[Muir contends that Shakespeare did not intend As You Like It to be a traditional pastoral-a literary form which presents an ideal and virtuous vision of rustic life-but a work suited to his own dramatic purposes. The critic also emphasizes the irony throughout the play in the fact that Duke Senior and his entourage will return to the court at their first opportunity, and he warns against taking Jaques's comments as Shakespeare's own point of view, for they are consistently undercut by the other characters. Additionally, Muir perceives Shakespeare exploiting other literary conventions besides the pastoral, including the notion of "love at first sight" and, in the cases of Oliver and Duke Frederick, the sudden conversion of a villain.]

As you like it? Does the title suggest (as some critics have supposed) that Shakespeare was deploring the taste of his audience at the Globe, or was he...