As You Like It, Shakespeare’s most lighthearted comedy and one of the best-loved and most performed of all his plays, was probably written in 1599 or 1600, though it was not printed until the
First Folio of 1623. As its witty heroine is Shakespeare’s longest female role, the play’s performance history is marked by notable Rosalinds, from Hannah Pritchard and Margaret Woffington
(giving rival performances in 1741), to Helen Faucit, Ada Rehan, Peggy Ashcroft, Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Ronald Pickup (in an all-male production of 1967), Juliet Stevenson, and
many others.
