INTRODUCTION.

“As You Like It” is not only founded upon, but in some points very closely copied from, a novel by Thomas Lodge, under the title of “Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacie,” which was originally printed in 4to, 1590, a second time in 1592, and a third edition came out in 1598. We have no intelligence of any re-impression of it between 1592 and 1598. This third edition perhaps appeared early in 1598; and we are disposed to think, that the re-publication of so popular a work directed Shakespeare's attention to it. If so, “As You Like It” may have been written in the summer of 1598, and first acted in the winter of the same, or in the spring of the following year^{1 note}.

The only entry in the registers of the Stationers' Company relating to “As You Like It,” is confirmatory of this supposition. It has been already referred to in the “Introduction” to “Much Ado about Nothing” (vol. ii. p. 183); and it will be well to insert it here, precisely in the manner in which it stands in the original record:—

“4 August.
“As you like yt, a book. Henry the ffift, a book. Every man in his humor, a book. The Commedie of Much adoo about nothinge, a book.”

Opposite this memorandum are added the words “To be staied.” It will be remarked, that there is an important deficiency in the entry, as regards the purpose to which we wish to apply it:— the date of the year is not given; but Malone conjectured, and in that conjecture I have expressed concurrence, that the clerk who wrote the titles of the four plays, with the date of “4 August,” did not think it necessary there to repeat the year 1600, as it was found in the memorandum immediately preceding that we have above quoted. Shakespeare's “Henry the Fifth,” and “Much Ado about Nothing,” were both printed in 1600, and Ben Jonson's “Every Man in his Humour” in the year following; though Gifford, in his edition of that poet's works (vol. i. p. 2), by a strange error,

states, that the first impression was in 1603. The “stay,” as regards “Henry the Fifth,” “Every Man in his Humour,” and “Much Ado about Nothing,” was doubtless soon removed; for “Henry the Fifth” was entered again for publication on the 14th August; and, as has been already shown (vol. ii. p. 183), Wise and Aspley took the same course with “Much Ado about Nothing” on the 23rd August. There is no known edition of “As You Like It” prior to its appearance in the folio of 1623, (where it is divided into Scenes, as well as Acts) and we may possibly assume that the “stay” was not, for some unexplained and uncertain reason, removed as to that comedy.

Malone relied upon a piece of internal evidence, which, if examined, seems to be of no value in settling the question when “As You Like It” was first written. The following words are put into the mouth of Rosalind:—“I weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain” (A. iv. sc. 1), which Malone supposed to refer to an alabaster figure of Diana on the east of Cheapside, which, according to Stowe's “Survey of London,” was set up in 1598, and was in decay in 1603. This figure of Diana did not “weep;” for Stowe expressly states that the water came “prilling from her naked breast.” Therefore, this passage proves nothing as far as respects the date of “As You Like It.” Shakespeare probably intended to make no allusion to any particular fountain.

It is not to be forgotten, in deciding upon the probable date of “As You Like It,” that Meres makes no mention of it in his Palladis Tamia, 1598; and as it was entered at Stationers' Hall on the 4th August [1600], we may conclude that it was written and acted in that interval. In A. iii. sc. 5. a line from the first Sestiad of Marlowe's “Hero and Leander” is quoted; and as that poem was first printed in 1598, “As You Like It” may not have been written until after it appeared.

There is no doubt that Lodge, when composing his “Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacie,” which he did, as he informs us, while on a voyage with Captain Clarke “to the islands of Terceras and the Canaries,” had either “The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn” (falsely attributed to Chaucer, as Tyrwhitt contends in his Introd. to the Cant. Tales, I. clxxxiii. Edit. 1830.) strongly in his recollection, or, which does not seem very probable in such a situation, with a manuscript of it actually before him. It was not printed until more than a century afterwards. According to Farmer, Shakespeare looked no farther than Lodge's novel, which he followed in “As You Like It” quite as closely as he did Greene's “Pandosto” in the “Winter's Tale.” There are one or two coincidences of expression between “As You Like It” and “The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn,” but not perhaps more than might be accidental, and the opinion of

Farmer appears to be sufficiently borne out. Lodge's “Rosalynde” has been recently printed as part of “Shakespeare's Library,” and it will be easy, therefore, for the reader to trace the particular resemblances between it and “As You Like It.”

In his Lectures in 1818, Coleridge eloquently and justly praised the pastoral beauty and simplicity of “As You Like It;” but he did not attempt to compare it with Lodge's “Rosalynde,” where the descriptions of persons and of scenery are comparatively forced and artificial:—“Shakespeare,” said Coleridge, “never gives a description of rustic scenery merely for its own sake, or to show how well he can paint natural objects: he is never tedious or elaborate, but while he now and then displays marvellous accuracy and minuteness of knowledge, he usually only touches upon the larger features and broader characteristics, leaving the fillings up to the imagination. Thus in ‘As You Like It’ he describes an oak of many centuries growth in a single line:—
‘Under an oak whose antique root peeps out.’ Other and inferior writers would have dwelt on this description, and worked it out with all the pettiness and impertinence of detail. In Shakespeare the ‘antique root’ furnishes the whole picture.”

These expressions are copied from notes made at the time; and they partially, though imperfectly, supply an obvious deficiency of general criticism in vol. ii. p. 115. of Coleridge's “Literary Remains.”

Adam Spencer is a character in “The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn,” and in Lodge's “Rosalynde;” and a great additional interest attaches to it, because it is supposed, with some appearance of truth, that the part was originally sustained by Shakespeare himself. We have this statement on the authority of Oldys's MSS.: he is said to have derived it, intermediately of course, from Gilbert Shakespeare, who survived the Restoration, and who had a faint recollection of having seen his brother William “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 person to a table, at which he was seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung a song.” This description very exactly tallies with “As You Like It,” A. ii. sc. 7.

Shakespeare found no prototypes in Lodge, nor in any other work yet discovered, for the characters of Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey. On the admirable manner in which he has made them part of the staple of his story, and on the importance of these additions, it is needless to enlarge. It is rather singular, that Shakespeare should have introduced two characters of the name of Jaques into the same play; but in the old impressions, Jaques de Bois, in the prefixes to his speeches, is merely called the “Second Brother.”

1 ^note.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ DUKE, Senior, living in exile. FREDERICK, his Brother, usurper of his dominions. AMIENS, Lord attending upon the exiled Duke. JAQUES, Lord attending upon the exiled Duke. LE BEAU, a Courtier. CHARLES, a Wrestler. OLIVER, Son of Sir Rowland de Bois. JAQUES [Jaques de Bois], Son of Sir Rowland de Bois. ORLANDO, Son of Sir Rowland de Bois. ADAM, Servant to Oliver. DENNIS, Servant to Oliver. TOUCHSTONE, a Clown. SIR OLIVER MAR-TEXT [Sir Oliver Martext], a Vicar. CORIN, Shepherd. SYLVIUS [Silvius], Shepherd. WILLIAM, a Country Fellow, in love with Audrey. HYMEN. ROSALIND, Daughter to the exiled Duke. CELIA, Daughter to Frederick. PHEBE, a Shepherdess. AUDREY, a Country Wench. Lords; Pages, Foresters, and Attendants. [Lord 1], [Lord 2], [Page 1], [Page 2] The SCENE lies, first, near Oliver's House; afterwards, in the Usurper's Court, and in the Forest of Arden.

AS YOU LIKE IT.

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