As You Like It by William Shakespeare

THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES
Like most of the major characters in As You Like It, William Shakespeare experienced life in both the country and the city. His birthplace - Stratford, on the Avon River - was a bustling country town. He arrived in London, the social, commercial, and intellectual center of England, during the reign of Elizabeth I, at the height of the English Renaissance. All classes of Englishmen, including artisans, the new middle class, and the nobility, shared a keen desire to be entertained. The influx of wealth from the New World had given many of them money to spend. Since Shakespeare's plays were and still are crowd pleasers, he quickly became one of the most successful playwrights of his time.
It should be helpful to examine a few ways in which As You Like It reflects the interests of the audience for which it was written. For example, Elizabethan audiences took great pleasure in the type of complex wordplay practiced by Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone. During the R...