LARGE CAST PLAYS

Shakespeare wrote As You Like It with 17 parts for men and 4 for women. It’s not really his fault he wrote so many male parts: he wasn’t a high school drama teacher. Our version has parts written for 11 females and 13 males and 24 parts that could be either, for a total of 48 speaking parts. Many of those can be doubled if you need a bit smaller cast.

Some of the major changes: The Dukes are now Duchesses (that’s a given), Rosalind has two sidekicks instead of one, and Corin, Ameins and Melancholy Jaques have had sex changes. In addition, the parts of William, Sir Oliver Mastext, Jaques de Boys, and Dennis, which all had under five lines in the original, have been expanded. We added a character named William Shakespeare, a playwright of note, to make it a play within a play, and added a prologue to explain some of the confusing back story. We’ve also written in some parts especially named for freshman. These don’t need to be played by freshmen, but it’s good to get the young ones involved.

With all these extras, we didn’t want to run extra time, so I’m afraid we had to cut some of the flowery language and stress the French farce qualities of the show.

The plot goes s0omething like this: Whoever loved that loved not at first sight. There is a longer synopsis included when you click on the button to read the play.

Click here to read As You Like It

As You Like It

By William Shakespeare

(Shakespeare wrote 21 speaking parts, 17m, 4w)

Adapted by Scott Hunter

48 speaking parts, 13m, 11f, 24 m/f