Chapter Commentary of As You Like It - Study Guide by William Shakespeare

Jacques dominates this scene at the beginning and the end. His reaction to meeting Touchstone is slightly manic - what the fool has said is hardly worthy of half and hour’s laughter. Nevertheless, though they are opposite in temperament and humour, Jacques and Touchstone share a somewhat jaundiced view of the world and he recognises something of his own alienation in Touchstone’s wit. The Duke’s opinion is intriguing - neither confirmed nor contradicted by anything else in the play - that Jacques has been a notorious libertine and therefore is in no position to assume the role of censorious scourge in criticising the rest of the world. Jacques, defending the liberty he wishes to assume in his imagined role as fool, doesn’t deny this, simply asserting that he will only attack vices generally. Though the Duke’s judgement might be thought to undermine Jacques’ integrity, Shakespeare gives him the onset and most serious speech on the theme of the seven ages of man.

Act III

Here the courtship begins in earnest. At the opening Duke Frederick charges Oliver with the task of bringing back Orlando within a year, dead or alive, making a dramatic contrast in tone and mood from the surrounding scenes in the forest.

In the forest Orlando pins up verses in praise of Rosalind on the threes. Touchstone and Corin debate the merits of life at court and life in the country. Rosalind finds and reads one of Orlando’s poems. Touchstone mocks and parodies it. Celia reads another and discloses that the author is Orlando, whom she has seen swooning beneath a tree. The women then overhear Orlando get the better of Jacques in a battle of wits. The disguised Rosalind decides to accost Orlando and speak to him "like a saucy lackey". She persuades him that she has a cure for love - he has to woo her as if she were his ‘Rosalind’, whom she will pretend to be. Her fickleness in this ‘courtship’ will bring him to his senses. Orlando agrees.

Centrally placed at a mid point in the action, this is the longest scene in the play and the first three (joining IV.1 and V.2) in which the disguised Rosalind talks to and courts Oralando. At the start, Orlando appears in the typical pose of the courtly lover, writing verses to his beloved. But this is undercut by the women’s mockery and Touchstone’s cynical wit, who, as a proponent of courtly love in his debate with Corin, here ridicules courtliness. Here, as in the whole play, wit triumphs at the expense of traditional poetic romance. But Oralando is not made to look a complete fool - he gets the better of Jaques in their wit combat. The defeat and departure of "Monsieur Melancholy" (III.2.286) at this point as the spirits of the principal characters rise is fitting and has symbolic effect. Orlando is then outdazzled himself by the wit of Rosalind who further ridicules the affectation of the male courtier and brilliantly manipulates him into seeking a cure for his madness. The romantic encounter between the lovers begins, therefore, not unromantically - traditional courtship is shown to be rather a silly game and Shakespeare’s plot allows an intelligent woman to turn the tables on unconventional male behaviour.

There is a courtship of a more earthy kind when Touchstone talks to the goat-herd Audrey whom he decides to marry. Jacques persuades him to marry in church.

This ungallant wooing and the cynical views of marriage expresses make a comic contrast with the previous scene.

Rosalind, upset that Orlando has not turned up for their meeting, discusses him with Celia. When Oralndo is on stage, the disguised Rosalind is masterly and controlled. Here, by contrast, speaking to Celia as a woman in love, she exhibits some of the giddiness that she previously attributed to fickle females. Celia, not yet a lover herself, pours scorn on the apparent folly of Orlando.

Corin offers to show them true love in the form of Silvius, who is being rejected with pitiless disdain by Phebe. Rosalind, who has observed this, steps in to rebuke her. Phebe immediately falls in love with the disguised Rosalind who rejects her and rebukes her in return. Phebe melts a little in her attitude to Silvius and sees that she can use him to her advantage as a messenger of her notes to Rosalind.