[Halio describes time's two Junctions in As You Like It; first, as a foil whose two extremes-timelessness and time-consciousness favorably contrast virtuous rustic life in Arden with dissolute court life, and second, as timelessness alone, as a link between life in the present and life in an earlier, less corrupt, generally better time. The critic maintains that Shakespeare perceives the city and court to be ruthless and degenerate, threatening places from which Arden s timeless world is a refuge, a world where past and present merge and people flourish. Surveying the dramatic and thematic juxtapositions of these two worlds, Halio especially focuses on Rosalind's awareness of time; he notes how, unlike Touchstone's fascination with time's power to ripen things and rot them, Rosalind is strongly influenced by time's regenerative power, particularly as it concerns lovers.]

In As You Like It Shakespeare exploits timelessness as a convention of...