As You Like It, one of Shakespeare's best known comedies. It was presented on the stage as early as 1600, but was not printed until 1623, when it appeared in the collection known as the "First Folio." The drama is founded on a novel by Thomas Lodge, but Shakespeare's "creative genius has surrounded a commonplace tale with an atmosphere of graceful romance." The scene is entirely in the open air; first a garden, then the lawn surrounding a palace, then, and for the greater part of the play, the forest of Arden. The plot is simple. It is the characters themselves that charm us; what they say, rather than what they do, that holds our attention. A quarrel between brothers, the daughter of an exiled duke disguising herself as a young forester, her interviews with her unsuspecting lover, the reconciliation of the brothers through "kindness, nobler than revenge," the four pairs of lovers that "join in Hymen's bands," the exiled duke finally restored to his own by the conversion of the usurper-such are the incidents of the play. But the wit and sprightliness of Rosalind, the frank sweetness of Celia, the coquettishness of Phoebe, the nobleness of Orlando, the wise folly of Touchstone-these are the things that charm. See ROSALIND; TOUCHSTONE; SHAKESPEARE; ARDEN. It is the most ideal of any of Shakespeare's plays.... There is hardly any one of Shakespeare's plays that contains a greater number of passages that have been quoted in books of extracts, or a greater number of phrases that have become in a measure proverbial. If we were to give all the striking passages we should give half the play.-Hazlitt. QUOTATIONS FROM "AS YOU LIKE IT." Sweet are the uses of adversity. Sucks melancholy out of a song as a weazel sucks eggs. For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood. Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, Frosty, but kindly. True is it that we have seen better days. Neither rhyme nor reason. I would the gods had made thee poetical. Down on your knees, And thank Heaven, fasting, for a good man's love. All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them,-but not for love. How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes! There's small choice in rotten apples. My cake is dough.