As You Like It

Banished from her uncle's court on a tyrant's whim, Rosalind does what Shakespeare's cleverest heroines do: she puts on a disguise and gets on with it. Dressed as a young man called Ganymede, she flees to the Forest of Arden with her devoted cousin Celia, where she promptly runs into Orlando, the young man she loves, who is papering the trees with terrible poems about her. Rather than reveal herself, Rosalind-as-Ganymede offers to cure him of love by pretending to be Rosalind. The tutorial does not go as planned, for either of them.

As You Like It is Shakespeare at his most relaxed and generous: a forest full of exiles, philosophers, shepherds, and fools, the melancholy Jaques musing that all the world's a stage, and at the center the wittiest wooing in the language, a woman teaching the man she loves how to love her properly. Sunlight from start to finish.

At roughly 25,400 words, As You Like It runs about 3 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

As You Like It is in the public domain, so the complete text is free on Project Gutenberg and LoudReader has the entire Project Gutenberg catalog built in. To listen:

1. Download LoudReader for Mac or iPhone (free, no account).
2. Search for “As You Like It” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

LoudReader reads with natural offline voices, so the whole book works on a plane or underground. It is fully on-device and private, your library never leaves your device. Listening is unlimited on the free tier.