As You Like It LRJ #3

Natalie Mironov
Ms. Peifer
English 10 IB, Hr 4
15 March 2009

As You Like It: Act 3

By this part of the play, Orlando has become a hopeless romantic, so caught up in love that it is all he can focus on. He uses his setting in the forest to help him express his love for Rosalind. He says, "O Rosalind, these trees shall be my books, and in their barks my thoughts I'll character, that every eye which in this forest looks shall see thy virtue witnessed everywhere" (3.2.5-8). In this way he uses the forest around him to show everyone that passes through, not just Rosalind, how much she means to him.

Although Orlando's overall goal is still to become a gentleman, his current goal has become wooing Rosalind and winning her love. He tells himself he is going to "carve on every tree the fair, the chase, and unexpressive she" (3.2.9-10), meaning he is going to tell everyone of her beauty, her virtue, and how hard it is to express all that she is. Jaques even tells Orlando that "the worst fault you have is to be in love" (3.2.286), to which Orlando replies, "'Tis a fault I will not change for your best virtue" (3.2.287-288). This shows how even though his love is consuming his every action, he would not give it up because it is so meaninful. Although unknowingly, Orlando does begin to achieve this goal when Rosalind, as Ganymede, tells him to "call me Rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me" (3.2.434-435), but he doesn't know that it's her so he doesn't get the satisfaction from it that he would if he knew it was Rosalind.

Orlando develops a bond with Ganymede, who is really Rosalind, of pretend lovers because Ganymede said to Orlando, "You must call me Rosalind" (3.2.442-443) so that Ganymede can "wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in 't" (3.2.429-431). In this way Rosalind can test Orlando to see how true his love really is. At this time, Orlando and Jaques have gone from being friendly acquaintances - from when Duke Senior and Jaques aided Orlando and Adam - to despising each other. Jaques says, "Let's meet as little as we can" (3.2.262), and Orlando agrees, saying, "I do desire we be better strangers"' (3.2.263). This shows their distaste for each other due to their differing opinions about Orlando's poems to Rosalind.