ABSTRACT
In this chapter we return to Shakespeare, this time to study one of his most popular comedies, As You Like It. Despite Shakespeare's status as a literary and dramatic 'genius' - a reputation he has enjoyed since the middle of the eighteenth century- his comedies have, until quite recently, received much less critical attention than his history plays or tragedies. In 1962, a well-known authority on Shakespeare, John Dover Wilson, argued that what he saw as the 'comparative neglect of Shakespeare's comedies is partly due ... to the neglect of comedy in general' (Shakespeare's Happy Comedies, p.17). This critical 'neglect' of comedy may be explained in various ways. It may, to some extent, be a consequence of the old idea, deriving from Aristotle, that tragedy as a genre is superior to, and therefore more worthy of study than, comedy. It may be that literary critics are, or have been, uncomfortable with the close association between comedy and popular culture, including its reliance on bawdy language and situations to provoke laughter.
