As You Like It / William Shakespeare / 263 pgs / Audiobook / Movie Adaptations

I'm in the process of reading all of Shakespeare's works, roughly one a month so far, and I just finished As You Like It. I like reading them in print and then listening to an audio version. This is a great Shakespeare production in performance, but I was underwhelmed reading it. The circumstances give the Bard quite a few opportunities to comment on gender, especially when Rosalind is dressed as Ganymede. She has many more freedoms as a man and knows she’ll be giving up a lot when she goes back and again when she marries. There’s also some muted commentary on race and station which I didn’t catch until reading background information. Celia and her friendship with Rosalind is my favorite part about this play. As one of my friends pointed out to me, this is “beach read Shakespeare” and best experienced in visual or audio form!