SOURCE: Daley, Arthur Stuart. “The Tyrant Duke of As You Like It: Envious Malice Confronts Honor, Pity, Friendship.” Cahiers Élisabéthains 34 (October 1988): 39-51.

In the following essay, Daley views Duke Frederick of As You Like It as an example of the stock Elizabethan tyrant character, and assesses his thematic purpose in the drama as it is principally expressed during the wrestling match episode of Act I, scene ii.

For the first six scenes of As You Like It, Shakespeare concentrates on elaborating an extraordinarily evil world. The first three scenes, making up Act I in the Folio, dramatize by a series of discussions and confrontations, with emblematic actions, the dominance of cruel and disruptive evil in the life of the family and the state, analogically picturing the aristocratic society (or first estate) of a nameless sovereign duchy. There injustice prevails unchecked by law or conscience: the innocent and...