“The play’s most sustained examination of human folly
focuses on the behavior of those who succumb to love,” says Jean E. Howard in
the introduction to As You Like It.
This statement sums up the way Shakespeare often showcases the complexity of
human emotions in his work by including conventions his audience would expect
while simultaneously providing satire of those same conventions.
There are many layers to the relationship between
Rosalind and Orlando. While the latter embraces (in exaggerated parody) the
Petrarchan tradition of courting and worshipping an unattainable woman, the
former teaches him a more practical and realistic view of love. Orlando
believes he is getting this advice from a man, since Rosalind is in disguise
under the name Ganymede. So, he gets a lesson in love from the woman’s point of
view without even knowing it. Disguise is just one of the many pastoral
conventions Shakespeare uses in this play to interweave different layers of
meaning.
Rosalind does shed her “doublet and hose” to reveal
herself at the end of the play. She even breaks the fourth wall and points out
to the audience that “she” is played by a “he,” since female characters were played
by young boys. We can even go one step further and remind ourselves that “her”
dialogue (and all the supposedly female perspective that comes with it) was, of
course, written by a “he.” Nothing in life or in love is as simple as it seems,
and Shakespeare uses these layers of complexity in As You Like It to make commentary on a range of social situations,
including the traditions of his time regarding love.
Picture: Jupiter
Kissing Ganymede, fresco by Anton Raphael Mengs and Giacomo Casanova (1758).
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