to "The Sad Shepherd" of Ben Jonson (1635?) or to John Fletcher's "Sad Shepherdess (circa 1608). 'As You Like It" is a pastoral rather in the sense put upon the word by Samuel Johnson: " a poem in which any action or passion is represented in its effect on a country life." This, too, before 1598, is rare in the English drama. Before that date even an artificial feeling for nature, to say nothing of genuine regard, is rare enough. Robert Greene has slight touches in the sub-plot of Lacy and Margaret of Fressingfield in "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay." George Peele, in his "Arraignment of Paris" and "Old Wives' Tale," curiously mingles frigid classical allusion with evidences of close observation of nature. There are some touches in the plays of John Lyly. It is, of course, possible that plays no longer extant would increase this list if we had them, for in Act IV of "The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington," Little John speaks as if plays full of outdoor life had not been uncommon:

"Methinks, I see no jests of Robin Hood,
No merry morrices of Friar Tuck,

No pleasant skippings up and down the wood,
No hunting songs, no coursing of the buck."

But the treatment of nature in these rustic scenes was, very probably, purely conventional, or there may have been little or no attempt to gain an added interest by fresh touches of nature; for in the extant plays preceding 1598, which might be expected, because they deal with Robin Hood, to show considerable feeling for

nature, there is little or nothing of the sort. In fact, in the two plays in question, " George a Greene," entered in the Stationers' Register in 1595, and attributed to Robert Greene, and in the "Edward I" of Peele, even the Robin Hood material provides very little. It is, therefore, so far as extant plays are concerned, in Shakespeare himself in his lyrics, in bits of description, in simile and metaphor - that we first find steady appreciation and simple presentation of nature.

There was evidently a vogue between 1598 and 1600 for plays which concerned themselves with life in field and forest, for in 1598 was licensed a two-part play by Munday and Chettle, not printed till 1601, — “The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington," and "The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington." In 1600 appeared "Look About You," and in 1600-01 was acted a non-extant play, "Robin Hood's Pen'orths." In 1599 there is record in Henslowe's "Diary" of payments for two plays which have not survived, - George Chapman's “Pastoral Tragedy" and "The Arcadian Virgin of Chettle and Haughton. Circa 1600 Lyly's "Love's Metamorphosis " was revived and the play of imitative title and nature, "The Maid's Metamorphosis,' was given. In the light of present evidence it is impossible to settle the question whether "As You Like It" by its success created this vogue or was merely the most artistic example of it. Certainly it is not on the list of Shakespeare's plays given by Francis Meres in his "Palladis Tamia" in the autumn of 1598, but it is not indubitably clear that that list is inclusive or infallible.

The quotation in the fifth scene of the third act, from Marlowe's "Hero and Leander," published in 1598,

"Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might,
"Whoever loved that loved not at first sight.""

has rather arbitrarily been held to date the play, for surely Shakespeare, a disciple, and even, in all probability, a collaborator of Marlowe, would have been likely to know the poem long before in manuscript. What is certain is that the play was entered in the Stationers' Register as follows:

As you like yt/ a booke

4 Agusti

Henry the Ffift / a booke

Euery man in his humour/ a booke

The commedie of muche A doo about nothing

a booke/

to be staied

From entries preceding and following this, critics are now well agreed that the date is 1600. Dr. Furness argues skilfully and cogently to prove that the cause of the staying was the already well-established tendency of Roberts to try to publish books properly controlled by others. When the three companion plays next appear in the Register, later in the same month, they are certainly in the hands of other publishers. "As You Like It," however, seems never to have been printed before the 1623 Folio. The date of composition most commonly assigned by critics is 1599.

What is noteworthy in all of the plays mentioned as plays of outdoor life which are extant, is that they were

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not in the least written to make nature interesting on the stage, but rather aimed, in recounting the doings of outlaws or shepherds, to use an interest in nature already stimulated, or to be stimulated, as a new element making for the variety so dear to the heart of the Elizabethan dramatist and playgoer. Even among these few plays, too, there is no comedy of just the same kind as Shakespeare's. "The Downfall" gives to a mingling of history and romantic legend a touch of nature. Of the same type is "Edward I." In "George a Greene legend predominates. The Arraignment of Paris," Love's Metamorphosis," and "The Maid's Metamorphosis," deal with gods and goddesses or those who people mythland. In material and in emphasis As You Like It" differs from its fellows. It so sets genuine romance that woodland charm is one of the chief attractions of the play. What is there, too, in Shakespeare's own work like it? There was opportunity in "Love's Labour's Lost" for a similar use of nature, but there Shakespeare let it appear only in rare touches, like those in the lyrics at the end of the play. In "As You Like It" we are steadily made to feel close to nature. There is nothing of that in "Love's Labour's Lost." No, except for touches here and there which reveal Shakespeare in all his work as the patient and loving observer of Nature's moods and ways, we must look to the second half of "The Winter's Tale" for any such pervasive atmosphere of the open air as we find in “ As You Like It." Within its own period, within the group of Shakespeare's plays, "As You Like It," then, is unusual.

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As I have already said, in no strict sense is the play a pastoral. This is no genuine tale of shepherds and shepherdesses. Though Corin, Sylvius, and Phebe tend flocks, though Rosalind and Celia live in a shepherd's hut, Shakespeare puts no emphasis on the manners and customs of the shepherds, but rather on the love story of all his figures as merely human beings. His emphasis for local colour and atmosphere comes instead in the brief scenes of the banished Duke and his companions. If the difference between what is and what might have been is not clear to a reader, let him turn to "The Faithful Shepherdess" or "The Sad Shepherd" and speedily it will be. As is always the case with Shakespeare after he passes, with “A Midsummer Night's Dream," the initial stage of his work, he individualises the conventional, humanises and simplifies the artificial and purely literary, bringing it all into relation with life as his audience knew and could understand it. What primarily interested him in writing the play was so to repeat a story known in Thomas Lodge's novel, "Rosalynde,' that even those of his hearers who already were acquainted with it should find it so superior in the retelling as to be of absorbing interest.

Dr. Furness has urged that the difference between the Clown of the second scene of the play1 and the Touchstone of the fifth act, as well as certain un-Shakespearean weaknesses felt here and there in the last act, may mean that an older play from Lodge's novel was carefully,

1 The name appears first in Act II, Sc. iv. Theobald first called the Clown of Act I, Sc. ii, this.