SOURCE: "To the Point of Folly: Touchstone's Function in As You Like It" in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. XXII, No. 4, Winter, 1981, pp. 695-717.

In the essay below, Frail asserts that Touchstone mirrors the "kaleidoscopic" nature of As You Like It, blurring the lines between wisdom and folly so that we may free our minds long enough to recognize ourselves as "the foolish humans we are. "

Some recent critics of Shakespeare's comedies have emphasized the plays' dissonant undertones and somber forebodings of the later (and, it is implied, greater) tragedies and romances. Since As You Like It is the next-to-last of the comedies, it is particularly vulnerable to this meteorological approach, which spots the dust particles about which the thunderheads form. Ralph Berry, for example, finds that the "reality principle," not the "festive principle," is Shakespeare's criterion by which to judge the comedies. In this light, Berry sees As...