As You Like It William Shakespeare

Music and dance

Thomas Morley (c. 1557–1602) composed music for "It was a lover and his lass"; he lived in the same parish as Shakespeare, and at times composed music for Shakespeare's plays.

Roger Quilter set "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind" for voice and piano (1905) in his 3 Shakespeare songs Op. 6

Florence Wickham wrote the music and lyrics for her opera Rosalind, based on As You Like It, which premiered at the open air Rockridge Theater in Carmel, New York, in August 1938.

In 1942, Gerald Finzi included a setting of "It was a lover and his lass" (V, iii) in his song cycle on Shakespearean texts Let Us Garlands Bring.

Cleo Laine sang a jazz setting of "It was a lover and his lass" on her 1964 album "Shakespeare... and all that Jazz". The composer is credited as "Young".

Donovan set "Under the Greenwood Tree" to music and recorded it for A Gift from a Flower to a Garden in 1968.

Hans Werner Henze, in the first part of his sonata Royal Winter Music, which portraits Shakespearean characters, included "Touchstone, Audrey and William" as its 5th movement, in 1976.[41]

John Rutter composed a setting of "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind" for chorus in 1992.

In 2005, the Barenaked Ladies wrote and released a full album for the play. It was recorded for and exclusively released at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.[42]

Michael John Trotta composed a setting of "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind" for choir in 2013.[43]

Rush's drummer and composer Neil Peart incorporated the passage "All the world's indeed a stage / And we are merely players / Performers and portrayers / Each another's audience / Outside the gilded cage" into the lyrics for "Limelight" from their 1981 progressive rock album Moving Pictures.[44]

In 2017 The Public Theater's Public Works program presented a musical adaptation of As You Like It, with original music and lyrics by Shaina Taub.[45]

In 2018 Vancouver's Bard on the Beach introduced a musical adaptation of As You Like It, with songs by The Beatles performed by the cast.[46] The production "broke Bard box office records" and toured several other cities, returning to Vancouver in 2023.[47]

Pakistani-American composer set "Blow, Blow thou Winter Wind" to music for voice, clarinet and piano as the middle song of his 'Three Songs of Longing". (1974/2020)

Radio

On 1 March 2015, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a new production directed by Sally Avens with music composed by actor and singer Johnny Flynn of the folk rock band Johnny Flynn and The Sussex Wit.[48] The production included Pippa Nixon as Rosalind, Luke Norris as Orlando, Adrian Scarborough as Touchstone, William Houston as Jaques, Ellie Kendrick as Celia and Jude Akuwudike as Corin.

Film

As You Like It was Laurence Olivier's first Shakespeare film. Olivier, however, served only in an acting capacity (performing the role of Orlando), rather than producing or directing the film. J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, wrote the treatment.

Made in England and released in 1936, As You Like It also starred director Paul Czinner's wife Elisabeth Bergner, who played Rosalind with a thick German accent. Although it is much less "Hollywoody" than the versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet made at about the same time, and although its cast was made up entirely of Shakespearean actors, it was not considered a success by either Olivier or the critics. Still, it's a visual delight with eccentric characters in an enchanting forest rife with animals: sheep, goats, peacocks, storks, a huge snake and skulking lioness.

Helen Mirren starred as Rosalind in the 1978 BBC videotaped version of As You Like It, directed by Basil Coleman.[49]

In 1992, Christine Edzard made another film adaptation of the play. It features James Fox, Cyril Cusack, Andrew Tiernan, Griff Rhys Jones, and Ewen Bremner. The action is transposed to a modern and bleak urban world.

A film version of As You Like It, set in 19th-century Japan, was released in 2006, directed by Kenneth Branagh. It stars Bryce Dallas Howard, David Oyelowo, Romola Garai, Alfred Molina, Kevin Kline, and Brian Blessed. Although it was actually made for cinemas, it was released to theatres only in Europe, and had its U.S. premiere on HBO in 2007. Although it was not a made-for-television film, Kevin Kline won a Screen Actors Guild award for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries for his performance as Jaques.[50]

In 2022[51] CBBC filmed a version of the play adapted for children.[52]

Other musical work

The 1902 Broadway musical Tommy Rot used an embedded narrative device where there was a play within a play; in this case the story taking place during a production of As You Like It.[53] The Seven Doors of Danny, by Ricky Horscraft and John McCullough is based on the "Seven Ages of Man" element of the "All the world's a stage" speech and was premiered in April 2016.