SOURCE: Wilson, Rawdon. “The Way to Arden: Attitudes toward Time in As You Like It.” Shakespeare Quarterly, 26, no. 1 (Winter 1975): 16-24.

In the following essay, Wilson identifies two concepts of time in As You Like It: one that views time as an objective process of measuring change and another that perceives time as relative and subjective. The critic finds that objective time is associated with the world of commerce and exchange, while the subjective sense of time is associated with the Forest of Arden.

In an essay on As You Like It published in 1940, James Smith argued that Celia's remark at the end of the first act, that Touchstone would “go along o'er the wide world” with her,¹ might have had “importance in an earlier version, but in that which has survived Shakespeare is no more concerned with how the characters arrive in Arden—whether under Touchstone's convoy or...