Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Artifice
As Orlando runs through the forest decorating every tree
with love poems for Rosalind, and as Silvius pines for Phoebe and
compares her cruel eyes to a murderer, we cannot help but notice
the importance of artifice to life in Ardenne. Phoebe decries such
artificiality when she laments that her eyes lack the power to do
the devoted shepherd any real harm, and Rosalind similarly puts
a stop to Orlando’s romantic fussing when she reminds him that “[m]en
have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not
for love” (IV.i.91–92).
Although Rosalind is susceptible to the contrivances of romantic
love, as when her composure crumbles when Orlando is only minutes
late for their appointment, she does her best to move herself and
the others toward a more realistic understanding of love. Knowing
that the excitement of the first days of courtship will flag, she
warns Orlando that “[m]aids are May when they are maids, but the
sky changes when they are wives” (IV.i.125–127).
Here, Rosalind cautions against any love that sustains itself on
artifice alone. She advocates a love that, while delightful, can
survive in the real world. During the Epilogue, Rosalind returns
the audience to reality by stripping away not only the artifice
of Ardenne, but of her character as well. As the Elizabethan actor stands
on the stage and reflects on this temporary foray into the unreal,
the audience’s experience comes to mirror the experience of the
characters. The theater becomes Ardenne, the artful means of edifying
us for our journey into the world in which we live.
Homoeroticism
Like many of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, As
You Like It explores different kinds of love between members
of the same sex. Celia and Rosalind, for instance, are extremely
close friends—almost sisters—and the profound intimacy of their
relationship seems at times more intense than that of ordinary friends.
Indeed, Celia’s words in Act I, scenes ii and iii echo the protestations
of lovers. But to assume that Celia or Rosalind possesses a sexual
identity as clearly defined as our modern understandings of heterosexual or homosexual would
be to work against the play’s celebration of a range of intimacies
and sexual possibilities.
The other kind of homoeroticism within the play arises
from Rosalind’s cross-dressing. Everybody, male and female, seems
to love Ganymede, the beautiful boy who looks like a woman because he
is really Rosalind in disguise. The name Rosalind chooses for her alter
ego, Ganymede, traditionally belonged to a beautiful boy who became
one of Jove’s lovers, and the name carries strong homosexual connotations.
Even though Orlando is supposed to be in love with Rosalind, he
seems to enjoy the idea of acting out his romance with the beautiful,
young boy Ganymede—almost as if a boy who looks like the woman he
loves is even more appealing than the woman herself. Phoebe, too,
is more attracted to the feminine Ganymede than to the real male,
Silvius.
In drawing on the motif of homoeroticism, As
You Like It is influenced by the pastoral tradition, which
typically contains elements of same-sex love. In the Forest of Ardenne,
as in pastoral literature, homoerotic relationships are not necessarily
antithetical to heterosexual couplings, as modern readers tend to
assume. Instead, homosexual and heterosexual love exist on a continuum
across which, as the title of the play suggests, one can move as
one likes.
Exile
As You Like It abounds in banishment.
Some characters have been forcibly removed or threatened from their
homes, such as Duke Senior, Rosalind, and Orlando. Some have voluntarily
abandoned their positions out of a sense of rightness, such as Senior’s
loyal band of lords, Celia, and the noble servant Adam. It is, then,
rather remarkable that the play ends with four marriages—a ceremony that
unites individuals into couples and ushers these couples into the community.
The community that sings and dances its way through Ardenne at the
close of Act V, scene iv, is the same community that will return
to the dukedom in order to rule and be ruled. This event, where
the poor dance in the company of royalty, suggests a utopian world
in which wrongs can be righted and hurts healed. The sense of restoration
with which the play ends depends upon the formation of a community
of exiles in politics and love coming together to soothe their various
wounds.
