AS YOU LIKE IT -Shakespeare-In very broad lines, the convention of the comedy includes happy-endings, cross-dressing or mistaken identity,

thwarted love, marital and romantic misunderstandings. The sources of Shakespeares comedies are varied as well the occasions for which they were composed. - A Midsummer Nights Dream, As You Like It, or Much Ado about Nothing are called festive comedies and they have various sources and plots and subplots, making them more complicated than the early comedies. -. Shakespeare gives a great importance to popular festivity and holidays in plays such as A Midsummer Nights Dream or in As You Like It. - Thus, Aristotle says that comedy deals with ordinary characters in everyday situation, opposing it to tragedy that depicts noble characters (kings, princes, and noblemen) in extraordinary situations. - comedy should be involved with the private life of people -: in comedy the fortunes of men are middle-class, the dangers are slight, and the ends of the action are happy - In comedy the beginning is troubled, the end tranquil - First, comedies deal with private lives and private affairs in opposition to the tragic conflict that resonates through the entire political body -, it does not have relevance beyond the private life of its characters and will not affect the entire political system, causing its downfall and destruction -, the characters in comedies pertain rather to the lower classes, since they are more likely to become subject to comic, or ridiculous attitudes. - comedy is about human integration (Terry Eagleton) - A comedy may start in misfortune, but it will end in communal joy and reconciliation. - the style of the comedy is humble, negligent - comedy also deals with certain stock characters and typical actions - love is one of the major comic actions, usually, thwarted love that leads to a series of misfortunes and misunderstandings which eventually have a happy ending. - young generation, as it usually deals with youthful love that has to overstep a series of obstacles created by those in the older generations - the triumph belongs to the young, and is celebrated by a sort of festivity, most commonly, a wedding.

- The comedy usually tries to impose a better version of the society, that is why, in many plays, the opening is marked by a cruel, or unnatural, or absurd law or deal - set the world right, the protagonist(s) need to pass through a series of obstacles, or tests. - Shakespeare did not rely on a solid theoretical body, but on stage traditions, such as the ancient comedy, Greek and Roman, medieval forms and Renaissance, especially Italian conventions - Shakespearean comedies have, in turn, been classed into early comedies and late comedies, other were named festive comedies. Some other terms were introduced to deal with the more problematic comedies, such as romance, problem play or tragicomedy. - The three main sources for his creation of comedies are: the classical plays, especially the Roman tradition; the Italian stories; and the English festive tradition. -the roman tradition: included music and songs, focus on music and musicality, variation of line-length and measure, alliteration and rhymes, uses puns, word-play, and draws comic effect from the use of neologisms or dialect, appearance and reality, as well as on ambiguous identities, cross-dressing, twins, exchanges of identity, overheard conversations, eavesdropping, many women dress as young men for different reasons: Rosalinde (As You Like It), theme of friendship that resists or does not resist the test of love, faithful friends in As You Like It (Rosalind and Celia) -the italian stories: use and adapt old material to their own texts, sources: novelle collection of Boccaccio, Bandello and Giraldi, the chivalric romance cycles -Popular festivities as well as Court festivities were a large source of influence for Shakespeare -The green world was regarded as a place of escape from the constraints of the law and from everyday life, a place of change (of gender or of identity or both) and deep interior transformation where the contact with nature and old custom provided a form of content and fulfillment.( Jeanette Dillon, CCSC) - The forest society can be regenerated, and where the banished can find a place of hiding and salvation till the world is regenerated, as it is a clear case in A Midsummer Nights Dream and As You Like It. festive element is to trigger and emotional release and create an atmosphere of joyful liberation in the face of an archaic moral order or tyranny. -main theme of a comedy is love. Shakespeares comedies usually involve love issues, lovers won and lost, change of identities, attempts to avoid unjust marriages. Love, therefore, triggers the process of growing up of the young into adulthood, and their breaking up with the authority of their parents or that of the elders - the JOURNEY, the passage of the young woman or man from innocence/ virginity to marriage

- In As You Like It the real Dukes place is usurped by his brother who, in the end, is rumored to have gathered an army against him, whereas, in the double plot, a older brother plans to kill his younger brother. - Some fall in love with the wrong person while being loved by somebody else: Silvius loves Phoebe who falls in love with Ganymede/ Rosalind in As You Like It -they have to pass through obstacles, interdictions and misfortunes. Therefore, are banished -women change their identities or disguise themselves as men as other women fall in love with the women who disguised themselves as men (Phoebe falls in love with Rosalind/Ganymede in As You Like It -. There is often an exchange of love letters, but sometimes, the letters do not directly reach their destinations, there are rings or necklaces to be given as tokens of love. -involve journeys at the end of the journey something happens to make their love socially acceptable, some sort of repentance, recognition, revealed tokens of love and identities and usually, the comedies end in (multiple) marriage(s). -As You Like ItTHE SPACE city a place of treason and danger, represented by both the banishment of the rightful duke and Olivers plan to get rid of his younger brother woods the hiding place of the Duke, a safe harbour for runaways, a place of ease and tranquility, but also of love confusion and switched identities.

THE END the several levels are united by multiple marriages, from the upper layer: the Dukes daughter Rosalinde and Orlando, his brother, Oliver, and the Dukes niece Celia thus solving the political, as well as the family conflict, to the lower: the shepherd Silvius and Phoebe, as well as Touchstone and Audrey

The danger posed by the usurper is miraculously solved off-stage and the Duke finally returns to his rightful position and to his court.