SOURCE: Daley, A. Stuart. “The Dispraise of the Country in As You Like It.” Shakespeare Quarterly 36, no. 3 (autumn 1985): 300-14.

In the following essay, Daley argues against the critical opinion that Shakespeare presented a thematic “antithesis between court and country” in As You Like It.

There is a well-established critical consensus that in As You Like It Shakespeare celebrates the superiority of life in the country to life in the city and the court. Is it possible that this consensus rests on a misunderstanding of the play? Or does the text in fact support the conviction of many critics that the forest of Arden represents a golden world, a restorative greenwood, where men live in the simplicity of nature in harmony and innocence?

“Freedom, of course, is in the hospitable air of Arden,” generalizes Harold Jenkins, “where convenient caves stand ready to receive outlaws, alfresco meals are abundantly provided...