<P> Some have suggested two other minor debts . The first is Michael Drayton's Poly - Olbion, a poetic description of England, but there is no evidence that the poem was written before As You Like It . The second suggested source is The Historie of Orlando Furioso by Robert Greene, acted about 1592 . It is suggested that Shakespeare derived the idea of Orlando's carving his lady's name on barks of trees from this play, but a lover carving love - poems on barks of trees was already in Lodge's tale . </P> <P> As You Like It was first printed in the collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, known as the First Folio, during 1623 . No copy of it in Quarto exists, for the play is mentioned by the printers of the First Folio among those which "are not formerly entered to other men ." By means of evidences, external and internal, the date of composition of the play has been approximately fixed at a period between the end of 1598 and the middle of 1599 . </P> <P> As You Like It was entered into the Register of the Stationers' Company on 4 August 1600 as a work which was "to be stayed," i.e., not published till the Stationers' Company were satisfied that the publisher in whose name the work was entered was the undisputed owner of the copyright . Thomas Morley's First Book of Ayres, published in London in 1600 contains a musical setting for the song "It was a Lover and his Lass" from As You Like It . This evidence implies that the play was in existence in some shape or other before 1600 . </P> <P> It seems likely this play was written after 1598, since Francis Meres did not mention it in his Palladis Tamia . Although twelve plays are listed in Palladis Tamia, it was an incomplete inventory of Shakespeare's plays to that date (1598). The new Globe Theatre opened some time in the summer of 1599, and tradition has it that the new playhouse's motto was Totus mundus agit histrionem--"all the Globe's a stage"--an echo of Jaques' famous line "All the world's a stage" (II. 7). This evidence posits September 1598 and September 1599 as the time frame within which the play was likely written . </P>

Discuss as you like it as a pastoral romance