SOURCE: Willis, Paul J. “‘Tongues in Trees’: The Book of Nature in As You Like It.” Modern Language Studies 18, no. 3 (summer 1988): 65-74.

In the following essay, Willis surveys the widely varying interpretations of nature expressed by the characters of As You Like It, finding these interpretations parody, but ultimately preserve, the Christian metaphor of the “book of nature.”

In As You Like It 2.1, Duke Senior assesses the Forest of Arden with a sweet variation on a theological commonplace:

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. 

(15-17)

These “tongues in trees, books in … brooks,” and “sermons in stones” all presumably do their part—with “the chiding of the winter's wind” (7)—in persuading the Duke what he is. But these lines also seem to initiate a playful test of the received idea...