From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (London: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 496-98.
AS YOU LIKE IT
1600
Of this play the fable is wild and pleasing. I know not how the ladies will approve the facility with which both Rosalind and Celia give their hearts. To Celia much may be forgiven for the heroism of her friendship. The character of Jacques is natural and well preserved. The comic dialogue is very sprightly, with less mixture of low buffoonery than in some other plays, and the graver part is elegant and harmonious. By hastening to the end of his work, Shakspeare suppressed the dialogue between the usurper and the hermit and lost an opportunity of exhibiting a moral lesson in which he might have found matter worthy of his highest powers. -- JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1768, General Observations on Shakspeare's Plays.
We make no scruple to affirm that "As You Like It" will afford considerable instruction from attentive perusal, with great addition of pleasure from adequate representation. -- GENTLEMAN, FRANCIS, 1770, Dramatic Censor, vol. I, p. 478.
Shakespear has here converted the forest of Arden into another Arcadia, where they "fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world." It is the most ideal of any of this author's plays. It is a pastoral drama, in which the interest arises more out of the sentiments and characters than out of the actions or situations. It is not what is done, but what is said that claims our attention. Nursed in solitude, "under the shade of melancholy boughs, " the imagination grows soft and delicate, and the wit runs riot in idleness, like a spoiled child, that is never sent to school. Caprice and fancy reign and revel here, and stern necessity is banished to the court. The mild sentiments of humanity are strengthened with thought and leisure; the echo of the cares and noise of the world strikes upon the ear of those "who have felt them knowingly," softened by time and distance. "They hear the tumult, and are still. The very air of the place seems to breathe a spirit of philosophical poetry: to stir the thoughts, to touch the heart with pity, as the drowsy forest rustles to the sighing gale." -- HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1817-69, Characters of Shakspear's Plays, p. 214.
Rosalind is like a compound of essences, so volatile in their nature, and so exquisitely blended, that on any attempt to analyze them, they seem to escape us. To what else shall we compare her, all-enchanting as she is? -- to the silvery summer clouds, which even while we gaze on them, shift their hues and forms, dissolving into air, and light, and rainbow showers? -- to the May-morning, flush with opening blossoms and roseate dews, and "charm of earliest birds?" -- to some wild and beautiful melody, such as some shepherd boy might "pipe to Amaryllis in the shade?" -- to a mountain streamlet, now smooth as a mirror in which the skies may glass themselves, and anon leaping and sparkling in the sunshine -- or rather to the very sunshine itself? for so her genial spirit touches into life and beauty whatever it shines on! -- JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL, 1832, Characteristics of Women.
The sweet and sportive temper of Shakspeare, though it never deserted him, gave way to advancing years, and to the mastering force of serious thought. What he read we know but very imperfectly; yet, in the last years of this century, when five and thirty summers had ripened his genius, it seems that he must have transfused much of the wisdom of past ages into his own all-combining mind. In several of the historical plays, in the "Merchant of Venice," and especially in "As You Like It," the philosophic eye, turned inward on the mysteries of human nature, is more and more characteristic; and we might apply to the last comedy the bold figure that Coleridge has less appropriately employed as to the early poems, that "the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war-embrace." In no other play, at least, do we find the bright imagination and fascinating grace of Shakspeare's youth so mingled with the thoughtfulness of his maturer age. Few comedies of Shakspeare are more generally pleasing, and its manifold improbabilities do not much effect us in perusal. The brave, injured Orlando, the sprightly but modest Rosalind, the faithful Adams the reflecting Jaques, the serene and magnanimous Duke, interest us by turns, though the play is not so well managed as to condense our sympathy, and direct it to the conclusion. -- HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. ii, ch. vi, par. 51.
The poet, in conceiving this fine work, first generated a lofty ideal. His aim was to set forth the power of patience as the panacea for earth's ills and the injustice of fortune, and self-command as the condition without which the power would be inoperative. Neither this power nor its condition can be easily illustrated in the life of courts, but the sylvan life such as the banished Duke and his companions live in Arden, is favourable to both. In the contrast between the two states of life lies the charm of the play, and the reconciliation of these formal opposites is the fulfilment of its ideal. -- HERAULD, JOHN A., 1865, Shakspere, His Inner Life as Intimated in his Works, p. 235.
"As you Like It" is a caprice. Action there is none; interest barely; likelihood still less. And the whole is charming. -- TAINE, H. A., 1871, History of English Literature, p. 343.
Nor can it well be worth any man's while to say or to hear for the thousandth time that "As You Like It" would be one of those works which prove, as Landor said long since, the falsehood of the stale axiom that no work of man's can be perfect, were it not for that one unlucky slip of the brush which has left so ugly a little smear in one corner of the canvas as the betrothal of Oliver to Celia; though, with all reverence for a great name and a noble memory, I can hardly think that matters were much mended in George Sand's adaptation of the play by the transference of her hand to Jaques. Once elsewhere, or twice only at the most, is any such other sacrifice of moral beauty or spiritual harmony to the necessities and traditions of the stage discernible in all the world-wide work of Shakespeare. -- SWINBURNE, CHARLES ALGERNON, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, p. 151.
Thus much may suffice to show that the Poet has here borrowed a good deal of excellent matter. With what judgment and art the borrowed matter w as used by him can only be understood on a careful study of his workmanship. In no one of his comedies indeed has he drawn more freely from others, nor, I may add, is there any one wherein he has enriched his drawings more liberally from the glory of his own genius. To appreciate his wisdom as shown in what he left unused, one must read the whole of Lodge's novel. In that work we find no traces of Jaques, or Touchstone, or Audrey, nothing, indeed, that could yield the slightest hint towards either of those characters. It scarce need be said that these superaddings are enough of themselves to transform the whole into another nature, pouring through all its veins a free and lively circulation of the most original wit and humour and poetry. -- HUDSON, HENRY NORMAN, 1880, ed. Harvard Shakespeare, vol. V, p. 6.
Much as I have written, I feel how imperfectly I have brought out all that this delightful play has been and is to me. I can but hope that I have said enough to show why I gave my heart to Rosalind and found an ever new delight in trying to impersonate her. -- MARTIN, LADY (HELENA FAUCIT), 1884, On Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters, p. 355.
One of the topmost things in Shakespeare, the masterpiece of romantic comedy, one of the great type-dramas of the world. -- SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 325.
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