Like It" was a title meant to connote utter contempt for theatergoers of his day. All I can say is reading "As You Like It" was the least fulfilling experience I've had reading Shakespeare, a chore well beyond the bad puns and lines that modern pronunciation have stripped of their rhyme.
There's a story in "As You Like It", regarding a nasty duke who exiles his daughter and niece, and a young lord whose brother strips him of his inheritance. The lord and niece fall in love, only she makes him work for it by approaching him in the guise of a male to counsel him and try to "cure" him of his infatuation. Their pointless banter runs on for quite a while. Meanwhile, an offputtingly smug clown named Touchstone tells off an uptight noble named Jacques, whose speech on the seven ages of man is the only memorable monologue in the play.
If love is being celebrated in "As You Like It", I'm at a loss as to how. That love is folly is a common theme in Shakespeare's plays, but here it seems a one-way ticket to hell. One woman treats her suitor with contempt, which only spurs him on. Touchstone picks up a country lass who seems chosen for her empty-headedness. One odd go-nowhere scene has a group of men singing boisterously of being cuckolded. And of course the play's center involves a woman teasing her true-loving beau under false pretenses for hundreds of blank-verse lines at a stretch.
At least the woman doing the teasing is Rosalind, the only sustained thing in this play I could enjoy, and only because I can imagine an actress assaying her with the right mixture of vinegar and sweetness, say Peggy Ashcroft in a 1930s London production. On the page she feels a bit too smooth, though it's hard to notice excess smoothness in a play where characters evidence no development and the central conflict is resolved offstage in the last four minutes.
The Signet edition has some nice supplementary features, including a history of various productions on stage and film and a lengthy section devoted to the play's source. Also some blather about Shakespeare the feminist, Shakespeare the cross-dressing pioneer, and how the play really isn't so badly crafted despite its near-total absence of engaging incident.
"Who has not looked at his or her watch during the last act of a well-made plot and sighed to think of the knots still to be untied?" asks one essayist in support of "As You Like It". It's not much in the way of praise, but perhaps it's the best one can offer here.
 Cambridge School Shakespeare: Nice Explanations for the Lay Reader August 30, 2007
Wolfgang Schlage
Note: This is a review of the particular "Cambridge School Shakespeare" edition [Edited by Rex Gibson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000] of As You Like it and not a review of the play itself.
This edition (a) contains the unabridged play and (b) tries to explain and elucidate Shakespeare's play to teenagers of the age of maybe 15-17. It clarifies difficult language, highlights the main conflicts, puts the play into a historical context and the context of the literary tradition that it belongs to. It encourages the reader to think of different possible ways to play the characters and different ways to understand the play.
I am not a teenager and I am not 16 years old any more, in fact, I am 53 years old with a PhD in Economics and a Masters in Psychology. I read Shakespeare for fun, to challenge my brain, and to grow personally. I found this edition of the play very helpful and enjoyable. The commentary neither spoiled my fun by overanalyzing or showing off its learnedness nor did it offend my intelligence by oversimplifying. In addition, the layout of the book is quite reader-friendly.
If you are a Shakespeare scholar or a scholar of English Lit, this edition will probably be too simple for you. For people of my caliber, however, I can really recommend this edition. Enjoy!
Recommended May 9, 2007
Mr. K. (U.S.A.)
The Caedmon recording of As You Like It is well worth the purchase just to hear two Redgraves soar in their performances.
Arguably the Greatest Shakespeare Comedy July 15, 2006
Bradley Headstone (New York)
As far as Shakespeare's comedies go, "The Comedy of Errors" will probably always be my favorite. While "As You Like It" never quite obtained the popularity of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," or "The Taming of the Shrew," one could easily argue that this is his greatest comedy. The play contains several plots that Shakespeare cleverly intertwines, and offers a happy ending for virtually all the characters. Love is triumphant, but more importantly, the theme of reconciliation carries through to just about everyone in the story. (Much like in "Comedy of Errors.")
The story begins with the sibling rivalry of older Oliver and younger Orlando. Oliver has hoarded the family inheritance, and after a brief fight, Oliver hopes that Orlando will die in a wrestling match. This is where the 2nd plot comes in. Duke Frederick (who has a daughter named Celia) has banished his older brother (the true duke who has a daughter named Rosalind). But for now, Rosalind is allowed to stay with Celia. Orlando meets these 2 women and falls in love with Rosalind. After the wrestling match, things start to go bad. Orlando learns that his brother Oliver is plotting to kill him, and Rosalind is banished. But all is not lost. (Orlando takes his loyal servant Adam and flees while Rosalind (in the male disguise Ganymede), along with Celia, and the comical Touchstone will flee to look for Rosalind's father.
Here is where the play starts to become really comical. (Good comedies often have a sad start. The hilarious "Comedy of Errors" started quite sadly.) Moving on, we meet Rosalind's fatherand his crew who have made exile into paradise. From Duke Sr's party, we meet the melancholy Jacques. Jacques is the most interesting character in the story. (In fact, the most famous passage in the play belongs to him. 'The 7 stages of man.')
Duke Sr. welcomes Orlando and Adam, and it isn't long before Orlando and Rosalind (though in her male disguise) run into each other. Shakespeare maintains the comedy when Rosalind tells Orlando to practice wooing Rosalind. (Orlando obviously thinks the Rosalind he sees is a man.)
Touchstone has some comical moments with Audrey. And there is the interesting triangle between where the Shepherd Silvius loves Phoebe, but Pheobe loves Rosalind! But this is when things start to resolve. Oliver comes on the scene, meets Celia, and falls in love with her. (So much so, that the now penitent Oliver is willing to reconcile with Orlando and leave him all.) The play ends not only with the reunion of Rosalind and her father, but the joyous weddings of Rosalind/Orlando, Oliver/Celia, Touchstone/Audrey, and Silvius/Pheobe.
Even more good news comes. Celia's father mends his ways, and returns all to Rosalind's father. Jacques offers the crowning touch. Despite his cynical nature, he is NOT A VILLAIN. Ironically, this hermit talks to more characters in the story than anyone. And while he can not be a part of the final happiness, he does not envy the characters who can. He does wish everyone well. As I said, my favorite comedy will always be "The Comedy of Errors." But "As You Like It" is arguably the best.
One of the most entertaining of Shakespeare's comedies. July 2, 2005
James Yanni (Bellefontaine Neighbors, Mo. USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
As with all of Shakespeare, the concept of love at first sight is given far too much credit, but other than that, this is a delightful romp filled with much amusement. The language is as beautiful as one expects in Shakespeare, but is somewhat less difficult for the modern reader to follow than in some of his plays; I found myself being more distracted than helped by most of the footnotes. As with most Shakespearean comedies, it was easy to see that this play was intended for the amusement of the common people; the similarities in style between the plot here and in much modern pop culture were striking (the sexual innuendo to be had when a woman passes for a man and finds another woman falling in love with her, for instance). If it had a flaw, it was that the ending was just a little TOO pat and contrived, even for a comedy, but that's just a minor quibble.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 24
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