A Reader’s Love for Rosalind
That Rosalind came from the same creative mind as Iago is a testament to Shakespeare’s capaciousness as both a writer and as a man. Rosalind is the true Touchstone of As You Like It. The reader’s reaction to her indicates the type of reader he or she is. For those who do not passionately love Rosalind have no love in their hearts at all.
Chesterton informs us that Rosalind is the most overworked of all created personages, as she has had to appear in every play, every novel and every story written since her initial appearance on the stage. It is true that Rosalind is the Eve of plenty of heroines in English literature. From Samuel Richardson through Fielding and Smollett and Trollope, and then in many of Jane Austen’s heroines, not to mention the women characters in novels written by the Bronte sisters, and Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. Wherever we turn in literature we encounter Rosalind. She is as pervasive as Hamlet. And much healthier for us.
From the little we know about Shakespeare, a few solid impressions can be gleaned from his physical existence. Contemporaneous journal entries remark that Shakespeare was amiable, calm, was fond of the alehouses of London, and good, if not a tad sharp at business. There are many court records citing William Shakespeare as a litigant in legal matters concerning his financial interests including rent owed to him by men sharecropping farm land he owned and several suits involving monies owed to him by those he lent money to, for Shakespeare was a money lender as well. And there is also his part ownership in his acting troupe, and his part ownership in the Globe Theater, all of which brought him economic success and great wealth in his later years.
Shakespeare left Stratford for London the son of a failure who was burdened with debt, and he returned to buy the “second” largest house in Stratford, and then the property and house next door in which he installed his parents and siblings.
This combination of sheer pragmatism mixed in with a singular creative genius is fascinating, on many levels. Rosalind shares this trait of pragmatism with her creator, for she too is both a creative genius and a sage, a wise and prudent woman who directs the play Shakespeare placed her in, and she has no qualms getting exactly what she wants. She wants Orlando, the somewhat dimwitted but good natured young man who Rosalind teaches to be the man she needs him to be so that she can love him. But Orlando is not all she wants, and her wisdom surpasses her desirous orchestrations within the play.
Rosalind taught the world and the humans that live on it how to love. Her motivations are pure, and she has absolute faith in the goodness of her intentions, and the goodness of her being. It is impossible not to love Rosalind. There is something seriously wrong with you as a person if you do not fall immediately, and permanently in love with Rosalind.
But she is also a shrewd judge of character, and not bashful at making her distaste known to somebody she doesn’t like, or trust. She takes Touchstone down at first meeting, and she is not a fan of Jaques’ either, but she has more sympathy for him. And even her stance on Touchstone is amiable and lighthearted. Pragmatically, she has opinions, but not sharp opinions, and she realizes levelheadedly that getting along with folks, and not taking them, or herself too seriously is the best way to go.
Rosalind is part of a very small company of Shakespearian characters for sure genius and depth of personality. Falstaff, Hamlet, Iago, Cleopatra, these are all part of the core of Shakespeare’s infinite multitudes. Out of those four just mentioned, Rosalind is by far the kindest, friendliest, and sanest of them. Falstaff shares many affinities with Rosalind, but there is an element of tragedy and pathos in Falstaff that is completely absent in Rosalind. Rosalind is incapable of finding life tragic, in any sense of that word. She really is the only and best antidote that Shakespeare provides us with to combat the negative ethos of Hamlet and Iago, Macbeth and Edmund.
As bright and cheery as Rosalind is, I’m not sure that the play she is in shares those qualities with her. There is a pervading sense that time, in the play as well as in ourselves, is quickly coming to an end. That the end is near. From Jaques’ Ages of Man speech, to Touchstone’s “witticisms” and rather rancid nihilism, there is a very real sense that fun picnic time in the Forest of Arden is momentary and fleeting. But, what fights this dread of time and the anxiety it causes us, the audience, is Rosalind herself. She knows she is but a player in a play that will close soon, but she sincerely, and touchingly, hopes that the audience won’t forget her and that it appreciates her and enjoyed her however brief performance.
And that is why Rosalind, this majestical creature that Shakespeare created, is so beloved, and will remain beloved for as long as men and women are able and willing to take a moment and giggle and come play in the Forest of Arden with Rosalind.