This chapter explores As You Like It through Walter Benjamin’s concept of messianic violence, which calls for the overthrow of the existing structures of oppression to allow for the opening up of new social possibilities. Benjamin considers resistant ‘unauthorized’ violence as a necessary defensive tool against the ‘authorized’ violence of positive law and the modern state it supports. This ‘authorized’ violence, through which the modern state oppresses large segments of the population in the name of power hierarchy and profit, reduces human beings to bare life within the productive and legal systems. We must, Benjamin asserts, overcome this legally sanctioned violence in order to achieve a more inclusive communal way of life grounded in social responsibility and true justice. Creating such a society will require the ongoing transformation of both the social structure and the social identities and roles of those creating it. Benjamin’s utopic vision of open-ended social transformation provides a helpful framework for thinking about the interactions of characters in Shakespeare’s play, many of whom transform their identities and relationships, and perhaps remake some aspects of the social order as they engage across social strata in the forest and fields of Arden.