Rosalind
Rosalind dominates As You Like
It. So fully realized is she in the complexity of her emotions, the
subtlety of her thought, and the fullness of her character that no one else in
the play matches up to her. Orlando is handsome, strong, and an affectionate,
if unskilled, poet, yet still we feel that Rosalind settles for someone
slightly less magnificent when she chooses him as her mate. Similarly, the
observations of Touchstone and Jaques, who might shine more brightly in another
play, seem rather dull whenever Rosalind takes the stage.
The endless appeal of watching
Rosalind has much to do with her success as a knowledgeable and charming critic
of herself and others. But unlike Jaques, who refuses to participate wholly in
life but has much to say about the foolishness of those who surround him,
Rosalind gives herself over fully to circumstance. She chastises Silvius for
his irrational devotion to Phoebe, and she challenges Orlando’s thoughtless
equation of Rosalind with a Platonic ideal, but still she comes undone by her
lover’s inconsequential tardiness and faints at the sight of his blood. That
Rosalind can play both sides of any field makes her identifiable to nearly
everyone, and so, irresistible.
Rosalind is a particular favorite
among feminist critics, who admire her ability to subvert the limitations that
society imposes on her as a woman. With boldness and imagination, she disguises
herself as a young man for the majority of the play in order to woo the man she
loves and instruct him in how to be a more accomplished, attentive lover—a tutorship
that would not be welcome from a woman. There is endless comic appeal in
Rosalind’s lampooning of the conventions of both male and female behavior, but
an Elizabethan audience might have felt a certain amount of anxiety regarding
her behavior. After all, the structure of a male-dominated society depends upon
both men and women acting in their assigned roles. Thus, in the end, Rosalind
dispenses with the charade of her own character. Her emergence as an actor in
the Epilogue assures that theatergoers, like the Ardenne foresters, are about
to exit a somewhat enchanted realm and return to the familiar world they left
behind. But because they leave having learned the same lessons from Rosalind,
they do so with the same potential to make that world a less punishing place.
According to his brother, Oliver,
Orlando is of noble character, unschooled yet somehow learned, full of noble
purposes, and loved by people of all ranks as if he had enchanted them
(I.i.141–144). Although this description comes from the one character who hates
Orlando and wishes him harm, it is an apt and generous picture of the hero of As
You Like It. Orlando has a brave and generous spirit, though he does not
possess Rosalind’s wit and insight. As his love tutorial shows, he relies on
commonplace clichés in matters of love, declaring that without the fair
Rosalind, he would die. He does have a decent wit, however, as he demonstrates
when he argues with Jaques, suggesting that Jaques should seek out a fool who
wanders about the forest: “He is drowned in the brook. Look but in, and you
shall see him,” meaning that Jaques will see a fool in his own reflection
(III.ii.262–263). But next to Rosalind, Orlando’s imagination burns a bit less
bright. This upstaging is no fault of Orlando’s, given the fullness of
Rosalind’s character; Shakespeare clearly intends his audience to delight in
the match. Time and again, Orlando performs tasks that reveal his nobility and
demonstrate why he is so well-loved: he travels with the ancient Adam and makes
a fool out of himself to secure the old man food; he risks his life to save the
brother who has plotted against him; he cannot help but violate the many trees
of Ardenne with testaments of his love for Rosalind. In the beginning of the
play, he laments that his brother has denied him the schooling deserved by a
gentleman, but by the end, he has proven himself a gentleman without the
formality of that education.
Jaques delights in being sad—a
disparate role in a play that so delights in happiness. Jaques believes that
his melancholy makes him the perfect candidate to be Duke Senior’s fool. Such a
position, he claims, will “Give me leave / To speak my mind,” and the criticism
that flows forth will “Cleanse the foul body of th’infected world” (II.vii.58–60).
Duke Senior is rightly cautious about installing Jaques as the fool, fearing
that Jaques would do little more than excoriate the sins that Jaques himself
has committed. Indeed, Jaques lacks the keenness of insight of Shakespeare’s
most accomplished jesters: he is not as penetrating as Twelfth Night’s
Feste or King Lear’s fool. In fact, he is more like an aspiring fool
than a professional one. When Jaques philosophizes on the seven stages of human
life, for instance, his musings strike us as banal. His “All the world’s a
stage” speech is famous today, but the play itself casts doubt on the ideas
expressed in this speech (II.vii.138). No sooner does Jaques insist that man
spends the final stages of his life in “mere oblivion, / Sans teeth, sans eyes,
sans taste, sans everything” than Orlando’s aged servant, Adam, enters, bearing
with him his loyalty, his incomparable service, and his undiminished integrity
(II.vii.164–165).
Jaques’s own faculties as a critic
of the goings-on around him are considerably diminished in comparison to
Rosalind, who understands so much more and conveys her understanding with
superior grace and charm. Rosalind criticizes in order to transform the
world—to make Orlando a more reasonable husband and Phoebe a less disdainful lover—whereas
Jaques is content to stew in his own melancholy. It is appropriate that Jaques
decides not to return to court. While the other characters merrily revel,
Jaques determines that he will follow the reformed Duke Frederick into the
monastery, where he believes the converts have much to teach him. Jaques’s
refusal to resume life in the dukedom not only confirms our impression of his
character, but also resonates with larger issues in the play. Here, the play
makes good on the promise of its title: everyone gets just what he or she
wants. It also betrays a small but inevitable crack in the community that
dances through the forest. In a world as complex and full of so many competing
forces as the one portrayed in As You Like It, the absolute best one can
hope for is consensus, but never complete unanimity.
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