SOURCE: “The Idea of Hunting in As You Like It,” in Shakespeare Studies, Vol. 21, 1993, pp. 72-95.

In the following essay, Daley questions the nature of the hunt in As You Like It, stating that it indicates the desperation of Duke Senior, and that it functions on an allegorical level as well.

Dr. Samuel Johnson counsels us that, “He who will understand Shakespeare must not be content to study him in the closet, he must look for his meaning sometimes among the sports of the field.”¹ This good counsel certainly applies to studying As You Like It, which is in some respects a hunter's play. We learn in the opening scene that the banished duke has taken refuge in the Forest of Arden, and in Elizabethan parlance forest means a spacious habitat for game. Almost immediately thereafter we learn that the hapless duke and his fellow outlaws live like...