Orlando
Who is Orlando in As You Like It?
What conflict does Orlando face with his brother Oliver?
How does Orlando end up in the Forest of Arden?
What role does Rosalind play in Orlando’s development?
Orlando, fictional character in William Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It, written and performed about 1598–1600 and first published in the First Folio of 1623. The youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys, Orlando is the love interest of the protagonist Rosalind and the object of her tutelage regarding the difference between mature love and foolishness.
Role in As You Like It
Conflict with Oliver and exile (Act I)
Orlando and his servant Adam are the first characters onstage. Complaining to Adam about his circumstances, Orlando relates how his father, Sir Rowland de Boys, had charged his eldest brother, Oliver, to take good care of Orlando. Because Oliver is the eldest of the three brothers (Jaques de Boys is the middle brother), he inherited their father’s property and authority by the law of primogeniture—the “courtesy of nations,” as Orlando calls it. Orlando complains that Oliver has neglected his education, whereas their brother Jaques was sent to school. Orlando resents that he is left to stagnate. He compares his brother’s treatment of him to that of livestock, and that, too, unfavorably, because even cattle are taught tricks, whereas Orlando is left uneducated and not given a chance to improve his state.
Oliver comes upon the scene, and Orlando tells Adam to stand apart and see how Oliver treats him. As Oliver commands Orlando to make better use of his time than idling, Orlando protests that idling is all that Oliver’s neglect allows him to do. Orlando’s accusations incense Oliver, who strikes Orlando. As Orlando retaliates, Adam comes forward and bids the brothers to make peace, but Orlando refuses to let go until Oliver promises to give Orlando his share of their father’s fortune so that Orlando can cultivate the knowledge and manners that become a gentleman of his birth. Oliver agrees to give some of his share, but, after Orlando and Adam leave, he plots to avenge his humiliation. He summons a wrestler named Charles, who is scheduled to compete at the court of a duke named Frederick (who had usurped the position of his older brother, Duke Senior) in a contest that Orlando will also participate in. To ensure Orlando is harmed, Oliver deceives Charles by portraying Orlando as ungrateful and hostile, persuading Charles to attack Orlando with maximum prejudice during the match, with the aim to kill Orlando.
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Orlando arrives at Frederick’s court, where the wrestling competition is to be held on the palace lawn. Frederick’s daughter Celia and her cousin Rosalind ask about him and learn that he is set to fight a more experienced wrestler. Fearing that the young Orlando will be badly injured, they meet him before the match to dissuade him from fighting Charles. Instead, Orlando forges ahead with the match and wins, earning Frederick’s approval. Spoiling Orlando’s victory, however, Frederick is displeased when he learns that Orlando is the son of his adversary Sir Rowland de Boys, who (as is revealed later in the play) had supported Duke Senior. He asks Orlando to leave, which prompts Celia and Rosalind to comfort Orlando. Rosalind gives him her necklace as a keepsake. Orlando finds himself tongue-tied: He has fallen in love with Rosalind.
Frederick exiles Rosalind from his court because of her popularity with the people of the dukedom. Celia chooses to accompany Rosalind in exile, and the cousins decide to leave for the Forest of Arden, taking the court jester Touchstone along.
Life in the Forest of Arden (Acts II–IV)
Adam warns Orlando that Oliver plans to kill him by burning his lodgings, prompting them to flee to the Forest of Arden. As Orlando and Adam make their way through the forest, Adam weakens from hunger. Orlando ventures to another part of the forest to look for food and encounters Duke Senior and his band of courtiers. At first Orlando threatens them for food, but Duke Senior gently admonishes him for his lack of courtesy. Shocked to find nobles using courtly etiquette in the forest, Orlando amends his behavior and ingratiates himself with the exiled duke, who explains that he is willing to help Orlando without coercion and asks him to bring Adam with him. Orlando escorts Adam to the camp, and they join the exiled band of former courtiers.
No longer struggling to survive in the forest, Orlando turns to lighter pursuits, as Rosalind, in the guise of a boy named Ganymede, settles in the forest with Celia and Touchstone. Meanwhile, Frederick commands Oliver to find Orlando and kill him. Unaware of these developments, Orlando starts pinning poems to trees in the Forest of Arden. His poems are written in praise of Rosalind, and he vows to carve poems in her name on every tree:
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O Rosalind, these trees shall be my books,
And in their barks my thoughts I’ll character,
That every eye which in this forest looks
Shall see thy virtue witnessed everywhere.
Run, run, Orlando, carve on every tree
The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.
Poetry written by the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca to a woman only known as Laura conveyed a chaste sense of love communicated to an idealized and lofty beloved. Orlando’s verses reflect a similar vision of love, idealizing Rosalind in the manner of a Petrarchan lover.
Orlando’s poetry is roundly criticized by Rosalind and Touchstone when they come across it. Celia reveals that the writer is Orlando, and Rosalind seeks him out in her guise of Ganymede. She finds Orlando conversing with Jaques, one of Duke Senior’s courtiers. Both of them exchange witticisms while growing increasingly weary of each other, and Jaques confirms Celia’s revelation. Once Jaques leaves, Rosalind, as Ganymede, accosts Orlando about his poetry. Orlando suspects nothing of her disguise, and she convinces him that his poetry proves that his lovesickness is a literal sickness requiring a cure. She offers him this cure by playacting as Rosalind. Through this ruse Rosalind seeks to tutor Orlando in a more mature form of love, tempering his romantic extravagance with practical wisdom.
Some time later Rosalind, as Ganymede, grows impatient when Orlando fails to arrive at the appointed hour for one of their meetings. Oliver, who had come to the forest intending to kill Orlando, approaches her and Celia. He explains that Orlando found him asleep in the forest and scared away a snake that was about to bite him. Then a lioness threatened to attack Oliver. Orlando, despite his resentment of his brother, fought it off to protect Oliver. As he drove the lioness away, Orlando was gravely wounded and unable to meet Ganymede.
Resolution (Act V)
Orlando, partly recovered from his wounds, walks with his brother in the forest. He is incredulous when he learns that Oliver has fallen in love with Celia (who is disguised as a shepherdess named Aliena). As Oliver tells Orlando that he intends to abandon courtly life to live with Aliena in the forest, Rosalind, still disguised as Ganymede, comes upon them and checks on Orlando’s health. Orlando tells Ganymede of Oliver’s intention to marry Aliena, confessing that he feels bitter at seeing another man’s hopes of marriage fulfilled while he still longs for Rosalind. When Ganymede asks Orlando if he will not be satisfied by his meeting “him” as Rosalind the next day, Orlando says “I can live no longer by thinking.” Ganymede then tells Orlando that “he” is a magician and will arrange for Orlando to marry Rosalind.
When Duke Frederick exiles Rosalind, Celia considers herself exiled as well and chooses to be called Aliena—Latin for alienated or estranged—as she accompanies Rosalind to the Forest of Arden.
Orlando later talks with Duke Senior about Ganymede’s odd promise. Rosalind meets them (as Ganymede) and reassures them that “his” plan will work. After she is satisfied that her father is happy with her marrying Orlando and that Orlando is still sincere in his love, she vanishes. Orlando remarks to Duke Senior that Ganymede looks a lot like Rosalind. She and Celia eventually reenter the scene without their disguises, accompanied by Hymen, the Greek god of marriage. Hymen predicts the fate of the various couples in the play: Rosalind and Orlando and Celia and Oliver are promised happy married lives. As Rosalind and the others receive Hymen’s blessings, Orlando and Oliver’s other brother, Jaques de Boys, arrives in the forest to inform those gathered about recent developments at court and in the forest: Frederick, while seeking to attack his brother’s company, met a religious man and is now inspired to renounce his crown, restoring power to Duke Senior and those in his company. Duke Senior in turn restores the property that Frederick had confiscated from Oliver. Thus, Orlando and Rosalind and Celia and Oliver are all promised good fortune.
Character appraisal: The education of Orlando
Orlando starts as a victim of primogeniture, denied a fortune and a chance to secure good social standing by an antagonistic eldest brother. He has a strong sense of justice, as well as a sense of propriety about his position in society, both of which drive him to a desire for self-improvement. As he tells Adam:
My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit. For my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you that keeping, for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox?
These qualities lead him to resent Oliver and drive Orlando to prove himself in other ways, such as by taking part in the wrestling match at the court of Frederick.
His relationship with Adam emphasizes his loyalty and provides further proof of his sense of justice as he strives to help a man who serves him faithfully. His admiration of Adam’s qualities also underlines his own sincerity and the type of values he prizes:
O good old man, how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, not for meed.
Thou art not for the fashion of these times,
Where none will sweat but for promotion.
For Adam’s sake, Orlando threatens Duke Senior and his company for food, but his conditioning as a member of the gentry, whatever material disadvantages he may have suffered at Oliver’s hands, helps him integrate into their company. His dialogue with the duke also foregrounds the theme of facades masking identities and human nature:
Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you.
I thought that all things had been savage here
And therefore put I on the countenance
Of stern commandment.…
Let gentleness my strong enforcement be,
In the which hope I blush and hide my sword.
This theme is raised time and again in the play, such as in Rosalind’s role as Ganymede and Jaques’s “Seven Ages” monologue.
For all his natural gifts, though, Orlando is also immature at times. In his love for Rosalind, Orlando displays the passion of love without a mature outlook. This leads to his fervent but poor poetry and sentiment of the sort that he reveals to Jaques when talking about Rosalind:
JAQUES: What stature is she of?
ORLANDO: Just as high as my heart.
Yet Orlando is not without considerable wit, as in his rejoinder to Jaques’s derision:
JAQUES: You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths’ wives, and conned them out of rings?
ORLANDO: Not so; but I answer you right painted cloth, from whence you have studied your questions.
This exchange implies that Orlando’s brush with romance makes him act with impassioned immaturity. Although his poetry conveys the sincerity of a man exposed to courtly culture, its lack of refinement shows he is not an expert in that culture. Rosalind’s guidance is essential to refining Orlando’s understanding of romance, steering him away from sentimental extremes toward a partnership based on equality and constancy.
As his story progresses, Orlando’s development from mistreated youngest brother to besotted lover and then to maturity parallels the play’s overall movement from discord to reconciliation. When Orlando tells Rosalind “I can live no longer by thinking,” it suggests that Orlando has matured beyond fanciful notions of love. Likewise, when Orlando comes across Oliver in the forest and sees the lioness, he risks his life to save Oliver, a sign that he gives more importance to forgiveness than resentment.
Shakespeare based Orlando’s character on Rosader from Thomas Lodge’s prose romance Rosalynde (1590). Rosader resembles Orlando in both his bravery and his romantic passion. Like Orlando, Rosader is targeted by a hostile brother (Saladyne in the original) whom he escapes by fleeing to a forest. Lodge’s original also features a role-play romance between Rosader and the titular Rosalynde, disguised as a man named Ganymede.
Adaptations
Onstage and screen, actors playing Orlando have largely adhered to portraying a sincere and passionate young character. The role was notably played by Laurence Olivier in 1936, marked by a display of physical vigor and ardor. Other portrayals sought to emphasize the character’s youthful diffidence and emotional vulnerability, such as Marianne Elliott’s staging in 2000 at the Royal Exchange Theatre, in which English actor Tristan Sturrock played Orlando.