SOURCE: McFarland, Thomas. “For Other Than for Dancing Measures: The Complications of As You Like It.” In Modern Critical Interpretations: William Shakespeare's As You Like It, edited by Harold Bloom, pp. 23-45. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.

In the following essay, originally published in 1972, McFarland examines the tragic, cynical, and unpastoral elements in the otherwise comic As You Like It.

To approach As You Like It immediately after Love's Labour's Lost and A Midsummer Night's Dream is to encounter a darkening of action and tone. The pastoral realm into which it enters has, in marked contrast to the moonlit forest outside Athens, genuine problems to ameliorate. The moment of pure pastoral celebration in Shakespeare's art is now forever gone. The motif of criminal action, which had been tentatively put forward in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, only to be banished from the golden confines of Navarre's park and...