While Shakespeare made limited use of pastoral elements in several early works, As You Like It is a full-scale pastoral comedy. Pastoral was generally popular in the 1590s: for instance the non-dramatic pastoral romances, Lodge's Rosalynde and Sidney's Arcadia, which were both first published in the same year, 1590, were reprinted (Lodge in 1592 and 1596, Sidney in 1593) and then in 1598 were both reprinted again. As You Like It appeared soon after, in 1599, Shakespeare basing the narrative on Lodge. I take it, nevertheless, that it is to Sidney rather than Lodge that Shakespeare was more indebted in his thinking, and that the new pressure of intelligence to which Shakespeare subjects the pastoral mode in As You Like It owes more to the example of Sidney; and I certainly find that to return to Arcadia with As You Like It in mind sharpens response to Sidney's art.

In the space of two or three years from 1598 Shakespeare produced, in addition to the epic history, Henry V, and the pastoral comedy, As You Like It, two romantic tragicomedies, Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night, a satiric history, Troilus and Cressida, a farce, The Merry Wives of Windsor (though this yet awaits satisfactory classification), and Hamlet.