As You Like It (Research file) – Rosalind

 

The character of Rosalind is the daughter of the exiled Duke, Nice of the current Duke and Cousin of the Character Celia. She is also the love interest of the Characters Orlando and Phoebe. Near the beginning of the play she is staying in the court of her Uncle with her Cousin Celia who will not let her be exiled with the over turned Duke, but Celia’s father soon tells Rosalind that she is also exiled for being his brother’s child and Heir. The Duke banishes Rosalind because he sees her as a threat and his brother’s child; therefore she is a threat to his dynasty. Celia and Rosalind run away to the forest, (along with there confident Touchstone) to try and find Rosalind’s father, Rosalind discusses herself as a man and calls herself Galamid. During the play she attracts the attention of a Shepherdess called Phoebe and runs into Orlando who has also been exiled and she teaches him on how to woo her, near the end of the play it is revealed that the exiled Dukes brother has become a priest and the Duke of the Forest is ruler once more. Rosalind also gets married to Orlando and reveals to Phoebe that she is a woman, so she orders Phoebe to marry Silvus.

The character of Rosalind is very strong and independent, she tests the character Orlando (who she is in love with) in order to see if he is worthy of her affections, she does this by discising herself as a man and running away to the forest, where he farther the banished duke it hiding. Rosalind calls herself Galamid while she is in banishment and when she sees the verses that Orlando has written about her on the trees she can’t resist in tempting him to practise how he would woe her if she was not descised as a man. During this scene Orlando arrives late for their meeting and she tells him off for not being on time and that she would scorn at him for being late if she was out of her descise and being herself. She also tells him to call her Rosalind to get him into practise on saying her name and making him pretend that she is the person he’s in love with but as a man. Another thing that happened during these courting sessions is that Olando does nearly fall in love with Galamid, without knowing that it is her in descise as a man.

In Shakespeare’s time all-female parts would have been played by men because in those times woman were not allowed to perform on the stage, the woman’s roll was seen as staying at home, looking after the children and the household. Everyone apart from the King or Queen would go to the theatre to hear the different shows because in those days there was no scenery so the play-write would have to put in the actors speech where they were in the play. During a production of ‘As You Like It’ most of the story is set in the forest, so if Shakespeare wanted to change the scene e.g. going from the forest to the Dukes court then Shakespeare would have to include that in the a characters lines.

The Globe would be open almost every day apart from Christmas day, but during the Puritans reign the Globe had to close because Oliver Cromwell banned the theatre because he believed that it was sinful. The Globe did re-open after England got board of Puritan rule and asked for King Charles 1^st son, Charles 2^nd (the King who brought back partying) to come back and rule England. Charles 2^nd loved the theatre and was keen to get females acting, so things started changing and during the Monarchy restoration woman were finally allowed to act on stage.      

There are different ways on how the play ‘As You Like It’ can be applied to appeal to a modern Audience and be set in the modern day. One challenges that the play offers is why a woman would descise herself as a man to get the attention of the character Orlando. Some of the things that have been done with films is that the woman descises herself as a man to take the place of someone she loves, this is seen in the Disney film ‘Mulan’ where the character Mulan joins the army to take the place of her sick father, but accidently falls in love with her commanding officer Captain Lee Shang.

For our contepory performance of 'As You Like It' we are setting our performance in a chatroom. One of the benifits of this is that the character of Rosalind can use the chatroom as a cover for finding out about Orlando, but during our scene she is talking to the characters Silvius and Pheobe and telling the character Pheobe not to fall in love with her and to love Silvius. Also because our scene is set in a chatroom the character Rosalind can us a the name Galamid as a cover so that the characters won't know if it's a male or female that they are talking to. During the scene Pheobe starts to fall in love with the character Galamid despite fact that Pheobe has been isulted by a character dressed as a man who is a woman to find out about the chartacter Orlando, but because Pheobe doesn't know that Galamid is really a woman she falls in love with her to which Rosalind tells her "Do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine" this shows that Rosalind is trying to warn Pheobe that she is not all she appears to be.

The language that Shakespeare uses is very complex and nothing like we would use today because of the way it is written. The challenges that we had to face were not just learning some very completed words, but also understanding what we were talking about so that we could understand the language of the text. I also found the rhythm of the speeches completed because not many people would normally speak in the way that the text is spoken, which is using a device called Im Bick Pentameter, which involves the character using stress on one word and then un-stressing the next word without sounding robotic the sentences are also set to a rhythm of ten beats.