As You Like It: Rosalind

The character of Rosalind in Shakespeare's As you Like It is definitely a character which is unlike most which I have studied throughout my experience with Shakespeare. She basically dominates the play, with the way Shakespeare has written her to such an extent. She is so complex and rich in her personality. She is well-rounded and identifiable to most everyone. 

She chastises Orlando and Silvius on multiple occasions, showing how tough she is and how she is a creature of logic. But at the same time, we see her faint at the sight of Orlando's blood, showing her tenderness and her passion. She is driven, as she spends the majority of the play dressed as a young man in order to woo the man she loves. She seems like a character that feminist audiences would particularly appreciate, as the society in Elizabethan times was definitely a male-dominated society and Rosalind's character stretches those boundaries, making her act as a man and give tutoring to Orlando, a nobleman, which at the time would be very unwelcome from a woman. 

One of my favorite lines of Rosalind's in this play was this:

"No, faith; die by attorney. The poor world is almost six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person, videlicet, in a love-cause. Troilus had his brains dashed out with a Grecian club, yet he did what he could to die before, and he is one of the patterns of love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair year though Hero had turned nun if it had not been for a hot midsummer night, for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont and, being taken with the cramp, was drowned; and the foolish chroniclers of that age found it was Hero of Sestos. But these are all lies. Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."
           (IV.i.81–92)

Here, it really demonstrates Rosalind's strength of character. She denies Orlando's claim that he would die of heartbreak if his love for her should go unrequited. She responds by telling him that it is far more likely for a man to die from being hit with a club, or drowning than to die of heartbreak. Rosalind here is showing that despite her love for Orlando, she is not willing to let it cloud her judgement or make her different. She is an independent woman and although she loves him and rejoices in loving him, she does not allow it to shift her sense of reality. Love, to her, should exist realistically and should be able to survive in the real, logical world where she lives. I think that is a very interesting sentiment, especially considering how the typical "romantic love" is portrayed in our society today. It's almost always this fantastical meeting and it makes love seem so magical and impractical, as if it will magically appear and will change everything. But that isn't real love, real love is the type of love that grows gradually and can exist despite the hardships of the "real world".