As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility.
First page of As You Like It from the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623
Marie Davey as Rosalind in As You Like It 2017
Poster for the Federal Theatre Project production of As You Like It at the Blackstone Theatre, Chicago
All the World's a Stage William Mulready (1838)
The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target audience is typically an urban one. A pastoral is a work of this genre. A piece of music in the genre is usually referred to as a pastorale.
Alvan Fisher, Pastoral Landscape, 1854
The Young Shepherd, engraving using stipple technique, by Giulio Campagnola, c. 1510
Georgics Book III, Shepherd with Flocks, Vergil (Vatican Library)
Romantic artist, illustrator and poet William Blake's hand painted print illustrating his pastoral poem "The Shepherd" depicts the pastoral scene of a shepherd watching his flock with a shepherd's crook. This image represents copy B, printed and painted in 1789 and currently held by the Library of Congress.
