The relationship between the two worlds of As You Like It becomes a metaphor of love, defined by conspicuous narrative and theatrical artifice. The expository opening scenes have a storybook flatness which becomes a metaphor of a world that limits self-realization while the liberating sojourn in the forest, a festive world of disguise and imagination, parallels the spectators’ experience in the playhouse as a withdrawal from everyday life. The pattern of withdrawal and return also objectifies the psychological development of love: the courtship of Rosalind and Orlando progresses from impulsive love at first sight at court, through subjective and imaginative responses to desire in the forest, to fulfillment in marriage. The play concludes by placing subjective freedom, expressed metaphorically through theatrical artifice, in the larger setting of forces beyond the self, established metaphorically in narrative artifice.