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neither true nor false, but are only produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary

and stable identity" (Gender, 174). Even here, so much depends on "if'-to plant an

argument against the truth of gender on solid ground is to imply that some kind of truth is

still possible, an opposite or negative truth, but a truth nonetheless. Butler's statement,

however, denies the very possibility of ground, of solidity, upon which any sort of truth

about gender can be based. In As You Like It, identities are neither primary nor stable, and

their truth effects are transient and changeable at best. There is no truth beyond the "if,"

and not even a god can sort out the tangled and commingling genders and desires which

propagate thereby.

The appearance of Hymen in the penultimate scene completely invalidates

whatever normalization critics attempt to force from the plethora of weddings that

conclude the play's action. Orlando marries Ganymede's Rosalind before he agrees to

marry the "original." Celia asks whether he will "have to wife this Rosalind?" (AYLI,

IV.i.120-1)-this one, who looks and acts like a boy and skips between all bounds-and

Orlando states that he will. Compared to the intimate, prose wedding between Ganymede

and Orlando, Hymen's marriages-presented in stilting poetry, pairing off whoever is

there to be paired without discretion so long as the genders superficially match-have a

strikingly artificial feel to them. Shakespeare does more than hint that the very desire to

wed is not a particularly natural one. Hymen, after all, is a god of civilization. He rules

over productive procreation, not love or nature: "'Tis Hymen peoples every town" (AYLI,

V.iv.141). Touchstone's reasons for marrying Audrey are characteristically frank in this

regard: "As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb and the falcon her bells, so man

hath his desires" (AYLI, III.iii.73-4). The bow, curb, and bells are all man-made burdens

47Zoia Alexanian

which animals are forced to endure for the sake of progress and propriety-and so it is

with marriage.

Hymen's arrival confuses as much as it attempts to organize. Traub writes that "as

the penultimate gesture towards the institution of marriage clearly indicates, endless

erotic mobility is difficult to sustain. But just as clearly, As You Like It registers its lack

of commitment to the binary logic that dominates the organisation of desire" (Traub,

106). A "binary logic" is based upon a system in which things either are or are not. But

Hymen, for all his coupling (both literal and rhythmic), does not operate on a binary

system; he himself cannot escape the all-pervasive (and pervading) "if':

Peace, ho. 1 bar confusion.

'Tis 1 must make conclusion

Of these most strange events.

Here's eight that must take hands

To join in Hymen's bands,

If truth holds true contents. (AYLI, V.iv.123-8)

The speech begins reassuringly enough-all the strangeness will be straightened out now

that Hymen is here. But the god has power only so long as "truth holds true contents."

The statement is an ambiguous one: "contents" has more than one meaning, and thus

more than one truth. Either truth holds true happiness, or else the container must match

what it contains-and in this play above all others, containers and contents are as

arbitrarily related as signifiers are to signifieds.

This arbitrary relationship is particularly encapsulated by Ganymede.

Ganymede's gender is wholly a linguistic operation-independent of body, of costume,

of any physicality, it emerges (if it all) only through speech, vacillating teasingly between

male and female roles. "I will speak to him like a saucy lackey and under that habit play

the knave with him" (AYLI, IILii.287-8), Ganymede decides after spotting Orlando, but