“All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players” probably is the most famous sentence of Shakespeare's As You Like It and perfectly summarizes the whole purpose of the play. Act IV Scene 3 sets the scene in the forest “theatre” of life and develops a sense of identification of the audience towards the players through its comic mode. Indeed, Orlando's wicked brother carries out a complete conversion as soon as he enters the forest. This last conversion made, clarification is reached and renewal can occur. This scene emphasizes the passage from conversion to freedom of thoughts and renewal and thanks to the comic structure, helps the audience to identify with the players and perhaps reach freedom of thoughts too. How does Shakespeare bring forward Oliver's conversion which is results from the power of the forest? How does he presents the freedom of thoughts reached by the characters of the play as a pathway the audience could go in if it choose to?

The power of the nature embodied in the forest is an important recurrent theme in the play . Indeed, as soon as the play begins, the characters alternately change when entering it. In this scene we witness the sudden conversion of Oliver as he enters the forest in turn. First, one may notice the sudden switch in Oliver's speech since he used to speak in prose and switch to verse when having entered the forest. This switch is also enhanced by breaks in the rhythm which echo the break in Oliver's life. In fact, Oliver's speech is in iambic pentameters but is broken into by three important lines which suggest that something is changing, something that is also introduced through the phrase: “Lo, what befell!!” (l.103).
Those three lines correspond to the discovery of a “wretched ragged man, o'ergrown with hair” (l.107). Orlando soon “found it was his brother” (l.121). This “wretched ragged” Oliver is in fact undergoing transformation since he is now under the charm of the forest which is acting like a