Essay: Gender in ‘As You Like It’ – Shakespeare

Throughout the myriad of characters in Shakespeare’s plays, he portrays very few that have women as the leading role of power and force due to social factors in society in the Early Modern Era. However, in few plays, Shakespeare bent these stigmas of society. One example is with his piece, As You Like It. The leading female role in this play is Rosalind, and not only is she the most-spoken female character with more than 700 lines in any of his plays, she is the foundation for holding the play forward, literally controlling and directing how the show goes, which proves her power as a central force to be reckoned with. Rosalind is a very complex character and has a lot of depth, and one aspect of her that can be analyzed is how she fluidly navigates the spaces of possessing characteristics or traits that are both feminine and masculine. Certain scenes in Shakespeare’s play As You Like It utilize the character Rosalind to serve as commentary to address the binary gender constructs of masculinity and femininity when she is in the forest of Arden. Arden, and Rosalind fluctuation of identities in Arden, can be seen as states of mind that, “we visit and leave, revisit and leave again,” (Lewis 46) where the transition from one side of life to another, or one gender to another, is seamless. By means of cross-dressing, Rosalind breaks this stigma of gendered roles in that she fluidly navigates between both spaces, which can be seen from the irony in the casting of Rosalind in the Early Modern Era, and in specific scenes from As You Like It.
A counterintuitive concept for modern day audiences to understand is the irony within the role of Rosalind in As You Like It. In the Early Modern Era, women were not on stage so prepubescent boys were casted for female roles, due to them being narrow-hipped and free of facial hair, their voice not being as deep and pronounced yet. These Elizabethan boys casted as female characters were seen as a sort of middle ground between both that of a man and a woman, because they were androgynous and indistinguishable due to their pubescence. Young boys were seen, “like women-but unlike men-acknowledged objects of sexual attraction for men,” as well (Orgel 70). Boy actors had the ability to be both feminine and masculine in a more natural way while the older men actors lacked a proficiency thereof. Considering this factor of production was something that the audiences could clearly see and understand when viewing plays, an unspoken rule that was understood amongst the masses, it’s hard to see reading it generations later. Navigating these spaces fluidly is a defining characteristic of Rosalind’s character, and not only is it Rosalind that can fluidly transition or be both of these roles, but also the boys who portrayed her on the stage. This was something that Shakespeare played to his advantage, especially in Rosalind’s epilogue to the audience and a variety of other scenes mentioned in this paper. In the Early Modern Era, where boys are seen as the transition or point between a man and a woman, their very role as Rosalind questions what constitutes, and what doesn’t constitute, a woman or man. With this in mind, there is an added layer of comedy and complexity within As You Like It when the actor for Rosalind must take on the role of playing Rosalind and Rosalind as Ganymede, which is essentially a male character acting as a female who also must portray a female character as a male character.
One way in which Rosalind’s masterful navigation between the polarized spaces of both masculinity and femininity is depicted starts in Act Three Scene Two, when Rosalind enters as Ganymede into the forest. She finds love poems carved into the bark of trees that are dictated to Rosalind, and banters with Touchstone, comparing the terrible poetry to “bad fruit,” from the trees in Arden. Rosalind however, just seems to view the poems from an objective, masculine view which is true to her character of Ganymede. Later Celia as Aliena reads one of the poems out loud. Upon listening to another poem, Rosalind as Ganymede begins to see the poems not from her role as a man, but from that of a woman. Celia starts to tease Rosalind, egging her on since she has knowledge of who the poet is. Intrigued by this thought, Rosalind swiftly moves to from her masculinity to her feminine, asking, “Is it a man?” and, “Is he of God’s making? What manner of a man? / Is his head worth a hat? Or his chin worth a beard?” (165). The repetitiveness of the questions depicts the femininity and curiosity that any woman can experience when finding out about a potential lover. Celia thinks the whole debacle is funny and points out at it. Rosalind later acknowledges her true identity of being a woman dressed as a man and tells Celia that her acting in a feminine manner should come as no surprise, because, “Do you not know I am a woman? When I think / I must speak,” (167). Rosalind in this incident is playing both role is Ganymede and her true identity of herself, seamlessly traveling in and out amongst the two. Physically by dress she is a man, but underneath, a woman who has just found out someone has a crush on her, gushing over and frantically needing to know all the details about him, despite the fact that a few lines earlier she had been distant and unemotional to the poems being in her character of Ganymede.
As time in the forest progresses, there is an evolution of Ganymede. Rosalind ends up using her disguise to her advantage when she runs into Orlando. Orlando says that he is in love, and Rosalind as Ganymede knows just how to fix him from being in it, to get him out of this love sickness he’s enduring. Rosalind as Ganymede tells Orlando to call her Rosalind, and by hatred she will make Orlando fall out of love because a woman that, “would now / Like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then / Forswear him,” (172). These polar opposites in her lines are not only to show how Orlando’s feelings will drastically change for Rosalind, but also parallel with the polar extremes between one emotion or another, like how she is either seen as one gender or the other even though in reality she is having to balance them both. When Rosalind offers this solution to Orlando’s problem, Rosalind is having to mask a hidden gender, yet again, and be extra wary of the multiplicity of the roles she is playing. Initially, her acting as a man wasn’t for this intention, of being complicated or a tool of manipulation. When she created her role of Ganymede, she dressed as a man to protect her womanhood of traveling in the woods alone, and to not get captured by her Uncle. But now in this situation Rosalind is utilizing her manhood for her womanhood’s advantage, the cross-dressing a means of communicating freely and willingly. Rosalind comes to know the split in herself and what she is capable of, navigating between these two spaces of identity. She begins to flow between both that of being a man and being a woman, whether it is subtly hinted in lines she says or directly by emotion. Rosalind either, “always speaks through Ganymede as if she were someone else, and Ganymede, when he speaks, can only elucidate what Rosalind is,” (Iser 323). She cannot be one without the other, so she becomes a master at portraying, or even being, both. Rosalind is not only a fluid controller of both roles, but a mastermind because she uses her role as Ganymede to ensure that Orlando does love Rosalind when she is witnessing his affection for her through Ganymede’s perspective.
Another instance in which Rosalind is honing on both her masculine and feminine side is in Act 4 Scene 3. Oliver comes into the forest inform Rosalind as Ganymede and Celia as Aliena that Orlando has suffered an injury from a lion in the forest. Worried, Rosalind and Celia beg for more details and the story progresses. At the end, as Oliver gives, “this napkin, / dyed in his blood,” (205), Rosalind faints upon sight of Orlando’s bloodied napkin, symbolizing the blood shed for his lover. It makes her queasy clearly, and as she is dressed as a man, she succumbs to her womanly reactions resulting in her fainting upon the sight of blood. The, “gender mask slips,” (Brown 159) and Rosalind now becomes subject to ridicule from Oliver, who is questioning his manhood by saying that he lacks a man’s heart (Shakespeare). Here, even when she wakes up from her dizzy spell, Rosalind says that she faked the whole ordeal in order to play her role genuinely as the lover of Orlando. Oliver kind of bickers back with Rosalind as Ganymede, saying that there was a, “passion of / earnest,” () at stake and it was more than acting the role of Rosalind. While he questions her and ridicules Ganymede’s weakness of blood, his statement has a bit of humor in it because he notices that there is kind of something more to the eye when Rosalind faints, an allusion to her true identity and feelings that she is masking. But of course, clever Rosalind just makes it seem that it was part of her plan all along and Oliver seems to believe it, relaying the story to his brother Orlando. This scene is just another that depicts how Rosalind has actions of femininity and masculinity while she is cross-dressing as a man.
Rosalind’s epilogue is a final area where we can see Rosalind acknowledging both of her identities, or the spaces she is fluctuating between. To the audience, Rosalind is bidding farewell one final time as she says, “If I / were a woman I would kiss as many of you,” (Epilogue 16-17), but a boy is actually playing her role. This play on words provides a sense of comedy to the audience, but can be seen as a point where the gender masks falls off again, drawing attention to the fact that the actor is a man, but hinting at the capabilities that one can be a woman explicitly.
In all of these scenes, Rosalind’s fluidity between being herself and channeling Ganymede is depicted. It is safe to say that she masters in pulling off both, because she can be one and the other without having to be all female or all male. Her actions and words she says even allude to her identity and the fluidity between it, it’s not just binary. For this reason, Rosalind is seen as a sort of “sexual chameleon” due to her mastery in the physical and verbal roles of being both masculine and feminine (Harley 335). Whether it be when Rosalind is dressed as Ganymede but experiencing female giddiness due to her crush on Orlando, to when she begins to utilize her manhood to her advantage for her womanhood with manipulating Orlando, or even when she faints at the sight if Orlando’s blood on a napkin. All of these scenes show Rosalind as a character that is encompassing characteristics of both gender roles, someone who is navigating both of these spaces. Her roles are not separated from each other but a mixture of both masculinity and femininity, which is proof that these roles shouldn’t be polarized because someone can fluctuate between both.
Overall, Rosalind is a significant character because she gives us insight and clarity on challenging the dynamic male and female roles, where someone can be not just one or the other, but both. Even as she is cross-dressing, she can be both masculine and feminine, navigating these spaces of gender identity. As Orlando even writes in one of his love poems, Rosalind is of “many parts” and that wasn’t said without intention. Shakespeare crafted a character that was desirable and desiring, knowledgeable but naïve, masculine and feminine. Rosalind is a catalyst for changing the gender roles because of her cross-dressing in the time period of the Early Modern Era, which can also be used to break our gender roles of masculinity and femininity in society today, that one can be both not just binary.