Rosalind
Who is Rosalind in the play As You Like It?
What role does Rosalind play in the Forest of Arden?
How does Rosalind’s disguise as Ganymede affect the play As You Like It?
What are some notable performances of Rosalind’s role?
Rosalind, protagonist of William Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It, written and performed about 1598–1600 and first published in the First Folio of 1623. One of Shakespeare’s most notable heroines, Rosalind is the daughter of the exiled Duke Senior. Disguised as a young man named Ganymede, she flees to the Forest of Arden after being exiled from court by her uncle. Although this disguise is originally intended as a means of protection, she uses it to direct the flow of events in the play. Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde (1590), a major source for As You Like It, features a heroine who, like Shakespeare’s Rosalind, disguises herself as a man and navigates a forest within a plot shaped by exile and romantic intrigue.
Role in As You Like It
Meeting with Orlando and exile from court (Act I, scenes 2–3)
Rosalind first appears in the play’s second scene and is sorrowful over the banishment of her father, Duke Senior, by his brother, Frederick. Celia, Rosalind’s cousin and Frederick’s daughter, cheers her up by drawing her into lighthearted banter, which is interrupted by news of a wrestling match. The cousins stay to see the young contender, Orlando, win the match. Frederick congratulates him, only to become incensed upon learning that Orlando is the son of Sir Rowland de Boys, a close friend of the banished Duke Senior. Rosalind and Celia rush to comfort Orlando, and Rosalind gives him the chain she wears around her neck as a token of affection. As he leaves, he calls her “heavenly Rosalind,” suggesting that he has fallen in love with her. Celia later teases Rosalind for clearly returning Orlando’s affections.
Shortly after, Frederick orders Rosalind to leave his court because of her popularity with the people of the dukedom. Celia, who is devoted to her cousin, is chagrined by her father’s order and chooses to join Rosalind. They leave for the Forest of Arden, where the deposed Duke Senior lives in exile. Rosalind opts to disguise herself as a man named Ganymede, while Celia says she will dab her face with a pigment to disguise her appearance, don “poor and mean attire,” and call herself Aliena. They also decide to take the court jester Touchstone with them.
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Rosalind spends part of the play disguised as Ganymede—named after the beautiful male youth from Greek myth who was taken to Olympus to serve as cupbearer for Zeus and is sometimes seen as a symbol of homoerotic desire. After meeting Orlando in the Forest of Arden, Rosalind, as Ganymede, plays the part of Rosalind, purportedly in order to cure Orlando of his lovesickness. In England before 1660 the role of Rosalind was taken on by young male actors. This nested gender performance created a layered comedy for audiences at the time.
Rosalind as Ganymede in the Forest of Arden (Acts II–IV)
Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone reach the Forest of Arden and eavesdrop on a conversation between two shepherds, Corin and Silvius. The latter fawns over Phoebe, a shepherdess. As Rosalind compares Silvius’s doting with her attraction to Orlando, Touchstone relates how he used to court a woman called Jane Smile, presenting a mocking take on romance that nevertheless ends with a sentiment Rosalind agrees with: “As all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.”
Rosalind as Ganymede manages to buy Corin’s master’s lodgings for herself, Celia, and Touchstone. She also finds that Orlando—who has fled to Arden as well after learning about his brother Oliver’s plot to kill him—has been pinning to trees in the forest poems in praise of Rosalind, such as:
From the east to western Inde
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures fairest lined
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no face be kept in mind
But the fair of Rosalind.
Ganymede accosts Orlando about his poetry and tells Orlando that he will cure him of his lovesickness by pretending to be Rosalind. This scheme comically serves to orchestrate Orlando’s courtship of her but also allows Rosalind to teach him the difference between mature love and mere infatuation. Rosalind, still as Ganymede, next encounters the shepherdess Phoebe and her suitor Silvius in the forest. Finding Phoebe’s rejection of Silvius arrogant, Rosalind rebukes her. Ironically, this flash of anger only makes Phoebe fall in love with Ganymede, involving Rosalind in another romantic intrigue that she decides to direct as Ganymede.
Later, still as Ganymede, Rosalind grows impatient when Orlando fails to arrive at the appointed hour for one of their meetings. Oliver, who had come to the forest to kill Orlando, appears before her and Celia and explains that Orlando saved him from a lioness. As he drove the lioness away, Orlando was gravely wounded and is unable to meet Ganymede. On hearing this and seeing a handkerchief stained with Orlando’s blood, Rosalind faints.
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Rosalind’s conclusion of her role (Act V and epilogue)
Rosalind prepares to abandon her disguise when she meets Orlando, who declares that the role-play wherein Ganymede has pretended to be Rosalind is not easing his longing. Rosalind exposes Phoebe’s manipulation of Silvius, revealing that Phoebe has been using Silvius as a messenger in her pursuit of Ganymede. Claiming to be a magician, mede, promises Orlando that “he” will use powers to arrange his marriage to Rosalind while also binding Phoebe to her word to marry Silvius if she cannot marry Ganymede. In another part of the forest, Touchstone woos a goatherd named Audrey, assuring her that the two of them will be married soon, setting the stage for all the couples in the play to converge later.
Rosalind is ready to drop her disguise so that she can marry Orlando. She and Celia then arrive without their disguises, accompanied by Hymen, the Greek god of marriage, who proceeds to predict the fate of the couples: Rosalind and Orlando and Celia and Oliver (who earlier fell in love with Celia at first sight) are promised happy conjugal lives. Touchstone, too, is set up to marry Audrey as Hymen makes it clear that he and Audrey suit each other “as the winter to foul weather.”
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 the crown, restoring power to Duke Senior and those in his company. Duke Senior in turn restores the property Frederick had confiscated from Oliver. Thus, Rosalind and her cousin are both promised good fortune.
In delivering the epilogue, Rosalind breaks the fourth wall by “charging” the women in the audience to “like as much of this play as” pleases them. Alluding to her shifting identity throughout the play (and to the casting of male actors to play women in Shakespeare’s time), she adds:
If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied not.
Character appraisal: Rosalind’s wit and command
At the start of the play Rosalind has the makings of a tragic heroine—as the daughter of the exiled duke, she has no prospects, and her reduced circumstances intensify with her banishment. For Rosalind the Forest of Arden enables her self-discovery and the opportunity to progress from disenfranchisement to self-possession. It is a transformation by which she is able to take control not only of those around her but also of her own narrative.
Disguised as the boy Ganymede, Rosalind gains a freedom that lets her wit, intelligence, and poise flourish. She secures shelter for herself, Celia, and Touchstone, and she takes the lead in her courtship with Orlando by proposing to “cure” him of love through role-play. Her playful command—“Come, woo me, woo me, for now I am in a holiday humour and like enough to consent”—lets her shape their romance on her terms. When Orlando claims that he will die for love, she responds, “Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love,” undercutting romantic excess with realism, steering Orlando to a more mature approach to love.
This temperate approach is also evident in how Rosalind characteristically eschews the type of happy idealism that Orlando’s poetry presents and criticizes it:
O most gentle Jupiter, what tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried “Have patience, good people!”
Rosalind has the most dialogue in As You Like It and has the most lines of any female Shakespearean character. She speaks a total of 685 lines, amounting to 5,727 words.
Rosalind is resourceful and creative in her use of disguise. She steers Phoebe and Silvius’s romantic interaction by deflating Phoebe’s vain rejection of Silvius. She rebukes Phoebe’s vanity—“Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?”—and steers her toward a union with Silvius. Her disguise thus enables her to critique the gendered behaviors of both men and women.
Throughout her role as Ganymede, Rosalind is grounded by her cousin Celia. At court, Celia is Rosalind’s protector and devoted friend, but in Arden the roles reverse: Rosalind becomes the leader. Yet their bond remains reciprocal, with Celia engaging Rosalind in banter as an equal and serving as a foil to her, such as when she scolds Rosalind for mocking women in her instruction of Orlando: “You have simply misused our sex in your love-prate. We must have your doublet and hose plucked over your head.”
When Rosalind abandons the “doublet and hose” she wears as Ganymede, her ingenuity ensures the resolution of multiple romantic plots, as the magical solutions she promised are delivered through the revelation of her identity. This confident conclusion of her performance sets the stage for her final gesture: She steps out of character in the epilogue to address the audience, directing their reaction to the play in a way that is in line with the commanding role she displayed throughout the bulk of the play.
Adaptations
In early performances of As You Like It, Rosalind was played by a boy, as women were prohibited from performing onstage. After the Restoration in 1660 (which marked the reinstatement of the monarchy in England with the return of Charles II as king), women began performing female roles, with Hester Santlow Booth likely the first woman to play Rosalind—in Love in a Forest, a heavily altered adaptation. Modern stagings have sometimes featured male actors such as Ronald Pickup (1967) and Adrian Lester (1991) as Rosalind to emphasize the gender complexities of the role. Notable portrayals by female stars include Helen Mirren in a 1978 BBC production and Bryce Dallas Howard in a 2006 film by Kenneth Branagh.