Henceforth there is but little need of any allusion either to fast or to slow movement of time, other than to make us believe that Orlando has been long enough in the Forest of Arden to write love-songs in the bark of the trees, and that he goes wooing every day to Rosalind's sheep-cote.

Yet Jaques
That this

I have just said that there are two reasons why, dramatically, it is necessary for us to suppose that the Duke has been long an exile in Arden; the reason which has just been given is, I think, of itself quite sufficient. But there is yet another, which renders a long sojourn there by the Duke, at least of many, many months, if not of years, almost, if not absolutely, imperative. Unless the impressions are obliterated that the Duke's exile is 'new news,' and that Jaques and Amiens and the rest have only just fled from the court and flocked to Arden,-unless, I say, these impressions are obliterated, how can we possibly understand why Jaques or the Duke, when they met Touchstone in the Forest, did not instantly recognise him, familiar to them as he must have A fool of Touchstone's stamp could not be overlooked been in and about the court. under any circumstances, and if once seen and heard at any court, be it at the lawful Duke's or at the usurper's, he could not afterwards be readily forgotten. had apparently never before seen him, and the Duke certainly had not. incongruity never occurs to us when sitting at the play shows how powerless we have been all along in fencing our ears against Shakespeare's sorcery, and how completely he has overmastered us in his treatment of dramatic time. If Jaques fails to recognise Touchstone as a court fool, Touchstone fails to recognise Jaques as a courtier. Yet when Touchstone is about to be married by the hedge-priest and Jaques interferes, Touchstone at once recognises and salutes Jaques as his former companion, when he moralised the time. So that their failure to recognise each other at that first meeting could have been due to no lack of observation, and would have been impossible, does it not seem, if Jaques and the rest had only just left the envious court' a few weeks before, or as short a time before as we were convinced that they had left it, in the First Act? The conclusion, therefore, is to me inevitable, that the impression which Shakespeare wished to make on us is that the Duke and Jaques and the rest had been so long fleeting the time carelessly in the Forest of Arden that a new set of courtiers had arisen in their old court at home, almost a new generation since their exile had begun.

The student will find the passages indicating Long Time' and 'Short Time' gathered together in THE COWDEN-CLARKE'S Shakespeare Key, the second great debt which all of us owe to one of the sharers of that honoured union. DANIEL (New Shakspere Society, Series I, Part ii) has made a 'Time-Analysis' of this play, wherein, however, by counting, in the right butter woman's rank to market, the mornings, noons, and nights mentioned in the play, and by dividing them up into days, he finds that there are 'ten days represented on the stage, with such sufficient intervals as the reader may imagine for himself as requisite for the probability of the plot.' He is not blind (p. 156) to the difficulties of reconciling to the onward flow of the plot, the Duke's old custom' or Celia's pleadings with her father, but attempts no solution.

ENGLISH CRITICISMS

DR JOHNSON: 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 up their hearts. To Celia much may be forgiven for the heroism of her friendship. The character of Jaques 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 this work, Shakespeare 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.

FRANCIS GENTLEMAN (Dramatic Censor, i, 478, 1770): 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.

MRS INCHBALD (1808): This comedy has high reputation among Shakespeare's works, and yet, on the stage, it is never attractive, except when some actress of very superior skill performs the part of Rosalind. This character requires peculiar talents in representation, because it has so large a share of the dialogue to deliver; and the dialogue, though excellently written and interspersed with various points of wit, has still no forcible repartee or trait of humour, which in themselves would excite mirth, independent of an art in giving them utterance. Such is the general cast of all the other personages in the play that each requires a most skilful actor to give them their proper degree of importance. But, with every advantage to As You Like It in the performance, it is a more pleasing drama than one which gives delight. The reader will, in general, be more charmed than the auditor; for he gains all the poet, which neither the scene nor the action much adorn, except under particular circumstances. Shakespeare has made the inhabitants of the Forest of Arden appear so happy in their banishment, that when they are called back to the cares of the world, it seems more like a punishment than a reward. Jaques has too much prudence to leave his retirement; and yet, when his associates are departed, his state can no longer be enviable, as refined society was the charm which seemed here to bestow on country life its more than usual enjoyments. Kemble's Jaques is in the highest estimation with the public; it is one of those characters in which he gives certain bold testimonies of genius, which no spectator can controvert, yet the mimic art has very little share in this grand exhibition. Mrs Jordan is the Rosalind both of art and of nature; each supplies its treasures in her performance of the character, and render it a perfect exhibition.

HAZLITT (p. 305, 1817): 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
thoughts, to touch the heart with
Never was there such beautiful
Within the sequestered and

....

to breathe a spirit of philosophical poetry; to stir the pity, as the drowsy forest rustles to the sighing gale. moralising, equally free from pedantry or petulance. romantic glades of the Forest of Arden, they find leisure to be good and wise or to play the fool and fall in love. Rosalind's character is made up of sportive gayety and natural tenderness; her tongue runs the faster to conceal the pressure at her heart. She talks herself out of breath, only to get deeper in love. The coquetry with which she plays with her lover in the double character which she has to support is managed with the nicest address. . . . . The silent and retired character of Celia is a necessary relief to the provoking loquacity of Rosalind. . . . . The unrequited love of Silvius for Phoebe shows the perversity of this passion in the commonest scenes of life, and the rubs and stops which Nature throws in its way where fortune has placed none.

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE (April, 1833, p. 559): We call As You Like It the only true Romance of the Forest.' Touching as it is, and sometimes even pathetic, 'tis all but beautiful holiday amusement, and a quiet melancholy alternates with various mirth. The contrivance of the whole is at once simple and skilful,-art and nature are at one. We are removed just so far out of our customary world as to feel willing to submit to any spell, however strange, without losing any of our sympathies with all life's best realities. Orlando, the outlaw, calls Arden 'a desert inaccessible'; and it is so; yet, at the same time, Charles the King's wrestler's account of it was correct, 'They say he is already in the Forest of Arden,. . . . where they fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world.' The wide woods are full of deer, and in open places are feeding sheep. Yet in the brakes 'hiss green and gilded snakes,' whose bite is mortal, and under the bush's shade a lioness lies couching.' Some may think they have no business there.' Yet give they not something of an imaginative salvage' character,—a dimness of peril and fear to the depths of the forest?

CAMPBELL (1838): Before I say more of this dramatic treasure, I must absolve myself by a confession as to some of its improbabilities. Rosalind asks her cousin Celia, 'Whither shall we go?' and Celia answers, 'To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden;' but arrived there, and having purchased a cottage and sheep-farm, neither the daughter nor niece of the banished Duke seem to trouble themselves much to inquire about either father or uncle. The lively and natural-hearted Rosalind discovers no impatience to embrace her sire until she has finished her masked courtship with Orlando. But Rosalind was in love, as I have been with the comedy these forty years; and love is blind; for until a late period my eyes were never couched so as to see this objection. The truth, however, is love is wilfully blind, and now that my eyes are opened, I shut them against the fault. Away with your best-proved improbabilities when the heart has been touched and the fancy fascinated! When I think of the lovely Mrs Jordan in this part, I have no more desire for proofs of probability on this subject, though proofs pellucid as the morning dews,' than for the cogent logic of a bailiff's writ.' In fact, though there is no rule without exceptions, and no general truth without limitation, it may be pronounced, that if you delight us in fiction you may make our sense of probability slumber as deeply as you please.

But it may be asked whether nature and truth are to be sacrificed at the altar of fiction? No! in the main effect of fiction on the fancy they never are nor can be

sacrificed. The improbabilities of fiction are only its exceptions, whilst the truth of nature is its general law; and unless the truth of nature were in the main observed, the fictionist could not lull our vigilance as to particular improbabilities. Apply this maxim to Shakespeare's As You Like It, and our Poet will be found to make us forget what is eccentric from nature in a limited view, by showing it more beautifully probable in a larger contemplation. In this drama he snatches us out of the busy world into a woodland solitude; he makes us breathe its fresh air, partake its pastoral peace, feast on its venison, admire its bounding wild deer, and sympathise with its banished men and simple rustics. But he contrives to break its monotony by the intrusion of courtly manners and characters. He has a fool and a philosopher, who might have hated each other at court, but who like each other in the forest. He has a shepherdess and her wooing shepherd, as natural as Arcadians; yet when the banished court comes to the country and beats it in wit, the courtiers seem as much naturalised to the forest as its natives, and the general truth of nature is equally preserved.

The events of the play are not numerous, and its interest is preserved by characters more than incidents. But what a tablet of characters! the witty and impassioned Rosalind, the love-devoted Orlando, the friendship-devoted Celia, the duty-devoted old Adam, the humorous Clown and the melancholy Jaques; all these, together with the dignified and banished Duke, make the Forest of Arden an Elysium to our imagination; and our hearts are so stricken by these benevolent beings that we easily forgive the other once culpable but at last repentant characters.

HALLAM (Literature of Europe, ii, 396, 1839): The sweet and sportive temper of Shakespeare, though it never deserted him, gave way to advancing years and to the mastering force of serious thought. What we 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 Shakespeare's youth so mingled with the thoughtfulness of his maturer age. This play is referred with reasonable probability to the year 1600. Few comedies of Shakespeare are more generally pleasing, and its manifold improbabilities do not much affect us in perusal. The brave injured Orlando, the sprightly but modest Rosalind, the faithful Adam, 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.

W. W. LLOYD (Singer's Edition, 1856, p. 120): The usurper pays the penalties of a falsely-assumed position; his very lords characterise him justly when they speak in an undertone, and warn away from the range of his passion those whom he is fitfully incensed against. His very daughter disowns the ill-bought advancement he would provide for her, and slips from his side to accompany in peril and privation a victim of his jealousy. Thus in every form of loyalty, compassion, duty, and affection, whether spirited, tender, sentimental, or grotesque, the better spirits fly by natural

attraction to a more congenial centre, and in all happy companionship. The lords, Amiens, Jaques, and the pages, tender free duty to an exiled master; Celia proffers companionship to her banished cousin without ostentation, and it is accepted without set acknowledgement, because in the same sympathetic spirit in which it was made; old Adam with limping gait, but with the best heart he may, goes on with his young master; while Touchstone follows his mistress as devotedly as the best, perhaps the most devotedly of all, for he is the only one of them all who, as he is carried along by the current of his attachment, has still the faculty of contemplating his wanderings philosophically, of appreciating his sacrifices, whether in friendship or marriage, correctly, without making them one whit less willingly. Perhaps Jaques, in his parody of Amiens' song, approaches the critical vein of Touchstone pretty closely, but he is inferior in that mixed vein of self-observation and self-knowledge, which approximates Touchstone at one time to Mr Pepys, and at another to Michel de Montaigne.

HALLIWELL (Introduction, p. 71): Though said to be oftener read than any other of Shakespeare's plays, As You Like It is certainly less fascinating than several of his other comedies. The dramatist has presented us with a pastoral comedy, the characters of which, instead of belonging to an ideal pastoral age, are true copies of what Nature would produce under similar conditions. . . . . The poet has relieved the development of a melancholy subject and an insignificant story by the introduction of a more than usual number of really individual subordinate characters. Even Rosalind, that beautiful but wilful representation of woman's passion, is not an important accessory to the moral purpose of the comedy; and the other characters, however gracefully delineated, are not amalgamated into an artistic action with that full power which overwhelms us with astonishment in the grander efforts of Shakespeare's genius.

BATHURST (p. 76): It is the very pleasantest and sweetest of plays, sprinkled with a good deal of seriousness; and some unhappiness, but none of it cuts deep. The elder Duke has long been banished, and is quite contented with his situation. The distress of Orlando and Adam is speedily relieved. Rosalind and Celia, happy from the first, in each other's company, are quite gay and cheerful when they get into the forest. Even the bad brother partakes of the general sunshine, and is let off very easily, kindly, and pleasantly, though not with any great probability. The cheerfulness of this play is delicate, however, and gentle. There are not the coarse gayeties (if anything Shakespeare did can be called coarse) of Falstaff and his companions, or of the people in Olivia's house; nor the bad conceits of Romeo & Juliet. It is a play of conversation more than action, on the whole, and of character. Some of the characters, as Jaques and Touchstone, are shown in what they say merely; not what they do.

HERAUD (p. 235): 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 illus trated 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.

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