Under a tree, with birdsong overhead and nothing to prove: that is the whole offer, and it is made with the ease of someone who has no wish to pressure you. These sixteen lines are a song from Shakespeare's *As You Like It*, sung by Amiens in the forest where the banished Duke has made his new home. It helps to hear the song as music first and argument second, because its charm lies in how little it seems to argue.
What it offers is a way of life. Anyone who loves to lie under the trees, who "doth ambition shun," who is content to seek his own food and be "pleas'd with what he gets," is welcome. The central idea is contentment, and the song defines it by what it leaves out. There is no court here, no rivalry, no climbing. The grammar reinforces this. Each stanza opens with a "Who" clause and holds back its main verb until "Come hither," so the invitation addresses a kind of person rather than everyone. You qualify by wanting less.
The form is as light as the idea. Each stanza has eight short lines, mostly six or seven syllables, and the stresses tumble forward: "Under the greenwood tree" skips along almost like a dance step. The rhymes come in snug pairs, *tree* and *me*, *note* and *throat*, so close together that they feel like a tune. In the first stanza the refrain's "see" and "enemy" chime with the opening "tree" and "me," and the stanza ends on its own starting sound. The second stanza pairs *shun* with *sun*, which quietly links giving up ambition to living in the open air, as though they were one choice. *Eats* and *gets* make a slightly imperfect rhyme, appropriately modest. Then comes "Come hither, come hither, come hither," a triple repetition that works like a beckoning hand.
The imagery is plain and physical. In "turn his merry note / Unto the sweet bird's throat," the verb *turn* suggests tuning or adapting, so the human singer fits his voice to the bird's instead of ruling over it. The second stanza gives us sun and food, but even here the life is not idle. The man is "seeking the food he eats," so he works for it. What marks him out is that his appetite stays small.
The sharpest moment is the last line. After the cheerful promise that "Here shall he see / No enemy," the sentence swerves: "But winter and rough weather." The line is longer than the ones before it, and the heavy sounds of *rough weather* land with a thud. The song could have promised paradise and instead admits the cold. Judging by the contrast the song sets up, its point seems to be that nature's hardships are honest. Weather has no schemes or motives, unlike the ambitious world left behind. The play itself seems to share this view. A later song in the same forest scene calls the winter wind less unkind than human ingratitude.
The setting adds some irony. The people in this forest did not entirely choose to be there, since the Duke has been driven out by his brother, so the song's cheerfulness is partly a way of making the best of exile. Jaques, the play's resident cynic, answers with a mocking stanza of his own, which shows that Shakespeare does not let the pastoral dream go unchallenged.
That is what makes the song significant. It takes an old and appealing idea, that a simple life outdoors is better than the struggle for status, and presents it in a form anyone can sing. Yet it never pretends the idea is free of cost. Its welcome is warm, but the final line reminds us that peace has to be paid for in discomfort.