Rosalind and the Masks in Shakespeares As You Like It :: Shakespeare As You Like It Essays

Rosalind and the Masks In this essay I would like to focus on Rosalinds - or rather Ganymedes - preoccupation with the outward cross-file of things. Whether this is a mutilatespring of her cross-dressing, the reason for the same, or the playwrights way of revealing his presence is not as yet clear to me, but Rosalinds constant insistence on the rectitude of masks and on the other hand her readiness to doubt this same right fascinates me. When she decides to dress up as a boy, Rosalind seems to think a manful right(prenominal) sufficient to convince the world at large (I.iii.111-118). She is more than than common tall and therefore all she needs is a bold curtle-axe, a boar spear and a swashing and a martial outside to hide her feminine anxiousness. Taking it for granted that noone will puzzle the misgiving to look beyond her male costume, she reasons that since cowardly men are adequate to hide these feminine qualities, she should be able to pass off as a man, simply b y behaving mannishly. Being so totally symbiotic on her take disguise not being found out, it is ludicrous how she proceeds to doubt anyone who does not put on an outward show fitting to their claims to feeling. The first to be put on the stand in this fashion is Orlando. As Ganymede Rosalind refuses to accept Orlandos claim to being the desperate pen of the love-verses (s)he has found hanging on the trees on the grounds that he has no visible marks of love upon him. A lean cheek, which you have not a blue eye and sunken, which you have not an unquestionable spirit, which you have not a beard neglected, which you have not (...) Then your irrigate should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and everything about you demonstrating careless desolation. (III.ii.363-371) He is, in other words, not exactly the picture of the despairing suitor. uncomplete does Jaques measure up to Rosalinds expectations of the melancholy traveller. She greet s him with a they say you are (IV.i.3), and sends him off with the order of Look you lisp, and wear strange suits disable all the benefits of your own country be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide graven image for making that countenance you are or I will incomparable think you have swam in a gondola.