50 Fun Facts About As You Like It

Which character in As You Like It, a gloomy exile who weeps over a wounded deer, delivers 'All the world's a stage'?

Jaques is a hanger-on of the banished duke who takes no part in the plot and simply comments on it. When the others head back to court at the end, he chooses to stay behind.

A moon named after Rosalind from As You Like It, spotted by Voyager 2 in 1986, orbits which planet?

Uranus counts Rosalind among a group of small inner moons with similar orbits, alongside Juliet, Portia and Desdemona.

Charles, a court champion in As You Like It, says the banished duke lives in the forest like which English outlaw?

Robin Hood is invoked in the opening scene, where young gentlemen are said to flock to the duke's merry men and pass the time without a care.

Kenneth Branagh's 2006 film of As You Like It moves the action to a 19th-century European colony in which country?

Japan after the Meiji Restoration is the backdrop, though filming took place at Shepperton Studios and in the gardens of Wakehurst Place.

In the 'All the world's a stage' speech from As You Like It, all the men and women are merely what?

Players was the Elizabethan word for actors, and the speech goes on to give each person exits, entrances and many parts in a single lifetime.

Orlando first wins Rosalind's heart in As You Like It by beating the duke's champion at which sport?

Wrestling brings the lovers together when Orlando throws Charles, a champion his own brother had quietly encouraged to break his neck.

Which English novelist took the title Under the Greenwood Tree from a song in As You Like It?

Thomas Hardy published the novel anonymously in 1872. It follows a village church choir and was the first of his Wessex novels.

From which animal does Orlando rescue his sleeping brother Oliver in the forest of As You Like It?

A lioness crouches waiting for Oliver to stir, and Orlando twice turns to walk away before he fights her off, which ends the brothers' feud.

In the 'All the world's a stage' speech from As You Like It, what is the infant doing in the nurse's arms?

Mewling and puking, meaning crying feebly and being sick, opens the speech on a comic note before the whining schoolboy takes over.

Which Surrealist painter designed the sets and costumes for a 1948 staging of As You Like It in Rome?

Salvador Dalí published his designs for the production, which Luchino Visconti directed at the Teatro Eliseo.

How many ages of man does the 'All the world's a stage' speech in As You Like It run through?

Seven ages take a man from the cradle to helpless old age. Splitting life into ages was already a commonplace of art, though ancient writers more often counted three or four.

Which forest, sharing its name with the family of Shakespeare's mother, shelters the exiles in As You Like It?

Arden was also a real forest covering much of Warwickshire, and it gave its name to the old family of Shakespeare's mother, Mary.

Which name, borrowed from the cupbearer of the gods, does Rosalind use when dressed as a boy in As You Like It?

Ganymede was the beautiful Trojan youth chosen to serve the king of the gods, and Rosalind picks the name herself, calling him Jove's own page.

Where does the lovesick Orlando hang his poems in praise of Rosalind in As You Like It?

On the trees is where he posts them, and he carves her name into the bark as well. Touchstone mocks the verses by improvising worse ones.

How are Rosalind and Celia, who run away from court together in As You Like It, related?

Cousins by birth, the two were raised together, and Celia says they have always slept, risen, learned, played and eaten side by side.

Which English actor made his first Shakespeare film as Orlando in the 1936 version of As You Like It?

Laurence Olivier found a long-term collaborator on the film in composer William Walton, who later scored his Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III.

The 'All the world's a stage' speech in As You Like It ends with old age sans teeth, eyes, taste and what?

Everything goes in the last line, which keeps repeating the French word 'sans', meaning without, until the old man has nothing left.

What post does Touchstone hold at Duke Frederick's court in As You Like It before he flees with the two heroines?

Jester to the usurping duke, Touchstone is one of Shakespeare's witty fools, whose humour comes from intellect rather than clowning.

Which everyday phrase does Rosalind use in As You Like It while pushing Orlando towards a mock wedding?

Too much of a good thing is Rosalind's joke: she asks whether anyone can want that, then has Celia play the priest and marry them.

A hit 2018 Vancouver staging of As You Like It had its cast perform the songs of which band?

The Beatles supplied the songbook for the Bard on the Beach production, which broke the festival's box office records and went on tour.

Which London playhouse, new when As You Like It was written, supposedly had a motto echoing 'All the world's a stage'?

The Globe opened in 1599, and tradition gives it the Latin motto 'Totus mundus agit histrionem', roughly 'all the world plays the actor'.

The schoolboy in As You Like It's 'All the world's a stage' speech creeps to school like which creature?

A snail sets his pace, and Shakespeare adds a satchel and a shining morning face to complete the portrait of a reluctant pupil.

Which American actress, later the star of Jurassic World, played Rosalind in the 2006 film of As You Like It?

Bryce Dallas Howard had already played the part on stage in 2003, in a production where the director M. Night Shyamalan spotted her.

How many couples marry in the final scene of As You Like It, where a god blesses them all at once?

Four couples pair off: the two heroines with two brothers, a shepherd with his shepherdess, and the fool with a goatherd.

How long does Orlando tell Rosalind he would keep his wife in As You Like It?

For ever and a day is his answer, and Rosalind tells him to drop the 'ever': men, she says, are April when they woo and December when they wed.

Touchstone in As You Like It shares his name with a dark stone once used to test the purity of which metal?

Gold drawn across a touchstone leaves a visible streak, and comparing its colour with known samples reveals how pure the metal is.

The banished duke in As You Like It says adversity wears a precious jewel in its head like which ugly creature?

A toad, 'ugly and venomous', is his image for hardship, and he goes on to find sermons in stones and books in the running brooks.

A song in As You Like It tells the winter wind it is not so unkind as which human failing?

Ingratitude bites deeper than frost in the song, which is sung for the exiled duke's men later in the same scene as the play's most famous speech.

The lover in the 'All the world's a stage' speech of As You Like It sighs like what, while writing a ballad?

A furnace is the comparison, and the lover's woeful ballad is addressed to nothing grander than his mistress's eyebrow.

Which old servant in As You Like It, a part Shakespeare himself is said to have played, follows Orlando into exile?

Adam offers Orlando his life savings of five hundred crowns, and is carried in, half starved, just as the famous speech on old age ends.

Which goatherd does Touchstone marry in As You Like It, though she admits she does not know what 'poetical' means?

Audrey is courted with jokes she cannot follow, and Touchstone sees off a rival for her by threatening to kill him a hundred and fifty ways.

Which proud shepherdess in As You Like It scorns the devoted Silvius and falls for Rosalind in boy's clothes?

Phebe sends the disguised Rosalind a love letter, carried by the very shepherd she has rejected, and ends up married to him.

Which new name, Latin for 'stranger', does Celia take when she flees to the forest in As You Like It?

Aliena suits a duke's daughter who has made herself an outcast, and Celia completes the disguise by smearing her face with brown earth.

Which Greek god of marriage walks on stage at the end of As You Like It to unite the couples?

Hymen leads Rosalind back in, dressed as herself at last, and hands her to her father and her bridegroom.

Which part of As You Like It does Rosalind speak alone, noting that it is not the fashion for a lady?

The epilogue ends with a wink at the boy actor in the role: Rosalind says that if she were a woman she would kiss the men in the audience.

Where does the soldier seek his 'bubble reputation' in the 'All the world's a stage' speech of As You Like It?

In a cannon's mouth, because this soldier is quick to quarrel, full of strange oaths and bearded like a 'pard', or leopard.

Which stock old man of Italian comedy gives the sixth age its name in As You Like It's most famous speech?

Pantaloon was the greedy old Venetian of commedia dell'arte, and Shakespeare gives him slippers, spectacles and stockings now far too big.

In As You Like It, Rosalind tells Orlando that men have died and which creatures have eaten them, but not for love?

Worms get them all in the end, she says, after debunking the great lovers of legend: Leander, she insists, simply drowned of a cramp.

In As You Like It, Celia mocks a pompous remark by Touchstone as being 'laid on with' which builder's tool?

A trowel spreads mortar thickly, which is Celia's point: Touchstone has just capped a simple answer with talk of what the Destinies decree.

Which English actress played Rosalind in the BBC's 1978 As You Like It, shot on location at Scotland's Glamis Castle?

Helen Mirren led the cast, with James Bolam as Touchstone, in the first series of the BBC Television Shakespeare.

Which actor won a Screen Actors Guild Award as the melancholy lord in the 2006 film of As You Like It?

Kevin Kline won in a television category, because a film made for cinemas went straight to HBO in the United States.

What stops the usurper Duke Frederick from attacking the forest exiles at the end of As You Like It?

Meeting a holy man at the forest's edge converts him on the spot: he gives up the crown, returns the exiles' lands and retires from the world.

A shepherdess in As You Like It quotes a line on love at first sight by which playwright, killed in 1593?

Marlowe wrote the line in his poem Hero and Leander, published after his death, and the play salutes him as the 'dead shepherd'.

Which actor, who joined Shakespeare's company around 1599, is thought to have created Touchstone in As You Like It?

Robert Armin took over as the company's leading comic when Will Kemp left, and is also credited with Feste and the Fool in King Lear.

Which Elizabethan writer's prose romance Rosalynde gave Shakespeare most of the plot of As You Like It?

Thomas Lodge supplied the story, but Shakespeare added characters of his own, among them Touchstone and the melancholy lord.

The gloomy lord of As You Like It says he can suck melancholy out of a song as which animal sucks eggs?

A weasel is his comparison as he begs for another verse, having been warned that the singing will only make him gloomier.

Before As You Like It, which Shakespeare play had Antonio call the world a stage where every man plays a part?

The Merchant of Venice gives the idea to its gloomy title character, who says his own part on the world's stage is a sad one.

Which is the first step on Touchstone's ladder of quarrelling in As You Like It, reached over a courtier's beard?

The Retort Courteous is the mildest step, and the ladder climbs to the Lie Direct, which Touchstone says can still be dodged with an 'if'.

Which country vicar does Touchstone hire in As You Like It for a hasty wedding in the forest?

Sir Oliver Martext never gets to perform the ceremony: a bystander talks Touchstone out of being married under a bush like a beggar.

Which British actor won a Time Out Award as Rosalind in Cheek by Jowl's 1991 production of As You Like It?

Adrian Lester's casting echoed Shakespeare's own stage, where a male actor played a woman pretending to be a man acting the part of a woman.