THE COPY FOR THE TEXT OF 1623

Summary

The First Folio is our sole authority for the text of As You Like It; and as the copy for the play was entered to Elount and Jaggard in the Stationers' Register on 8 November 1623, together with such of the rest of ‘Mr. William Shakspeers Comedyes, Histories and Tragedyes…as are not formerly entred to other men,’ it is pretty certain that it had not previously appeared in print. Another entry in the Register suggests, however, that it narrowly escaped being printed twenty-three years earlier. The entry in question is the famous note of 4 August 1600, directing four plays belonging to the Lord Chamberlain's Men ‘to be staied’; the four being As You Like It, Henry V, Every Man in his Humour, and Much Ado. This staying order, which Dr A. W. Pollard interprets as a precaution by Shakespeare's Company against an anticipated piracy, was frustrated as far as Henry V was concerned, seeing that a pirated text of this play was issued in 1600, though whether before or after the order is unknown, and was of merely temporary service as regards Much Ado and Every Man in his Humour, which were also published in the same year, though after due entry in the Register and doubtless with the full consent of the company to which they belonged. But with As You Like It the order was both effective and absolute.