As You Like It and “The Love You Bear”

Dr. Erin E. Kelly

When I teach undergraduate Shakespeare courses, I tell students that it’s not entirely possible to “spoil” the ending of most of the plays. A tragedy will end in a pile of dead bodies. And a comedy will end – as Jaques puts it – with some number of “couples … coming to the ark” about to be wed. As You Like It memorably ends with four pairs of lovers receiving the blessing of the Hymen, the Ancient Greek god of marriage. Yet this play features a number of other instances of love that merit our attention.

As soon as a theatre audience in 1599 (likely at the newly opened Globe Theatre) heard the name Rosalind, they would expect a play about love if they were at all familiar with the popular prose romance Rosalynde first published by Thomas Lodge in 1590. This book is now best known as Shakespeare’s source for the plot of As You Like It, but Rosalynde had gone through four editions before Shakespeare’s play premiered, and it continued to be reprinted well into the seventeenth century. Lodge’s preface promises readers “Love anatomized” – that is, accounts of the minute details of many types of love experiences – and Shakespeare builds the play on that foundation.

The first instance of love we encounter in As You Like It takes the form of a servant’s devotion to his master. Adam tries to resolve tensions between Orlando and his older brother Oliver by invoking “your father’s remembrance,” and the old man’s unwavering loyalty to Orlando seems motivated by a commitment to the values of the deceased Sir Rowland de Boys. Eventually, Adam gets his wish that the brothers will be reconciled. Lodge’s treatise makes explicit that Rosander (his character who gets renamed Orlando) decides to save Oliver’s life because of his memory of his father, specifically his dying words that “Brothers’ amity is like the drops of Balsamum, that salveth the most dangerous sores” – in other words, brotherly love heals all wounds.

Rosalynde also offers numerous examples of how language and love interconnect. As in the play, experiences of love in Lodge’s work generate poetry. Orlando writes love poems about Rosalind. Montanus (the young shepherd Shakespeare renames as Silvius) and an old shepherd (Coridon, later called Corin) debate the nature of love in “A pleasant Eclogue.” Phoebe rejects her shepherd suitor with a song, and Saladyne (the play’s Oliver) woos Aliena by handing her a sonnet. Yet Shakespeare deviates from his source by showing that at the moments of most intense, genuine feeling, words fail – for instance, his first encounter with Rosalind leaves Orlando speechless.

Given the situation in which they find themselves, the love between Celia and Rosalind is surprising. Celia’s father has banished Rosalind’s father, and that would be reasonable grounds for resentment. If the usurping Duke Frederick is right that Rosalind’s “silence and patience” make the people favour her over his own daughter, Celia might be happy to see her cousin sent away. Yet Celia proffers the strongest possible expression of her feelings, declaring to Rosalind in language that evokes a wedding vow, “thou and I am one.” It is love that takes Celia from the court into the uncertainty and possibilities of the forest.

Indeed, the idea that love is associated with people becoming “one” gets reinforced by the play’s rendering of character names. While the rightful ruler in Roslaynde is Gerismond and the usurping brother Torismond, Shakespeare calls these figures Ferdinand and Frederick. The young Rosander who is mistreated by his older brother Saladynde is the son most like his father John of Bordeaux. Shakespeare’s play turns these character names into similar-sounding near anagrams: Orlando, Oliver, Rowland. In this way, just as the play signals the happiness of its key female characters by unifying their identities – as Rosalind/Ganymede and Celia/Aliena once again become the true Rosalind and Celia – it linguistically suggests that the resolution of conflicts between brothers is a (re)unification into one true self.

As if to underline this idea, Shakespeare gives his play an ending even more loving than that provided by Lodge. On the final page of Rosalynde, Torismond leads an army into the woods to vanquish Gerismond and the loyal courtiers who followed him into exile, but the courageous leadership of Rosader and Saladyne overcomes the usurper, and Torismond is “slain in battle.” The ending of As You Like It would therefore have surprised audiences familiar with Lodge’s work by describing a different outcome for the tyrannical Duke Frederick. An audience or reader coming to this play for the first time can still be delighted by how the play resolves by having a villain choose to embrace yet another variety of love.

Offering examples more expansive than the model of the young married couple, the play’s anatomizing of love through poetry, humour, and spectacle offers something for everyone – a chance to observe varied examples of love just “As you like it.”

Dr. Erin E. Kelly is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Victoria.