What You Will

What You Will is a late Elizabethan comedy by John Marston, written in 1601 and probably performed by the Children of Paul's, one of the companies of boy actors popular in that period.

The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 6 August 1607, and was published later that year in a quarto printed by George Eld for the bookseller Thomas Thorpe.

The Induction that precedes the text mentions a small sized stage and candles for illumination, details that verify that the play was acted in a smaller "private" theatre rather than a large "public" one like the Globe or the Fortune.

The play focuses on the relationship between two rival poets: the bitter, misanthropic satirist Lampatho Doria and the generous, lighthearted epicurean Quadratus.

It criticizes the satirist as a mean-spirited, envious man, and celebrates good humor, merriment and "play."