As You Like It

Pardon the lack of pictures. I'm having technical difficulties.

Have to be perfectly honest here, when I learned I'd be reading As You Like it for my personal reading, I was a little bummed; I had hoped to experience new plays in this class. This play is not only the first I've ever read, (granted it was quite some time ago. . . it was way back in Seventh grade English class) but also the first I've ever seen; both in the form of a play (at the Utah Shakespearean Festival, 2009) and of a film (2006 version directed by Kenneth Branagh, the one with the colorblind cast and set in feudal Japan).
But, at the same time. . . I guess it's a good opportunity to take a look back at it. . .because otherwise, I probably would have never read it again. And let's be honest, it's a wonder I could even figure out the  basic plot reading it at that age. I may as well read it again, now that I can actually understand what they're saying.
To get myself back up to speed with it, I first consulted with the almighty Sparknotes on the summary of the plot, all about Rosalinda and Celia cross dressing and running about the woods, trying to "train" Orlando in the way he should woo her. . .Really it's just Robin Hood with cross dressing, mixed in with [insert name of modern Romantic Comedy here. . . they're all the same]. Then, I  moved on to Netflix to see what film versions were available there. Unfortunately, the above mentioned version directed by Kenneth Branagh was not on instant play, so I contented myself with watching bits and pieces from two other versions. The first, a "modernized" (set in 1992) version where Oliver is some big shot CEO and Orland is his punky, hard-edged (yet surprisingly soft spoken) younger brother, and the woods where they were exiled to was more like a hobo village somewhere in the U.K. I can't say I was very impressed by it. The other was a 1936 version that I also had difficulty watching, due to the fact that Rosalind spoke like she had been hit over the head with a stupid-stick and acquired some strange, half-slurred accent in the process. The helpless-female, cry-baby attitude so often adopted by actresses of that time also irritated me.
As far as a "reading plan" goes, it looks like I've got 8 days left to read a total of 8 acts(3 in Love's Labour's Lost, 5 in As You Like It). . . So a One-Act-Per-Day from either book sounds sufficient. What I'd like to get out of [re-]reading this is finding outs why Shakespeare wrote it. It seems to me like it was targeted very much at the female audience; after all, what girl wouldn't like to dress up like a dude to pick the brain the man she's got her eye on?