As You Like It

As with Rosalind, one of Celia’s primary motivations in the play is her love for her best friend. This love surpasses any Celia holds for her cruel father Duke Frederick. When Duke Frederick banishes Rosalind, there is no question for Celia that she will follow her friend into exile. However, while in exile, her choice of name and disguise betrays her separation from home. In Latin, the name Aliena—like the English word “alien”—means foreign or other. While in the forest, Celia is far from her home, and although she willingly and loyally plays along with Rosalind’s scheming, she is at times a third wheel to Rosalind and Orlando’s love. Celia shows her powerful ability to love again at the end of the play when she makes a quick connection with Oliver, whom she ultimately marries.

Orlando is the hero of the story and the love interest of Rosalind, the heroine. His is the youngest brother of the deceased Sir Rowland de Boys. As youngest, he has no inheritance and suffers under the inadequate charge of his oldest brother Oliver. Despite his lack of education and training, he possesses natural charm and talents that Oliver envies. He fully embraces the role of hero, proving his physical prowess in a wrestling match against Charles, Duke Frederick’s wrestler. He also proves his gentleman’s loyalty to his servant Adam in the forest, saving the man from starvation. Orlando even saves his jealous and hateful brother Oliver from a stray lioness in the forest, forging a new and positive bond with him. Although he is not as intelligent as Rosalind, his love for her is powerful, and he does whatever he can to gain her hand.

As a fool, or clown, in Duke Frederick’s court, Touchstone fulfills a stock character role in Shakespearean comedy. He is full of constant and often bawdy critique of the other characters, and his jokes are frequently vulgar. Like Rosalind, Touchstone is intelligent, although his intelligence lacks her refinement. Still, even while in exile Touchstone maintains a strong connection with his courtly roots. He continually defends life at court and its refined education in the face of his rustic forest surroundings. Like Celia and Rosalind, by the end of the play Touchstone decides to get married. Unlike Celia and Rosalind, his love for Audrey rendered as crude and comic.

Duke Frederick, the younger brother of Duke Senior, is a cruel usurper. Before the play begins, he has taken over his elder brother’s lands and court, banishing Duke Senior to the forest. He initially allows Rosalind, Duke Senior’s daughter, to remain at court due to her friendship with his own daughter Celia. However, Duke Frederick becomes unfairly suspicious of Rosalind and banishes her. When he discovers the girls are gone and attempts to recover them, it is more out of anger and brutality than fatherly devotion. This lack of connection with his family, including his own daughter, fits with his turn to a religious life at the end of the play. Although it might seem a miraculous turn of events for the previously tyrannical Duke Frederick to suddenly return his lands to his older brother, his personality and lack of familial connection is better suited to the solitude of religious life.

Duke Senior is Duke Frederick’s older brother and Rosalind’s father. Before the beginning of the play, his brother has banished him to the Forest of Arden. While in the forest, he sets up a rustic mock-court, holding table with various lords and attendants, including Amiens and Jaques. His temperament is far more level and kind than his brother’s, and he forms connections more easily. For example, he happily welcomes Orlando to his table in the forest, despite Orlando’s initial hostility. Upon learning that Orlando is the son of his late friend Sir Rowland de Boys, Duke Senior is even more pleased.

Oliver is the oldest son and heir to the deceased Sir Rowland de Boys, as well as a brother to Orlando. Despite being charged with his brother’s care, Oliver hoards his wealth and envies his brother’s natural charm and talent. He relishes this hatred when Duke Frederick tasks him with finding Orlando. However, once in the forest, Oliver’s fate turns, and Orlando must save him from a lioness. Saved by his brother, Oliver has a change of heart and embraces his brother as family. He further shows his personality change and newfound willingness to love when he falls for Aliena, who is Celia disguised as a shepherdess. By declaring that he would give up his inheritance to live a simple life as a shepherd with Aliena, Oliver shows how far his personality has changed from the greedy, hateful older brother of the play’s beginning.