As You Like It

“This life is most jolly” AMIENS (Act 2, Scene 7)
“Here we see no enemy, but winter and rough weather” Subverting pastoral idea of weather – AMIENS (Act 2, Scene 5)
“Joy is to see my lambs suck”
“Sit down and feed and welcome to our table” Self Sufficiency DUKE SENIOR (Act 2, Scene 7)
“Fleet their time carelessly”… “as they did in the golden world” Leisure CHARLES (Act 1, Scene 1)
“Are these woods not more free from peril from this envious court?” Monologue – DUKE SENIOR (Act 2, Scene 1)
“To join in Hymen’s hands” Biblical Reference – Spiritual -HYMEN (Act 5, Scene 4)
“There’s no clock in the forest” Free from constrictions – undermined later on in the play ORLANDO (Act 3, Scene 2)
“Now we go in content, to liberty and not to banishment” free from the harshness of the court CELIA (Act 1, Scene 3)
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” Seven stages of man JAQUES (Act 2, Scene 7)
“The worse fault you can have is to fall in love” Undermines pastoral concept of love JAQUES (Act 3, Scene 2)
“Let the forest judge” Judge has connotations of law therefore can be associated with the court. TOUCHSTONE (Act 3, scene 2)
“Break his neck and his finger” The court is much more violent then Arden -Country vs. Town concept OLIVER (Act 1, Scene 1)
“Golden World” a time of eternal spring and innocence without labor and laws – Pastoral Element
“I am a shepherd to another man and do not sheer the fleece that I graze” Subverting pastoral convention CORIN (Act 2, Scene 4)
Critical Quote – Richard Wilson The play is powerfully infected by narratives of popular resistance whilst its plot… Is the brutal story of Elizabethan social transformation
“From hour to hour, we rot and rot” Act 2, Scene 7 – time, subverting against the pastoral conventions
“Merry men” Idea of leisure
“Men are April when they woo, Decemeber when they wed” Pathetic fallacy – the change in men from getting married to being married