THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S MAN 185
Ambiguous Rosalind
At the very heart of the play’s
ambiguity is the character of
Rosalind. In the forest, Rosalind
dresses as a boy and takes the very
classical name, Ganymede—the
name of a beautiful Trojan boy in
Greek myth. On the Elizabethan
stage, she would have been played
by a boy actor, and the play has fun
with her constantly switching
gender identities. At one point,
Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede,
pretends to be “Rosalind” to teach
Orlando how to love. So at this
moment on stage, there would
have been a boy actor playing a
girl who is playing a boy playing
a girl! Meanwhile, Orlando is in
love not with the pretend Rosalind
played by Ganymede but the “real”
Rosalind who is at that moment
playing Ganymede playing
Rosalind. And Phoebe—a girl’s role
also played by a boy actor—is in
love with Ganymede, mistakenly
thinking her a boy, when “he” is in
fact a girl played by a boy! Much
of the entertainment in the play
comes from seeing how adeptly
it manages these confusions and,
at the end, resolves them.
Critics have talked a great deal
about gender issues in As You
Like It and the undercurrents
of homoeroticism in, for instance,
Phoebe’s love for Ganymede/
Rosalind, Celia’s for Rosalind, and
Orlando’s flirtation with Ganymede.
Indeed, the Ganymede of Greek
myth was a beautiful boy who
became Zeus’s lover and was a
byword for erotic relationships
between men and young boys.
In the play’s epilogue, “Rosalind”
has fun with the ambiguity of her
gender. She partly steps out of
her role, and as a boy actor toys
with the audience, offering a kiss
to “as many of you as had beards
that pleased.” Shakespeare’s play
is a celebration of all kinds of love
and sexual possibilities, as the
title implies.True love
Beneath the role-playing and
gender-switching, a portrait
of the reality of love appears.
When Orlando says he will die
for love, Rosalind as Ganymede
at once points out the flaws
in this romantic nonsense.
“Men have died from time and
worms have eaten them,” shesays in her somewhat down-to-
earth fashion, “but not for love”
(4.1.99–101).
But Rosalind is not a cynic like
Jaques, who doesn’t believe in
love. At this very moment, she is
“fathom deep” in love with Orlando
(4.1.196) and “cannot be out / of ❯❯No, no, Orlando; men are
April when they woo,
December when they wed.
Maids are May when they are
maids, but the sky changes
when they are wives.
Rosalind
Act 4, Scene 1The idyllic countryside setting in
Shakespeare’s source novel Rosalynde
was the Ardennes in Belgium (below).
Shakespeare’s forest may also be partly
inspired by the Arden forest in England.O wonderful,
wonderful, and most
wonderful-wonderful,
and yet again wonderful,
and after that out of
all whooping!
Celia
Act 3, Scene 2