The play begins with problems between two pairs of brothers. Duke Frederick has usurped his brother, "Duke Senior" and taken over the land, but the more immediate problem lies between Oliver de Boys and his younger brother, Orlando. Oliver's a bad dude of the Bad For No Reason school of villains and he mistreats Orlando because: "my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he." Oliver tried his hardest to keep Orlando from any sort of achievement or accomplishment, yet Orlando is "gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved". In other words, he's a Mary Sue. Everybody loves Orlando, except the antagonists. But for all that unearned virtue, he's still cool. He even wins me over, and I usually despise the leading men in Shakespeare's comedies *cough*BassanioandClaudio*cough* So those are the brother problems, and now we move on to the girls' problems.
Rosalind is the deposed duke's daughter, and she is best friends with her cousin Celia, the new duke's daughter. The new duke banishes Rosalind, and Celia goes off into exile with her. Both of them put on disguises so they won't be assaulted in the wilderness (apparently, taking Touchstone the clown with them is not sufficient protection). Rosalind disguises herself as a teenage boy called Ganymede, and Celia pretends to be Ganymede's shepherdess sister.
So, Orlando flees into the forest to escape from his brother, Rosalind and Celia flee to the forest from Duke Frederick, and suddenly all of the cool people in the dukedom are out in the forest of Arden. The disguised girls rent a cottage and relax, while Orlando occupies himself by writing really bad poetry and hanging it on the trees. Rosalind find his poetry, which is all about her since they had a love-at-first-sight thing back at court, but instead of revealing her identity she stays hidden and becomes Orlando's buddy while passing herself off as Ganymede.
One of the main things Rosalind does as Ganymede is to insult all women and to tell Orlando why he shouldn't love "his" Rosalind. She really lays it on thick, all the reasons why he shouldn't pursue her. When I first read this play, I thought Rosalind was just bing sadistic, enjoying Orlando's emotional pain while she taunted and baited him and risked nothing. I'm now convinced that's not what is going on. Orlando is acting the part of a stricken lover--sighs, groans, poetry, etc--and Rosalind's trying to figure out if he's legit. And, okay, maybe she's having a little fun watching him squirm. For the audience, part of the trouble with these scenes is that Orlando's flagrant displays of lovesickness and his later tested and true love for Rosalind both look much the same to us. We're comparing one type of old-timey love convention against another, and it's hard to sort out what's supposed to be lasting when we know well get a happy ending in either case.
Silvius and Phebe, a lover and his icy beloved are even more clearly ancient archetypes of love. Rosalind doesn't think much of their behavior, and rails on Silvius for pursuing an idiot. Rosalind's words for Phebe are even harsher: "Sell when you can, you are not for all markets". Burn! Silvius and Phebe are one of the four couples who get married by the end of the play, and you have to wonder how well their union will turn out. Silvius has no self-esteem and Phebe has no mercy. But then again, we are in a play where the evil usurping duke suddenly gets religious and easily gives his land back to it's rightful leaders, so maybe these crazy kids will turn fine, all evidence to the contrary.
I feel sorry for Celia, who gets few lines after she enters Arden, although she deserves better attention after bravely following Rosalind into exile. She's an excellent but underused character who gets to be part of the play's resolution. Orlando's land problems are solved when his brother Oliver falls in love with Celia and decides to take up shepherding. It's Oliver and Celia's insta-love that inspired the famous lines "no sooner met than looked, no sooner looked than loved" and so on. With four major weddings, everyone's happy in Arden except for Jacques, the resident gloom-spreader who is nevertheless a source of entertainment for his companions because they love to hear his weird turns of melancholy. The play ends kind of unusually when Hymen, the god of marriage, comes down to perform the marriage ceremonies. And nobody thinks this is weird. But any play that includes this many "hey nonny nonny"s isn't taking itself too seriously. Rosalind's one of Shakespeare's best heroines, and her play can survive guest appreances by retro figures from Greek drama.
