Both a witty satire of literary cliché and a tender meditation on the varieties of love, As You Like It continues to be one of Shakespeare’s most beloved and widely performed comedies. In the introduction to this new edition, David Bevington traces the complex relationships between the characters in the play, and explores the history of its criticism from Samuel Johnson to the twenty-first century. As part of the newly launched Broadview Press / Internet Shakespeare Editions series, this edition features a variety of interleaved materials—from facsimile pages, diagrams, and musical scores to illustrations and extended discussions of myth and folklore—that provide a context for the social and cultural allusions in the play. Appendices offer excerpts from Shakespeare’s key sources and influences, including Thomas Lodge’s Rosalind and Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humor. A collaboration between Broadview Press and the Internet Shakespeare Editions project at the University of Victoria, the editions developed for this series have been comprehensively annotated and draw on the authoritative texts newly edited for the ISE. This innovative series allows readers to access extensive and reliable online resources linked to the print edition.

シェイクスピアの喜劇の中でも、本作は「自然と人間」の対比が最も美しく、かつ鋭く描かれた傑作です。アーデンの森を舞台に繰り広げられる変装劇は、単なるドタバタ喜劇に留まりません。そこには、身分や性別という社会的枠組みを脱ぎ捨てた先に現れる、人間の真の自由とアイデンティティの探求が深く刻まれています。 特に主人公ロザリンドの機知に富んだ対話は、愛の本質をシニカルかつ情熱的に解剖しており、読者の魂を揺さぶります。全編に漂う「世界はすべて舞台である」という達観した死生観と、瑞々しい生命賛歌の調和は、テキストでしか味わえない至高の芸術体験です。言葉の森に迷い込み、真実の愛の形を再定義する悦びに浸ってください。