As You Like It CHARACTERS
Adam:
An old servant in the de Boys household. He supports Orlando’s claim to his father’s legacy and accompanies him into exile, even offering his life savings to help Orlando survive.
Aliena:
This is an alias used by Celia.
Amiens:
A courtier who is with Duke Senior in exile.
Audrey:
A simple country girl who herds goats and marries Touchstone. She doesn’t understand Touchstone’s mockery of her.
Celia:
Duke Frederick’s daughter and Rosalind’s cousin. She shares a strong bond with Rosalind and willingly goes into exile with her. She serves as a catalyst for some of Rosalind’s actions. After Orlando’s victory, she suggests they thank and encourage him. When Rosalind is banished, Celia suggests they go to seek her uncle in the Forest of Arden and wear disguises. Celia poses as a peasant woman named Aliena.
Charles:
Duke Frederick’s wrestler who fights Orlando in Act 1, Scene 2. Oliver tricks Charles into believing that Orlando is a villain and that Charles should harm Orlando as much as possible. However, Charles is defeated by Orlando.
Corin:
An old shepherd who befriends Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone. Despite Touchstone’s mockery, Corin defends his simple pastoral life.
Jaques de Boys:
The middle son of Sir Rowland de Boys and brother to Oliver and Orlando. He delivers the news of Duke Frederick’s conversion and serves as a neutral mediator between the good and evil forces of the play.
Duke Frederick:
Duke Senior’s younger brother who usurps his throne. He is also Celia’s father and Rosalind’s uncle. Duke Frederick is a fairly one-dimensional villain throughout most of the play. His base nature is summed up by Le Beau. He does not appear after being converted by an “old religious man” in the forest.
Duke Senior:
The exiled elder brother of Duke Frederick and father of Rosalind. Duke Senior serves as the benevolent patriarchal figure of the Forest of Arden. He introduces the forest as a superior setting and also addresses its drawbacks. He delights in the physical sensation of being cold, which makes him feel more alive than the “painted pomp” of the court.
Ganymede:
This is an alias used by Rosalind.
Hymen:
The Greek god of marriage, Hymen, appears in the final scene to marry all the couples. His presence adds a sense of otherworldliness to the forest.
Jaques:
Jaques is a melancholic lord attending Duke Senior in exile. He provides commentary on the play’s various issues from a different perspective. Jaques’s dislike for humanity initially casts a dark shadow over the events in the Forest of Arden. While Duke Senior expresses regret at killing the deer, Jaques weeps at the sight of a wounded deer. He goes so far as to criticize not only Duke Senior but also all the men who have invaded the forest as usurpers. Jaques is seen as something of an environmentalist. However, the audience does not develop a favorable impression of Jaques. His cynical statements are rebuked time and again by Rosalind, Orlando, Touchstone, and Duke Senior. In the end, Jaques refuses to take part in the wedding celebration. He intends to join the newly religious Duke Frederick, indicating his devotion to the ideal of the pastoral world.
Le Beau:
One of Duke Frederick’s courtiers, Le Beau acts as a go-between for Duke Frederick and his daughter and niece. He informs the two women about the wrestling match and also about the duke’s bad mood after its conclusion.
Sir Oliver Mar-text:
Sir Oliver is a vicar whose marriage of Touchstone and Audrey is interrupted by Jaques.
Oliver:
Oliver is the oldest son of Sir Rowland de Boys. He is openly villainous, expressing his dislike for Orlando because Orlando is virtuous and well-liked. This animosity mirrors Duke Frederick’s hostility towards the late Sir Rowland de Boys, showing how both men are antagonized by virtue. In the end, Orlando’s kindness towards Oliver inspires Oliver to give Sir Rowland’s estate to Orlando. Oliver then marries Celia.
Orlando:
Orlando is the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys and the play’s romantic male hero, who eventually marries Rosalind. Orlando’s appearances in the first act establish his moral virtue. He desires only to engage in activities befitting a gentleman, including a good education. Oliver, the oldest de Boys brother, professes to despise Orlando because Orlando is well-liked and respected. Orlando goes on to defeat Charles, a Goliath-like figure, in a wrestling match without boasting or bravado, and he even shows humble shyness when Rosalind addresses him afterward.
Much attention is given to Orlando’s ties to his father, Rowland. Their last name, de Boys, comes from “bois”, which means “forest” in French. When Orlando claims, “The spirit of my father grows strong in me”, the audience understands that Orlando, not Oliver, is the true heir to the virtuous natural world signified by their last name.
In the Forest of Arden, the audience’s impression of Orlando shifts somewhat, as Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, appears to control the interactions between the destined pair. The audience may feel that Orlando’s inability to direct their conversations reflects a lack of masculine assertiveness. Yet, one of Orlando’s virtues may be his ability to reconcile himself to more feminine qualities. Upon reaching the forest realm of Duke Senior, Orlando first adopts an aggressive stance; however, once he realizes he is being kindly received, he remarks, “Let gentleness my strong enforcement be”. With Duke Senior serving as a surrogate father figure to Orlando, this scene might be viewed from a Freudian perspective as a resolution of the hostility toward the father associated with the Oedipus complex. Orlando taps into his nurturing side, noting, “like a doe, I go to find my fawn”.
Ultimately, Orlando is confirmed as the foremost authority figure in both his relationship with Rosalind and in the play as a whole. The possession of Rosalind in a literal sense passes from Duke Senior to Orlando. When Duke Senior is restored as the head of the dukedom, his possessions will pass not to his daughter but to the husband of his daughter, meaning that Orlando will inherit the entire land. Thus, festive celebration is now possible because a dependable, that is, patriarchal, social order is securely in place.
Phebe:
Phebe is a shepherdess who is indifferent to Silvius, who is trying to court her. She falls in love with Ganymede instead. Eventually, she agrees to marry Silvius.
Rosalind:
Rosalind is the daughter of the exiled Duke Senior and the niece of Duke Frederick. She is the main character of the play, having the most lines and driving much of the play’s resolution. She starts off feeling down because her father has been exiled, and only perks up when her heart is “overthrown”. When she is banished from the court, she disguises herself as a man, Ganymede, to appear less vulnerable. In this disguise, she uses her wit to guide conversations, particularly with Orlando. She arranges for Orlando to dote on her, as if she were Rosalind, ensuring a sustained connection with him. She later lectures Orlando on the appearances and actions of someone who is truly in love. Despite the freedom her disguise gives her in terms of her attitude towards Orlando, Rosalind feels constrained by it. When she, Celia, and Touchstone enter the forest, she expresses a desire to “disgrace my man’s apparel, and to cry like a woman”. Similarly, when she faints at the news of Orlando’s serious wound, she first says, “I would I were at home”, then denies her emotional state, claiming she had faked the faint. The audience is left to decide whether such denials are positive steps for a woman of that era to take. Regardless of how much Rosalind enjoys her man’s disguise, the play’s closure is very much a return to a state of female subservience. Indeed, from the outset, Rosalind is understood to be depressed largely because of the absence of any male figure in her life: her father has been exiled, and the fact that she only becomes animated upon meeting Orlando sheds light on her earlier suggestion that they divert themselves by “falling in love”. Before revealing her identity, Rosalind refers to herself in speaking to her father as “your Rosalind” and requests confirmation that he will “bestow her on Orlando”. Regarding Rosalind’s return to her womanhood, Peter B. Erickson notes, “A benevolent patriarchy still requires women to be subordinate, and Rosalind’s final performance is her enactment of this subordination”. Erickson also notes that the epilogue, in which the male actor playing Rosalind reveals himself as male, presents a “further phasing out of Rosalind”.
Silvius:
Silvius is a shepherd who remains in love with the shepherdess Phebe despite her constant rejection. He eventually marries her.
Touchstone:
Touchstone is a fool who first serves Oliver, then Rosalind and Celia. He acts as a touchstone, testing the qualities of the other characters both at Duke Frederick’s court and in the forest. He also conveys bits and pieces of philosophy to the audience, whether they be genuine or ironic. Many commentators have noted that Touchstone differs from the fools in Shakespeare’s preceding plays largely because the playwright shaped the part to a different actor: Robert Armin. Armin, who himself wrote a work on the varying natures of court fools, was perhaps fit to play a jester of greater sophistication than the man he replaced within the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Will Kempe, who had proven successful playing strictly comic roles. In fact, Armin may have joined the company midway through Shakespeare’s writing of As You Like It, which would account for the difference in Touchstone’s temperament in the first act as compared to the later acts. Touchstone is perhaps more out of place in the Forest of Arden than any other character in the play. While Touchstone marries Audrey at the end, the audience understands that he does so merely to enjoy the associated conjugal rights. Otherwise, throughout much of the play Touchstone remarks not on the merrier aspects of the forest but on what the forest lacks as compared to the court. In general, Touchstone looks at every situation from an oblique angle and speaks in a caustic voice. He sees Orlando’s poetry not as charming but pedantic; he insists that Corin is a sinner for having never learned court manners; and rather than enjoying their song, he condemns the pages as being off time. He even refuses to acknowledge himself as either witty or a fool. Touchstone’s presence within the pastoral romance is a concession to our sense of comic realism and protects the play from corrosive criticism.
William:
William is a country fellow who loves Audrey and is rudely threatened by Touchstone.
