In “As You Like It,” Shakespeare’s celebration and sendup of the pastoral, written in 1600, and his crew of cast-out characters wander into the Forest of Arden,a site whose name evoked not only the geography of Shakespeare’s Edenic Warwickshire but also the paradise of his childhood. (Mary Arden was his mother’s maiden name.) The paradox of the pastoral is that the dream of the natural requires artifice. Central Park, where a rollicking production of “As You Like It” (directed by Daniel Sullivan, or at the Delacorte) is being staged,is a particularly piquant location for Shakespeare’s ironies: a man-made Victorian Arcadia, where twilight dapples the landscaped canopy of maple trees and ducks float on an artificial lake beside the theatre.
Source: newyorker.com