Study Questions & Essay Topics
Study Questions
1. By putting
on male clothes and adopting a masculine swagger, Rosalind easily
passes as a man throughout the better part of the play. What does
her behavior suggest about gender? Does the play imply that notions
of gender are fixed or fluid? Explain.
2. Discuss
As
You Like It as an example of pastoral literature. What
features of the pastoral mode lend themselves to social criticism?
What, if anything, does Shakespeare’s play criticize?
3. Throughout
the play, we find numerous allusions to cuckoldry. In a play that
celebrates love and ends with four marriages, what purpose might
these allusions serve?
Suggested Essay Topics
1. As You Like It is
full of characters pretending to be someone other than themselves.
To what degree are the characters aware that they are role-playing?
Does their acting have serious consequences, or is it merely a game?
2. Like Rosalind, both Touchstone
and Jaques possess an ability to see things that the other characters
do not. They are critics, but their criticism differs greatly from
Rosalind’s. How is this so? To what effect do these different criticisms
lead?
3. In a play that ends with the
formation and celebration of a community, we may be struck by Jaques’s
decision not to return to court. What does his
refusal suggest about his character? What effect does it have on
the play’s ending? Does it cast a shadow over an otherwise happy
ending, or is it inconsequential?
4. As You Like It explores
the possibility of both homosexual and heterosexual attraction.
Does the play present one as the antithesis of the other, or does
it suggest a more complex relationship between the two? What, in
the end, does the play have to say about these different forms of
love?
5. What does Phoebe represent?
Why does Rosalind react so negatively toward her?
6. What is the significance of
Duke Frederick’s unexpected and very sudden change in Act V? Discuss
this episode in relation to other transformations in the play. What
does As You Like It suggest about the malleability
of the human experience?
