As If, Essays in As You Like It

Author

West

Year

2016

Publisher

Punctum Books

Language

English

Pages

Link

Last Update

07-Jan-2026

Keywords

Language & Literature

Description

As You Like It is and long has been one of Shakespeare’s best-loved plays. Critics in the nineteenth century in particular were captivated by what they saw as its artful blend of wistful nostalgia, buoyant optimism, and a dash of worldly wisdom in what the great Romantic essayist William Hazlitt declared “the most ideal of any of this author’s plays.” Love for the play was tied up in an equally ardent Victorian love for the character of Rosalind, which even Shakespeare’s most famous baiter George Bernard Shaw recognized with some exasperation: “Who ever failed, or could fail, as Rosalind?”