As You Like It was a play by William Shakespeare. (PROSE: Exits and Entrances, As You Like It)
Partly set in the Forest of Arden, the play's plot concerned the exile of Duke Senior and the "melancholy" Jaques to the forest after the former was usurped by his brother, Frederick, and they were both banished from court. (PROSE: As You Like It)
As You Like It featured one of Shakespeare's most famous speeches. (PROSE: Exits and Entrances) This speech began with the lines “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players", as quoted by the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble. (PROSE: Legends of Camelot) However, an early draft of the speech beginning "The cosmos is a stage, and all, from thou to Fenric, merely players", appeared without explanation in the Shakespeare's notebooks. The Shakespeare Notebooks speculated that it was "probably revised" as many of the allusions seemed rather obscure. It was spoken by an unnamed character who identified as a Time Lord clearly based upon the Seventh Doctor. They reflected upon their previous incarnations during the piece. (PROSE: Exits and Entrances)
A transcript from an early 17th century staging of the play also appeared in the Notebooks. As it differed considerably from all other known versions of the text, The Shakespeare Notebooks suggested the diversion may have been unique to a single performance and "perhaps" an extreme example of improvisation by the actors involved. The transcript featured a clown (referred to in dialogue as "a fool") and a character named Peri Brown who travelled together through time and space in their home which they called the TARDIS. The two were clearly based upon the Sixth Doctor and his companion of the same name. During the play, the clown encountered Jaques, a meeting which he relayed to Duke Senior, but after this they left in the TARDIS with apparently no further effect on the main action. (PROSE: As You Like It)
As You Like It was one of many Shakespeare's plays which the bookshop Books Unltd stocked in the 21st century. After an outraged Robert Greene used the Shadeys' powers to wreak destruction to the shop upon finding out that Shakespeare had been remembered by history instead of him, a copy of As You Like It was in pieces when the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler arrived to investigate. (COMIC: A Groatsworth of Wit)
Martha Jones had seen As You Like It in Stratford on a school trip. She complained that her teachers had made it dull, (PROSE: Martha Jones' MySpace blog) unlike the William Shakespeare whom she later met in real life. (PROSE: Martha Jones' MySpace blog, TV: The Shakespeare Code)