ABSTRACT
In As You Like It, forgetfulness and desire ultimately lead to the recuperation of the social order, as Zackariah Long suggests. As You Like It and All's Well That Ends Well place particular pressure on questions of memory and identity. In As You Like It, selves can seem alarmingly discontinuous; understanding or at least tolerance—even transformation—are possible when memory is used as the basis for imagining the experience of strangers, whether these strangers be former selves or other people. In All's Well That Ends Well acts of recollection and acts of imagination become too close for comfort. While social identity and a 'forgetful' subjectivity clash only to come to an uneasy alliance in both these plays, the two dramas also explore the problem of subjective continuity. In All's Well That Ends Well, Helena's forgetfulness of father and social position also leads to the perpetuation of the social order when she is finally gathered into Bertram's family.
