SOURCE: Strout, Nathaniel. “As You Like It, Rosalynde, and Mutuality.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 41, no. 2 (spring 2001): 277-95.

In the following essay, Strout maintains that in As You Like It Shakespeare advocated the concept of mutuality through his characters' expressions of love and through the choices that they make. The critic contrasts this notion of mutuality with Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde (1590), which reinforces a patriarchal order based on rigid, absolute human behavior.

Over the years, critics have noted a variety of thematic oppositions in As You Like It: fortune versus nature, country versus court, a view of time “as the medium of decay” versus time “as the medium of fulfillment,” “contrary notions of identity,” “the conspicuous narrative artifice of the opening scenes” versus the “equally prominent theatrical artifice in the forest scenes,” two different “manipulative modes,” and, most recently, the concerns of a “generally privileged audience” versus “the concerns...