From the Royal Shakespeare Company – a fresh new edition of Shakespeare's journey into the Forest of Arden

THIS EDITION INCLUDES:

* An introduction to As You Like It by award-winning scholar Jonathan Bate
* The play – with clear and authoritative explanatory notes on each page
* A helpful scene-by-scene analysis and key facts about the play
* An introduction to Shakespeare's career and the Elizabethan theatre
* A rich exploration of approaches to staging the play featuring photographs of key productions

The most enjoyable way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or participate in it. This unique edition presents a historical overview of As You Like It in performance, recommends film versions, takes a detailed look at specific productions and includes interviews with two leading directors and a well-known Shakespearean actor - Dominic Cooke, Michael Boyd and Naomi Frederick - so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible, a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made 'our contemporary' four centuries after his death.

'Invigorating, radical and original … I look forward to using it at my desk and perhaps in my classroom over many years, enjoying Jonathan Bate's perceptive comments, trusting Eric Rasmussen's textual scholarship.'
– Professor Peter Holland, Times Literary Supplement

Introduction
About the Text
Key Facts
As You Like It
Textual Notes
Scene-by-scene Analysis
As You Like It in Performance: the RSC and Beyond
Four Centuries of As You Like It: An Overview
At the RSC
The Director's Cut: interviews with Dominic Cooke and Michael Boyd
Playing Rosalind: an interview with Naomi Frederick
Shakespeare's Career in the Theatre
Shakespeare's Works: a Chronology
Further Reading and Viewing
References
Acknowledgements and Picture Credits


JONATHAN BATE is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, University of Warwick, UK, and the editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Yale and UCLA and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Cambridge, and a Governor and Board member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. A prominent critic, award-winning biographer and broadcaster, he is the author of several books on Shakespeare, including The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador), which was praised by Sir Peter Hall, founder of the RSC, as 'the best modern book on Shakespeare.' In June 2006 he was awarded a CBE by HM The Queen 'for services to Higher Education'.

ERIC RASMUSSEN is Professor of English at the University of Nevada, USA, and the Textual Editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama and has edited volumes in both the Arden Shakespeare and Oxford World's Classics series. He is the General Textual Editor of the Internet Shakespeare Editions project - one of the most visited Shakespeare websites in the world. For over nine years he has written the annual review of editions and textual studies for the Shakespeare Survey.