Shakespeare's As You Like It Author:William Shakespeare Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES AND COMMENT As You Like It was written, not to be read, but to be acted. Its first performance was no doubt superintended by Shakespeare himself, and th... more »ere is a credible tradition that he played the part of Adam. The stage directions, even when supplemented by subsequent editors, are scantier than they would be in a play published by a modern author, and the demand made upon the reader's imagination is proportionately greater. A play in any case requires closer attention from the reader than a novel, for the latter brings in narrative and description to the aid of the dialogue. And yet in a novel the most vivid and lifelike scenes are those in which we hear the characters speak, as well as learn from the author what happens to them and where the incident takes place. This is because, in real life, next to action it is conversation which most reveals people. You have, perhaps, an acquaintance of whose life you see nothing except at school. Aside from what he does there, you form your opinion of him chiefly from (i) what he says,— especially in regard to some subject in which he is greatly interested, or on some important occasion. You learn much, too, from (2) what his schoolmates in conversation say to him, for this shows the immediate effect of his words on them; and from (3) what they say about him. Of course in the case of (2) and (3) you have to take into consideration the aims and feelings of the speakers. But the point is that in these three ways you come to know the character of this acquaintance and to form an idea of the life he leads out of school. In a similar manner we get to know Orlando, Rosalind, and the other personages of the play and their life-stories. For we no more believe that they cease to exist between scenes, than that our school-fellows ...« less