Most of the play takes place in the Forest of Arden, and it asks searching questions about it's human characters in relation to the animals, and plants, around them: is Orlando abusing trees by carving his love poems on them? Is hunting wrong, given that deer have as much right to the forest as people do? Is there, in fact, a clear line dividing humans from animals? It would be historically reckless to suggest that Shakespeare's play is ecological in our modern sense of the term. But its focus on the relationship between things that occur as part of nature and things that are made by humans (which Shakespeare collectively terms "art") gives us access to debates in Renaissance England that relate in important ways to ecological issues in our own time.
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