Act I
This act is set wholly in the court of Duke Frederick who has ousted his elder brother Duke Senior from power and sent him into exile. In the garden of the late Sir Rowland de Boys, his youngest son Orlando complains to his aged servant Adam that Oliver, his elder brother, is not treating him as his father would have wished. He has not given him access to the funds set aside for his education, but instead treats him no better than a servant. Oliver enters and the brothers quarrel. Oliver, who hates his brother, refuses to reimburse him. Instead, he summons the wrestler Charles, whose challenge Orlando intends to answer and tricks him into thinking that Orlando will plot against his life if he loses the wrestling match. Charles departs with the intention of disabling him.
The opening of the play contains nothing light-hearted or comic, instead revealing a disturbing background to then comedy that follows. Orlando is still treated as a boy, even though he has now grown up, so decides to assert himself against the oppression of his elder brother:
"The spirit of my father grows strong in me,
and I will no longer endure it" (I.1.65-6)
Orlando's complaints are shown to be entirely justified. All the claims of villainy that Oliver levels at his brother are in fact true of himself. Mean-spirited and malicious with Orlando, manipulative with the well- intentioned Charles and vicious in his manner, he admits that his hatred is simply borne out of jealousy for his more popular and attractive brother. Shakespeare uses the convention of the soliloquy (a great means of discovering a character's true thoughts) twice in this scene to leave us in no doubt as to Oliver's wickedness.
Within the frame of this quarrel we also learn of the earlier fraternal usurption of Duke Senior by his younger brother Duke Frederick. No justification for this is given here or elsewhere is the play except for Frederick's desire for power. This artfully enacts the past through the present. Duke Senior is said to be living the carefree life of the golden age in the Forest of Arden (I.1.112) - in classical myth this is a time of innocence like that enjoyed by Adam and Eve. We are presented with a dramatic representation of human wickedness and greed in marked contrast to these idyllic suggestions.
Orlando's character is also firmly established as assertive, honest and bold. Even Oliver has to admit that he has "never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device" (I.1.155-6). Though no match for Rosalind in the wordplay that the play later abounds in, he is intelligent and has a courageous honesty that makes him a worthy suitor.
The scene then shifts to show Celia, the daughter of Duke Frederick, comforting her cousin Rosalind, daughter of the exiled Duke, who has been allowed to remain at the court because of her great friendship with Celia. Upset at her father's absence, Rosalind replies to Celia's entreaties to be merry in a style that reveals a character who deliberately uses her wit and intelligence to triumph over misfortune:
"From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports.
Let me see - what do you think of falling in love?" (I.2.23-4)
This also encapsulates the sportive spirit of this romantic comedy.
Touchstone's entrance intensifies this, as he is funny alone and the trigger for further humour in the jokes that are made (affectionately) at his expense. The courtier, Le Beau, who enters to tell them of the impending wrestling bout, is not so fortunate, his formal pomposity making him a target for the jibes of others. The Duke's entrance changes the tone again, preparing us for the serious business and the dramatic climax of the wrestling and the first encounter of Rosalind and Orlando.
This occurs when they witness the wresting match in which Orlando defeats Charles. When the Duke learns that the unknown challenger is the son of Sir Rowland, a former enemy, he brusquely departs; the two cousins compliment him on his success, Rosalind in particular as Sir Rowland had been a friend of her father. Orlando immediately falls in love with Rosalind. Rosalind tells Celia that she has fallen in love with Orlando. The Duke enters and banishes Rosalind for alleged disloyalty but actually because she is so popular, and thus an annoyance and a threat. Celia, who has pleaded against her father's decision in vain, determines to accompany her cousin in exile, suggesting that they disguise themselves in humble clothes. Rosalind has the idea of dressing as a man. Together they decide to journey to the Forest of Arden in search of Rosalind's father, taking with them the court jester Touchstone for comfort and support.
Act II
In conversation with the lords in the Forest of Arden, where most of this act and the rest of play is set, the exiled Duke Senior extols the virtues of life away from the court. They then discuss the attitudes of the melancholy Jacques (one of their party) and the Duke sets our to find him. This stoic praising of the virtues of the Forest of Arden in preference to life at the court is central to the debate about values contained within the action of the play. The forest is not, however, a wholly ideal state. Those within it are still subject to "the penalty of Adam" (II.1.5) i.e. seasonal change. However, the Duke still finds nature to be an uplifting source of moral teaching. Jacques continues this moralising more melodramatically when he speaks of killing a deer. His speech serves as a reminder that life in the forest is not a paradise - in the classical 'Golden Age', nature provided food for man unbidden without the need to kill. As the melancholy character in a romantic comedy, his 'humour' is a little out of place, and there are hints that some of the other courtiers laugh at his determined sadness.
Back at court, Duke Frederick having discovered their absence, sends for Oliver to help him find Celia and Rosalind, whom he believes to be in the company of Orlando. Adam warns Orlando of a plot against his life by Oliver and together they leave his house. This shows a moving example of true loyalty and service in the reciprocated feeling and concern Adam feels for Orlando.
In the forest, Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, and Celia, disguised as Aleina, overhear the young shepherd Silvius talking to the aged Corin of his love for Phebe. Celia bids Touchstone to solicit food from Corin. He says they can offer little food as they work for a mean master who is about to sell their flocks and livelihoods. The women make arrangements for Corin to buy his master's pasture, flock and cottage, where they propose to live. Thus, what might have been a purely pastoral interlude is modified by two factors - the bawdy and very unromantic perspective of Touchstone and the realistic presentation of Corin's economic situation.
The Duke's musician Amiens sings a song "Under a greenwood tree" in the company of Jacques, which praises the life of nature, free from ambition, sustaining the pastoral note and idyllic associations of life in the Forest of Arden. However, Jacques' conversation and his own verse mocking those who leave wealth and ease strikes am contrary note just as the clowning of Touchstone stops the theme of romantic love from being over-saccharine. A balance of attitudes is therefore being perpetually struck throughout the play, which seldom falls unambiguously into one view.
In another part of the forest, Orlando comforts the weary Adam and promises to bring him food. This introduces a new perspective on forest life - as inhospitable to strangers, a wild and deserted place where the even the air is "bleak" (II.6.14). In this setting, Orlando's decent humanity shines through.
As the Duke is about to eat, Jacques rushes in to tell of his meeting with a fool in the forest (Touchstone). Orlando enters abruptly demanding food. The Duke treats him gently; Orlando apologises, pleading necessity. Jacques delivers his great "All the world's a stage" speech. Amiens sings a song, "Blow, blow, thou winter wind". The Duke is pleased to discover the identity of Orlando whom he welcomes into his "court".
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.
Phebe's heartlessness in this scene outdoes Touchstone's lack of gallantry a few scenes back. She is an incarnation of the disdainful Petrarchan mistress, prominent in many Renaissance sonnets. In taking Silvius's extravagant love literally, she reveals its absurdity. Rosalind is again in control - her chiding of Phebe giving her a taste of her own medicine. The ironies of unrequited love are intensified to the point of comic absurdity when Phebe falls for the disguised Rosalind.
Act IV
Rosalind gets the better of Jacques in a debate about Melancholia. This genial and gentle mockery represents the banishment of melancholy by the mirthful spirit of comedy incarnated by the youthful and optimistic central character. In exuberant form Rosalind then chides Orlando for being late, bids him woo her and enlists Celia's help in performing a mock marriage ceremony with him. This is the second great scene in which the central devise of disguise is used to advance the love plot as Rosalind ("in a holiday humour" - IV.1.61) manipulates Orlando and experiments with her language, some of which has bawdy undertones. She is bold, assertive and daring, promoting Celia's later rebuke:
'You have simply misused our sex in your love-prate' (IV.1.186-7)
The normal conventions in relations between the sexes are subverted through the devise of disguise. When Orlando says he must leave her for two hours because her has to dine with the Duke, she warns him not to be a minute late for their next rendezvous or she will think him untrustworthy.
There follows an interlude in which Jacques elicits a song from a forester who has killed a deer that they propose to present to the Duke. The function of this scene is to fill the time demanded by the plot (two hours have to pass before Orlando returns to Rosalind). Jacques, who had earlier lamented at length the killing of a deer in the forest (II.1.27ff), appears to show no disapproval here. The idea of presenting the Duke with the horns prompts the old joke about cuckoldry, which is a recurrent theme taken up by Touchstone and Rosalind, to be repeated later.
Rosalind receives from the hands of Silvius a love letter from Phebe; at first she pretends that it is abusive and that she really believes Silvius to be the author. She then reads it to Silvius and rebukes him for his folly in love. Rosalind's pretence, though her intentions are not malicious, compounds Silvius's distress, who is treated quite severely, almost tormented. Oliver enters in search of Ganymede to deliver a message from Orlando which explains his non-arrival. It tells of how Oliver rescued him first from a snake and then a lion, and was wounded in the process. Rosalind faints.
Oliver's account of his conversion though the generosity of his brother provides further evidence of Orlando's essential goodness, who is not so perfect that he did not contemplate revenge. Oliver's account of Orlando "Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy" (IV.3.102) cleverly introduces what is a fanciful bittersweet narrative. The scene's climax, in which Rosalind faints, is the occasion of comic and touching irony and an indication that under the pressure of her feelings her disguise is beginning to crack.
Touchstone's threateningly dismisses of one of Audrey's previous suitors, William, the country clown. This treatment contrasts with his good-natured dismissal of Jacques and the disinterested schooling of Silvius by Rosalind. In performance it can either be played as farce, with William's simplicity exaggerated, or as genuinely vicious. Either way, it enhances Rosalind's good-natured wit and character by contrast.
In conversation between the two brothers it emerges that Oliver and Aliena (Celia) have fallen in love at first sight and propose to get married the following day. When Orlando rebukes that it is a bitter thing to look into happiness through another man's eyes, Rosalind promises that she will bring about his own marriage to Rosalind at the same time. Phebe rebukes Rosalind for revealing the contents of her letter. Silvius defines what it is to be a true lover referring to his own feelings for Phebe; Orlando and Phebe echo his feelings in a refrain as they yearn for Ganymede and Rosalind, while Rosalind joins in with her feeling "for no woman".
The love of Oliver and Celia is the final example of 'love at first sight' in the pay, amusingly recounted to Rosalind by Orlando. Thereafter she speaks "in sober meanings" (V.2.66). This sobriety underpins the comically romantic refrains on the nature of love as Phebe, Orlando and the still disguised Rosalind echo the idealistic definitions and feelings of Silvius and prepare us for the solemnity of the final scene.
Touchstone announces that he and Audrey will be married the next day, thus confirming the fourth potential marriage. Two pages sing "It was a lover and his lass", but the romantic note is not unalloyed, succeeded as it is by Touchstone's unappreciative comments.
In the final scene, Rosalind, still in disguise, confirms the marriage pacts that she has made in the Duke's presence. Touchstone arrives with Audrey and engages in a final bout of wit as he is introduced to the Duke. This final interchange between Touchstone and Jacques in which Touchstone mocks aspects of courtly life and manners precedes the denouement, easily brought about by the revelation of Rosalind's disguise as she and Celia then enter and Rosalind seals the bargains made. The entrance of a masquer, Hymen, who sings a wedding song brings solemnity and formal ceremony. The Duke welcomes his daughters and niece. Phebe accepts Silvius.
Jacques de Boys, the second son of Sir Rowland, comes with then news that Duke Frederick, who had come to the forest with the intention of capturing Duke Senior and putting him to the sword, has experienced a change of heart. He has decided to bequeath his crown to the banished Duke and restore the lands seized from those he banished and to withdraw from the world. There is general rejoicing. So impressed is Jacques with the Duke's conversation that he decides to follow him into the religious world. It's left to Rosalind to appeal to the audience's goodwill in the epilogue.
News of the conversion of Duke Frederick prepares the way for the restoration of the old order made wiser by experience. The decision of Jacques to join the Duke means that he too has made a resolution appropriate to his temperament and character, so that it cannot be said tbat he is excluded from the plays harmonious and happy ending. There are no loose ends. Rosalind remarks that it is not convention to give the epilogue to a lady, but as the engineer of Shakespeare's plot it is highly fitting that it is she who speaks and so brings the play to an end on a note of good humour and insinuating comic banter.