As You Like It is Shakespeare's most light-hearted comedy and one of the best-loved and most performed of all his plays. In his introduction to this new edition Alan Brissenden suggests reasons for its delayed publication and discusses in detail how productions have changed radically over the years. Shakespeare's use of his sources, his handling of the themes of love, doubleness, and pastoral are dealt with, as well as the significance of men playing women's parts on the Elizabethan stage. Detailed annotations explain allusions, puns, and difficult passages, enabling student, reader, actor, and director to savor the humor and the seriousness of the play to the full. There are illustrations, and appendices on "wit" and the songs, for which the earliest known music is printed.