As You Like It themes

As You Like It themes

1. Love

   • Shakespeare demonstrates love can make people do foolish things
   • The artifice of 'courtly romance' is constantly mocked
   • The play steadily works its way towards four marriages
   • numerous cuckold jokes that suggest all men are destined to be cheated on by unfaithful wives

2. Foolishness and folly

   • The character that mocks the most is a 'licensed' fool, Touchstone
   • It's acknowledged that foolishness and folly makes us human

3. Gender

   • By dressing as Ganymede, Rosalind challenges what it means to be a man or woman
   • This is confused further as in Shakespeare's day it would've been a boy playing a girl playing a boy

4. Family

   • Family treachery and betrayal drives the play's action and reminds us there cannot always be loyalty
   • explores the social problems that can arise when oldest sons inherit all of their fathers' titles

5. Transformation

   • Some characters literally transform themselves by cross-dressing, while others shrug off their city-slicker identities and live as rustic country-types
   • these "conversions" are sudden and seemingly miraculous, as is the case with Duke Frederick and Oliver
   • this theme allows Shakespeare to explore the nature of the theater, which requires actors to transform themselves on an ever-changing stage