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As You Like It

A story retold from William Shakespeare's play by E. Nesbit

This reader is drawn from E. Nesbit's 1907 prose retelling of William Shakespeare's pastoral comedy 'As You Like It,' first performed around 1599. Nesbit, best known for her children's novels, adapted Shakespeare's plays to make them accessible to young readers, preserving the major plot, characters, and some of the language. The play itself is a romance of disguise, exile, and reconciliation set in the Forest of Arden, where characters flee from a corrupt court and discover love, forgiveness, and their true selves. Shakespeare explores the contrast between courtly artifice and natural honesty, and the liberating power of disguise—especially for Rosalind, one of his wittiest and most resourceful heroines. This text reflects its era; a few period terms have been modernised. The play endures because it asks whether we are freer when we step outside our given roles, and whether love can survive being tested by truth.

Band

Red · Complex language and analysisTypical starting range: ages 15–17

Length

long · about 1480 words in 4 sections · 2 pictures

Source

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare, E. Nesbit and William Shakespeare

First published

1907

Regions

Canada · United States

Included formats

• · Web reader and PDF
• · EPUB for e-readers
• · Home-print sheet
• · Folded booklet
• · Binder edition (8.5 × 11)
• · Worksheet
• · Quick Check (10 questions) with answer key
• · Read-aloud script
• · Teacher’s Edition (members)

Readers are engineered from the original public-domain text with AI under HummingRead’s published canon and Content Philosophy, checked by automated audit and sampled by a person. Pictures are made with AI to HummingRead’s brief for each story. How a reader is made.

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