A Brief Discussion of Shakespeare's As You Like It

“As You Like It” opens as Orlando complains to the aged servant Adam of his own “servitude” to his brother’s bondage. He has been withheld what he feels he deserves: a high-class life with wealth, but his brother Oliver has denied him any rights to their father’s money. It is ironic that he complains of his “servitude” to Adam who is in fact Oliver’s servant. The two are bound by their common discontentment under the Oliver’s dictatorship. Orlando says, “This is it, Adam, that grieves me, and the spirit of my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude. I will no longer endure it...” (Act I.i 21-24).

We’re introduced to Oliver, the evil brother who plans to have Orlando killed by the Duke’s wrestler. This, we discover, is a result of jealousy. “(Orlando is) so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether mispris’d. But it shall not be so long, this w...