The Show's History

William Shakespeare's As You Like It, is a comedy thought to have been written in 1599. The play contains some of Shakespeare's most famous and well-known lines however, it has had to endure its due amount of criticism, with some historians finding it to be not up to Shakespeare's writing standards, while others believe it is one of his best works.

There is no certain record of any performance before the Restoration, however evidence suggests that the premiere may have taken place at Richmond Palace on 20 Feb 1599, enacted by the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Another possible performance may have taken place at Wilton House in Wiltshire, the country seat of the Earls of Pembroke. William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke hosted James I and his Court at Wilton House from October to December 1603, while Jacobean London was suffering an epidemic of bubonic plague. The King's Men were paid £30 to come to Wilton House and perform for the King and Court on 2 December 1603. A Herbert family tradition holds that the play that night was As You Like It.

During the English Restoration, the King's Company was assigned the play by royal warrant in 1669. It is known to have been acted at Drury Lane in 1723, in an adapted form called Love in a Forest. Another Drury Lane production seventeen years later returned to the Shakespearean text.

In the 1900s, As You Like It had a 1936 production starring Edith Evans and the 1961 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre production starring Vanessa Redgrave. The longest running Broadway production starred Katharine Hepburn as Rosalind, Cloris Leachman as Celia, William Prince as Orlando, and Ernest Thesiger as Jaques, and was directed by Michael Benthall. It ran for 145 performances in 1950.

Another notable production was at the 2005 Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, which was set in the 1960s and featured Shakespeare's lyrics set to music written by Barenaked Ladies.

In the last 10-20 years there have been dozens maybe even hundreds of community, school, and regional, productions of As You Like It that have modernized through, open race casting, gender bent casting, and re-interpretations of setting, time period, and character progression.

As You Like It: ADAPTATIONS

MUSIC:

- Thomas Morley (c. 1557–1602) composed music for "It was a lover and his lass"; he lived in the same parish as Shakespeare, and at times composed music for Shakespeare's plays.

- Donovan set "Under the Greenwood Tree" to music and recorded it for A Gift from a Flower to a Garden in 1968.

- John Rutter composed a setting of "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind" for chorus in 1992.

- Michael John Trotta composed a setting of "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind" for choir in

2013.[21]

- Meg Sturiano and Benji Goldsmith added original songs to their 2019 production.

RADIO:

- According to the history of radio station WCAL in the US state of Minnesota, As You Like It may have been the first play ever broadcast. It went over the air in 1922.

- On 1 March 2015, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a new production directed by Sally Avens with music composed by actor and singer Johnny Flynn of the folk rock band Johnny Flynn and The Sussex Wit.

FILM:

- As You Like It was Laurence Olivier's first Shakespeare film. Olivier, however, served only in an acting capacity (performing the role of Orlando), rather than producing or directing the film as he would in the future of his career. Made in England and released in 1936, As You Like It also starred director Paul Czinner's wife Elisabeth Bergner, who played Rosalind with a thick German accent. Although it was much less "Hollywood” than the versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet made at about the same time, and its cast was made up entirely of Shakespearean actors, it was not considered a success by either Olivier or the critics.

- Helen Mirren starred as Rosalind in the 1978 BBC videotaped version of As You Like It, directed by Basil Coleman.

- In 1992, Christine Edzard made another film adaptation of the play. In this version, the action is transposed to a modern and bleak urban world of the 90s.

- In 2006, Kenneth Branagh, a revered Shakespeare director created a film set in 19th-century Japan! It stars Bryce Dallas Howard, David Oyelowo, Romola Garai, Alfred Molina, Kevin Kline, and Brian Blessed. Although it was originally made for cinemas, it was released to theatres only in Europe, and had its U.S. premiere on HBO. Despite it not being a television film, Kevin Kline won a Screen Actors Guild award for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries for his performance as Jaques.

- The donation funded film, LOVE: As You Like It, is set in modern San Francisco with the cityscape in place of a forest and color-blind casting. The choice of color-blind casting had interested a reviewer as they had mentioned how interracial couples would have been condemned at Shakespeare's time. The film gained two awards at the International Indie Gathering Film Festival and Convention: second place as Best Romantic Comedy and the other for Best Supporting Actor.