Summary: Act III, scene i
Oliver, who has been unable to locate Orlando, reports
to Duke Frederick at court. The duke chastises him for his failure
and commands him to find Orlando within a year’s time or else forfeit
the whole of his property. Frederick turns Oliver out to search
for Orlando and seizes his lands and worldly goods until Orlando
is delivered to court.
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Act III, scene i →
Summary: Act III, scene ii
Orlando runs through the Forest of Ardenne, mad with love.
He hangs poems that he has composed in Rosalind’s honor on every tree,
hoping that passersby will see her “virtue witnessed everywhere”
(III.ii.8). Corin and Touchstone enter, but
are too engrossed in a conversation about the relative merits of
court and country life to pay attention to Orlando’s verses. Corin
argues that polite manners at court are of no consequence in the
country. Touchstone asks him to provide evidence to support this
thesis and then challenges the shepherd’s reasoning.
Rosalind enters, disguised as Ganymede. She reads one
of Orlando’s poems, which compares her to a priceless jewel. Touchstone
mocks the verse, claiming that he could easily churn out a comparable
succession of rhymes. He does so with couplets that liken Rosalind
to a cat in heat, a thorny rose, and a prostitute who is transported
to the pillory on a cart. Rosalind rebukes Touchstone for his meddling.
Just then, Celia enters disguised as the shepherdess Aliena. She,
too, has found one of Orlando’s verses and reads it aloud. The women
agree that the verses are terribly written, yet Rosalind is eager
to learn the identity of their author. Celia teases her friend,
hesitating to reveal this secret until Rosalind is nearly insane
with anticipation. When Celia admits that Orlando has penned the
poems, Rosalind can hardly believe it. Like a smitten schoolgirl,
she asks a dozen questions about her intended lover, wanting to
know everything from where he is to what he looks like.
As Celia does her best to answer these questions, despite
Rosalind’s incessant interruptions, Orlando and Jaques enter. Hiding,
the women eavesdrop on their conversation. Orlando and Jaques clearly
do not care for one another’s company and exchange a series of barbed
insults. Jaques dislikes Orlando’s sentimental love, declaring it
the worst possible fault, while Orlando scoffs at Jaques’s melancholy.
Eager to part, Jaques walks off into the forest, leaving Orlando
alone. Rosalind decides to confront Orlando. She approaches him
as the young man Ganymede, and speaks of a man that has been carving
the name Rosalind on the trees. Orlando insists that he is the man
so “love-shaked” and begs her for a “remedy” (III.ii.332–333).
She claims to recognize the symptoms of those who have fallen under
the spell of true love, and assures Orlando that he exhibits none
of them. He is, she says, too neatly dressed to be madly in love.
She promises to cure him if he promises to woo Ganymede as though
Ganymede were Rosalind. As Ganymede, Rosalind vows to make the very
idea of love unappealing to Orlando by acting the part of a fickle
lover. Orlando is quite sure he is beyond cure, but Rosalind says,
“I would cure you if you would but call me Rosalind and come every
day to my cot, and woo me” (III.ii.381–382).
With all his heart, Orlando agrees.
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Act III, scene ii →
Analysis: Act III, scenes i–ii
In Act III, as the play moves from Duke Frederick’s court
into the Forest of Ardenne, Shakespeare explores more fully the
complexities of his major themes: the merits of country versus city
life, and the delights and dismays of romantic love. The conversation between
Touchstone and Corin in Act III, scene ii provides interesting insight
into the matter of city versus country living. Although Corin concedes
the argument to Touchstone, calling the clown’s high but hollow
rhetoric “too courtly . . . for me,” we note that Corin’s speech
is much clearer and his logic more sound than Touchstone’s (III.ii.61).
Corin’s declaration that “[t]hose that are good manners at the court
are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the country
is most mockable at the court” is not only sensible, it is also
in keeping with the guiding philosophy of the play: that the world
is full of contradictions that do not cancel one another out, but
exist side by side (III.ii.40–42).
Corin’s willingness to rest, then, is not so much an admission of
defeat as a recognition that court and country,
along with the style and the substance that they respectively
represent, must coexist.
As the argument between Touchstone and Corin plays out,
we witness the repercussions of Orlando’s lovesickness. When characters
fall in love in As You Like It, they invariably
fall hard and fast, abandoning all reason in their desperate attempts
to win the object of desire. Orlando is no exception, as the silly
and unskilled poems he tacks on the trees make clear. Here, Orlando’s
behavior accords with the Petrarchan model of romantic love (Petrarch
is a fourteenth-century Italian poet whose lyrics elevate the woman
he loves to an unattainable, semidivine status). Orlando’s behavior
leads him to great folly and prompts Jaques’s sour declaration:
“The worst fault you have is to be in love” (III.ii.258).
But, sour though it is, the sentiment is not Orlando’s alone. As
Rosalind reads Orlando’s verses, she comments on their poor composition,
but this shortcoming does not stop her from enjoying them. It is
much to the play’s credit that it conceives of such irrational devotion
as both a virtue and a vice. It is also the greatest testament of
the depth of Rosalind’s character: only she is capacious and generous
enough to welcome and thrive on such contradictions.