CQ - As You Like It (Acts I to III)

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

In the first three acts of William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It the themes of the play are presented and developed, one of them call attention: that of love, especially love at first sight.

It is common in Shakespeare’s plays to find character that fall in love with each other at first sight. In As You Like It, the first couple to fall in love as soon as they meet is Rosalind and Orlando. They first see each other when Orlando goes to a wrestling match in the new Duke’s court, who is Rosalind’s uncle and usurped her father’s dukedom. Later Rosalind is disguised as Ganymede when she encounters Orland at the Forest of Arden after finding the poems he has written about her and his love and left on the trees. She proceeds to tell him that “Love is merely a madness” (III. iii. 331) and persuades him to pretend that he, Ganymede, is her beloved and court him in order to get cured from his love.

Another instance of the so called loved at first sight is that of Phoebe, a shepherdess, who believes to have fallen in love with Ganymede, who is actually Rosalind dressed up as a man. Phoebe asks of Silvius, the man who is in love with her: “Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?” (III. Vi. 81).

These two examples seem to call the reader’s attention to the feebleness of such instances of love. Rosalind professes to have fallen in love with Orlando at first sight and yet, talking to him under the disguise of Ganymede she dismisses the notion of love itself declaring it a malady that can be cured. It could be that her intention was to test the strength of his feeling for her, but it can also be her honest opinion on the business of love that she cannot reveal as Rosalind, but feels free to speak under the protection of her disguised self.

 The Duke Senior’s daughter also classifies love as an emotion that cannot be trusted when talking to Phoebe: “I pray you do not fall in love with me for I am falser than vows made in wine.” (III. Vi. 71-72) In this passages it seems that she is implying that love is so blind that Phoebe believes herself to be falling for one that is actually another woman, which could be accepted nowadays but could not at the time.

Based on these examples we can wonder at Shakespeare’s mentions of love at first sight and whether he meant to criticized this belief more than to endorse it.

Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Ed. Michael Hattaway. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2000.