As You Like It

By William Shakespeare

Actor and director David Ivers presents As You Like It, as you’d like to hear it today. Presenting a new translation of Shakespeare into contemporary English, Ivers reimagines Shakespeare’s comedy from an actor’s point of view. Analyzing the play line by line to uncover the meaning of every joke, pun, and witty aside, Ivers repurposes Shakespeare’s language while maintaining an homage to the original rhythm, cadence, and structure. An accomplished actor and director, and a lifelong lover of the Bard, Ivers is the perfect writer to bring As You Like It into the present moment. 

This translation of As You Like It was written as part of the Play On! Shakespeare project, an ambitious undertaking from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that commissioned new translations of 39 Shakespeare plays. These translations present the Bard’s work in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
• Release date: Jun 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9780866986649

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is arguably the most famous playwright to ever live. Born in England, he attended grammar school but did not study at a university. In the 1590s, Shakespeare worked as partner and performer at the London-based acting company, the King’s Men. His earliest plays were Henry VI and Richard III, both based on the historical figures. During his career, Shakespeare produced nearly 40 plays that reached multiple countries and cultures. Some of his most notable titles include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. His acclaimed catalog earned him the title of the world’s greatest dramatist.

Book preview

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Play On Shakespeare

As You Like It

Play On Shakespeare

As You Like It

by

William Shakespeare

Modern verse translation by

David Ivers

Dramaturgy by

Lezlie C. Cross

Arizona State University

Tempe, Arizona

2021

Copyright ©2021 David Ivers.

All rights reserved. No part of this script may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage or retrieval systems without the written permission of the author. All performance rights reside with the author. For performance permission, contact: Play On Shakespeare, PO Box 955, Ashland, OR 97520,

[e-mail]

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Publication of Play On Shakespeare is assisted by

generous support from the Hitz Foundation.

For more information, please visit www.playonshakespeare.org

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Published by ACMRS Press

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,

Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona

www.acmrspress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ivers, David, 1969- author. | Cross, Lezlie C., contributor. | Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. As you like it.

Title: As you like it / by William Shakespeare ; modern verse translation by David Ivers ; dramaturgy by Lezlie C. Cross.

Description: Tempe, Arizona : ACMRS Press, 2021. | Series: Play on! Shakespeare | Summary: Actor and director David Ivers presents As You Like It, as you’d like to hear it today. Presenting a new translation of Shakespeare into contemporary English, Ivers reimagines Shakespeare’s comedy from an actor’s point of view. Analyzing the play line by line to uncover the meaning of every joke, pun, and witty aside, Ivers repurposes Shakespeare’s language while maintaining an homage to the original rhythm, cadence, and structure. An accomplished actor and director, and a lifelong lover of the Bard, Ivers is the perfect writer to bring As You Like It into the present moment-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021001975 (print) | LCCN 2021001976 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780866986618 (paperback) | ISBN 9780866986649 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Fathers and daughters--Drama. | Exiles--Drama.

Classification: LCC PR2878.A8 I94 2021 (print) | LCC PR2878.A8 (ebook) | DDC 812/.6--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001975

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001976

Printed in the United States of America

We wish to acknowledge our gratitude

for the extraordinary generosity of the

Hitz Foundation

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Special thanks to the Play on Shakespeare staff

Lue Douthit, CEO/Creative Director

Kamilah Long, Executive Director

Taylor Bailey, Senior Producer

Summer Martin, Director of Learning Engagement

Katie Kennedy, Publications Project Manager

Amrita Ramanan, Senior Cultural Strategist and Dramaturg

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Originally commissioned by the

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Bill Rauch, Artistic Director

Cynthia Rider, Executive Director

PREFACE

Play On Shakespeare

In 2015, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced a new commissioning program. It was called Play on!: 36 playwrights translate Shakespeare. It elicited a flurry of reactions. For some people this went too far: You can’t touch the language! For others, it didn’t go far enough: Why not new adaptations? I figured we would be on the right path if we hit the sweet spot in the middle.

Some of the reaction was due not only to the scale of the project, but its suddenness: 36 playwrights, along with 38 dramaturgs, had been commissioned and assigned to translate 39 plays, and they were already hard at work on the assignment. It also came fully funded by the Hitz Foundation with the shocking sticker price of $3.7 million.

I think most of the negative reaction, however, had to do with the use of the word translate. It’s been difficult to define precisely. It turns out that there is no word for the kind of subtle and rigorous examination of language that we are asking for. We don’t mean word for word, which is what most people think of when they hear the word translate. We don’t mean paraphrase, either.

The project didn’t begin with 39 commissions. Linguist John McWhorter’s musings about translating Shakespeare is what sparked this project. First published in his 1998 book Word on the Street and reprinted in 2010 in American Theatre magazine, he notes that the irony today is that the Russians, the French, and other people in foreign countries possess Shakespeare to a much greater extent than we do, for the simple reason that they get to enjoy Shakespeare in the language they speak.

This intrigued Dave Hitz, a long-time patron of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and he offered to support a project that looked at Shakespeare’s plays through the lens of the English we speak today. How much has the English language changed since Shakespeare? Is it possible that there are conventions in the early modern English of Shakespeare that don’t translate to us today, especially in the moment of hearing it spoken out loud as one does in the theater?

How might we carry forward the successful communication between actor and audience that took place 400 years ago? Carry forward, by the way, is what we mean by translate. It is the fourth definition of translate in the Oxford English Dictionary.

As director of literary development and dramaturgy at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, I was given the daunting task of figuring out how to administer the project. I began with Kenneth Cavander, who translates ancient Greek tragedies into English. I figured that someone who does that kind of work would lend an air of seriousness to the project. I asked him how might he go about translating from the source language of early modern English into the target language of contemporary modern English?

He looked at different kinds of speech: rhetorical and poetical, soliloquies and crowd scenes, and the puns in comedies. What emerged from his tinkering became a template for the translation commission. These weren’t rules exactly, but instructions that every writer was given.

First, do no harm. There is plenty of the language that doesn’t need translating. And there is some that does. Every playwright had different criteria for assessing what to change.

Second, go line-by-line. No editing, no cutting, no fixing. I want the whole play translated. We often cut the gnarly bits in Shakespeare for performance. What might

Reviews for As You Like It

[mbmackay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Nice little comedy with lots of mistaken/disguised identities and love interests, which we later saw played in King’s Park. Not 'great' literature, but a good romp. Contains the "all the world's a stage" line. Read January 2008.

[rbeene-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I haven't either read or seen this play.

[jpsnow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fun. Rosalind plays the romantics well and Shakespeare made a happy ending even beyond what was necessary. Jaques, Act II: "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players, They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts."

[nx74defiant · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I struggled with the language

[missyr46 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a comedy with many different characters such asOrlando, Rosalind, Toushstone, Jaques, Phoebe, and Silvius. This play is composed of many clever personalities, including a boy named Oliver who will not share his father’s recently inherited wealth with his brother Orlando. Other characters include Duke Senior, usurped of his throne, Rosalind, Touchstone, and Jaques.

[mickyfine · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I recently ordered this L.A. Theater Works audio production for work and couldn't resist the temptation of having James Marsters reading Shakespeare in my ears. The production is excellent and while the physical comedy that comes with cross-dressing is obviously missing, the actors do an excellent job of conveying the comedy using just their voices. An excellent way to revisit the Bard.

[deborahj2016 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Given as part of the course-work for BADA Summer 1999 in Oxford. The (very useful and well-researched) introduction is almost as long as the play itself! Loads of footnotes to help comprehension for the lay-reader.

[katieloucks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So great! Absolutely love it!

[amerynth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked "As You Like It" quite a bit. It has similarities to other works by Shakespeare -- characters in disguise and falling in love at the first glance. But it's also very charming and a nice little story, making for a fun read. Lots of familiar quotes in this one too!

[unreachableshelf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The New Folger Library editions of Shakespeare's works are my favorites. With ample introductory material, long notes at the end, and short language notes on the lefthand pages to match the text on the right, they are easy to read whether you need to check the notes or not.

[weeziesbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

“As you Like It” is a beloved Shakespeare play. it is easier to follow and understand as some his other works. There is the reintroduction of Rosalind and Orlando, who are deeply in love, but Orland does not recognize her because she is a boy. The story tells of a series of marriages and infidelities and mixed with love. In the story Rosalinda is so realistic when dressed as a boy because of he exile, that a young shepherdess is a bit taken with him/her). As usual, this volume is filled with quotes we will recognize and more than a bit of tongue and cheek humor. It is a light play for Shakespeare, and very enjoyable. This is a good piece for young people to read if they are not familiar with Shakespeare. There are also fairly good video productions of the play.I have the Pelican library of Shakespeare books and find them extremely easy to follow. With the introductions and foot notes well developed, it makes the reading more enjoyable and understandable for me personally.

[leslie398 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked this play, which I had thought was something else when I first started it! I found the comedy to be of the milder type of making me smile rather than laugh but still fun. There are several famous speeches, most memorable being the one about the seven stages of life.

[thinkneil · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This has some really cute lines, especially from Touchstone, but it is not one of Shakespear's best works in my opinion. Although it probably would be much better to see on stage rather than to read.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fabulous language. "All the world's a stage" is just one of many quotable quotes. Very much a fairy tale, but the wonderful Rosalind and the beautiful words of Shakespeare has made it one of my favorite of his comedies thus far.

[jhudsui_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

More of Shakespear's drag king fetish; to hetero audiences, light entertainment only notable as the source of the "all the world's a stage" quote.

[aileenpio · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My favorite Shakespeare play of all--for the humor and for Shakespeare's heroine, Rosalind

[coach_of_alva · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've been made aware that modernists like to write fiction that is basically plot-free, where the point is to entertain with beautiful, glorious language, not to excite or inform. One modernist, John Barth, has argued that what he is doing is more reactionary than modern, that he was merely returning to what masters like Cervantes and Rabelais did. Or, in this case, Shakespeare. He had already written one nearly meta-fictional play, Love's Labour Lost, where witty people did nothing but talk wittily about life. He revised and improved the idea for this play, where a group of people hide in the Forest of Arden and do little but discourse of love and life. I loved it all, but especially the typically plucky heroine and the two polar opposite clowns.

[cmbohn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm not going to go into the complicated plot on this one, but it's the one with Rosalind and Orlando, where Rosalind, for her own mysterious reasons, pretends to be a boy and flirts with Orlando, who is extremely dense, and never figures out that she is a girl.Forget about whether this is believable or not. (It's not.) In fact, the whole plot is pretty darn farfetched. It is, however, funny in some places and thoughtful in other places. Like all Shakespeare, it's much better on stage than on paper, but it was still a fun read.What I really enjoyed about the edition I read is that it had photos from the Royal Shakespeare Academy and others of the play, including a very young Alan Rickman as Jaques and a ludicrously costumed Kenneth Branagh as Touchstone. Very funny!

[jadski_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I think I read this at University...but the fact I can't remember it speaks volumes. I'm currently teaching this and found it quick and easy to read. But Shakespeare was never meant to be read was he? I'd like to see this of course. It would be hilarious. Hopefully soon somewhere in Sydney there will be a production and I look forward to it.I was particurly interested in The Forest of Arden representing how primal and animal selves, the natural world where still a heirachy exists. Shakespeare obviously writing in a Christian country steeped in Pagan lore and practice. A man so far ahead of his time with gender awareness and commentary on social status and abuse of power. Got to love the big William.