‘As You Like It.’
‘As You Like It,’ which quickly followed, is a dramatic adaptation of Lodge’s romance, ‘Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie’ (1590), but Shakespeare added three new characters of first-rate interest—Jaques, the meditative cynic; Touchstone, the most carefully elaborated of all Shakespeare’s fools; and the hoyden Audrey. Hints for the scene of Orlando’s encounter with Charles the Wrestler, and for Touchstone’s description of the diverse shapes of a lie, were clearly drawn from a book called ‘Saviolo’s Practise,’ a manual of the art of self-defence, which appeared in 1595 from the pen of Vincentio Saviolo, an Italian fencing-master in the service of the Earl of Essex. None of Shakespeare’s comedies breathes a more placid temper or approaches more nearly to a pastoral drama. Yet there is no lack of intellectual or poetic energy in the enunciation of the contemplative philosophy which is cultivated in the Forest of Arden. In Rosalind, Celia, Phœbe, and Audrey, four types of youthful womanhood are contrasted with the liveliest humour.