32Zoia Alexanian

and tragedy there is only silence regarding As You Like It. The play, one of the most

frequently staged today, was not published until the 1623 Folio, and over a century would

pass before it was mentioned or staged again" (Schapiro, 204). In its first staging, the

play would have had an all-male cast, no different from Twelfth Night (which was

mentioned in contemporary correspondence) or any other Elizabethan drama. And yet,

somehow, the absence of women on the stage in this particular production caused a

decidedly rare reaction amongst the spectators: silence. It is possible that the audience

members failed to comment on the play because they found it unremarkable; it is much

more likely that they found it too disconcelting to discuss.

With twentieth-century critics, however, the play (and its heroine) is a perennial

favorite. In some ways, As You Like It is much more fitting to Barber and Frye's

conception of Shakespearean comedy as being ultimately recuperative than the more

overtly troublesome Twelfth Night. Sherman Hawkins writes: "In the green world

Identities are frequently changed or disguised: Rosalind as Ganymede surrenders the gifts

of nature, Celia as Aliena those of fortune. Yet in the end all that was lost is more than

restored" (Hawkins, 50). His statement makes two assumptions characteristic of this

breed of critic: the first, that in becoming the (male) Ganymede, the (female) Rosalind

loses part of her "nature"; the second, that this loss and any others are paid in full "in the

end." To be sure, in the fifth act Rosalind becomes Rosalind again easily enough-too

easily, in fact, according to feminist critics such as Howard and Penny Gay. In Gay's

opinion, "Rosalind's last two speeches in the play's narrative are a ritual of voluntary reentry into the patriarchy" (Gay, 48) which Rosalind-as-Ganymede managed to elude. Or,

in one editor's somewhat happier terms, "the wedding at the end of As You Like It is a

33Zoia Alexanian

joyous heterosexual celebration" (Dusinberre, 10). But again, the "inevitable" restoration

which Barber and Frye posit and which Howard and Gay bemoan is never more than

fantasy-the "end" invoked by Hawkins is not the actual end of the play; Rosalind's reentry into patriarchy is not as seamless as it first appears; and "joyous" seems an odd

word to use when describing a celebration which involves the union of the dissolute

Touchstone and Audrey.

Still, these issues are apparently easily enough ignored, and do not explain As You

Like It's strange contemporary reception. But perhaps it is the modern reception, with all

of its effusive praise and lack of consideration for the play's oddities, that is stranger than

the silence of the past. Using the standard all-male cast and all sorts comedic

conventions, Shakespeare produces a very queer type of play indeed-one that could, for

lack of a better word, be described as "feminine." And feminine not in the sense of the

Other of masculine discourse, but as that which cannot be put into discourse-and,

Indeed, wasn't. As Valerie Traub points out, "Bypassing a purely scopk economy, As

You Like It possesses provocative affinities with the tactile, contiguous, plural erotics

envisioned by Luce lrigaray as more descriptive of female experience" (Traub, 155).

Traub, however, does not explore this point much further, or investigate what these

"plural erotics" entail for the identities of the play's characters (and the reaction of the

audience watching them). The "women" in As You Like It are never satisfactorily such;

stripped of any reflecting Other, the masculine self becomes a self that is "plural" (to

burrow award from Irigaray, 28), a self that can be intelligible only through masquerade;

a self that is, in effect, female.

34Zoia Alexanian

In This Sex Which Is Not 011e, Irigaray describes how "the feminine is defined as

the necessary complement to the operation of male sexuality, and, more often, as a

negative image that provides male sexuality with an unfailingly phallic selfrepresentation" (Irigaray, 70).This definition bears a striking resemblance to one set of

early modern beliefs about gender, in which the female sex organs were inversions (or

negations) of male sex organs. But the other Elizabethan conception of gender

differentiation-in which "we all begin as female, and masculinity is a development out

of and away from femininity" (Orgel, 19)-is decidedly at odds with Irigaray's

contention that women (and only women) are forced to perform a "masquerade" due to

the belief that "it is necessary to become a woman, a 'normal' one at that, whereas a man

is a man from the outset" (Irigaray, 134). The feminine "becoming" which Irigaray

describes is a psychological rather than a physical construction, but so is a majority of the

masculine "development" which Orgel depicts as a primary concern in early modern

England: "Moralists continually reminded their charges that manhood was not a natural

condition but a quality to be striven for and maintained only through constant vigilance"

(Orgel, 19). Men not only had to look the part, but act it as well. Though "Renaissance

ideology had a vested interest in defining women in terms of men" (Orgel, 24), this

ideology, when looked at askance, actually defines men in terms of women-men are the

"not-women," the ohes who have successfully overcome the default feminine state to

reach what was then considered a more perfect condition. And it is this skewed

perspective, inherent in the ideology itself, which Shakespeare exposes and undoes in As

You Like It. All of the women are boys; all of the men take part in masquerades. Mocking

standard Petrarchan conceptions of the proper roles for each gender in rituals of love,

35Zoia Alexanian

Shakespeare does not so much reverse these roles as confuse and confound them until all

sense of direction is lost.

Where is the woman in this play? Everywhere and nowhere at once. Never

present on the stage, her absence is all-pervasive as the men ardently attempt to construct

her, and continually fail in their endeavors. And with these failures, the men themselves

become mere constructions, or else diffuse out of their standard masculine roles into

something looser, more limitless-into something more feminine. Desire runs rampant

and uses patriarchal structures to legitimize its excesses; identities, such as they are,

balance precariously atop conditional statements; and the vertiginous economy of gender

and desire that begins even before Ganymede's appearance continues to the very last line

of the Epilogue.

The play continually plays with the fact that all of the "women" in it are

transvestites, costumed surfaces with unusual degrees of freedom and movement. From

the start, Rosalind and Celia, those proper princesses, engage in a variety of bawdy

discussions which are allowable within the rules of propriety only because "real" women

are not speaking the lines. "You amaze me, ladies" (AYLI, Lii.105), Le Beau tells them

after Rosalind makes a rather crass joke about Touchstone's "rank" (AYLI, Lii.104). Le

Beau's comment can be read as a subtle reminder to the boys playing girls to act more

convincingly as the "ladies" they are supposed to be. Touchstone, discussing the "lie

seven times removed," has a brief aside--"bear your body more seeming, Audrey"

(AYLI, V.iv.68-9)-in which a similar admonition can be heard. Audrey's "body" is itself

a lie several times removed-its chasteness is doubtful, its "seeming" not entirely

credible.

36Zoia Alexanian

In this play, appropriation of these cross-dressed figures as male or female is a

futile task. Shakespeare do~s not refute the "truth" of gender but multiplies it, until a

plurality of both truth and gender is not only possible but inevitable. Ganymede explains

to Orlando how s(he "cured" a man of his love-sickness by showing "for every passion

something and for no passion truly anything, as boys and women are for the most part

cattle of this colour" (AYLI, III.ii.395-7). Ganymede explicitly links boys with women,

and compares both to chattel, which both men and women of a certain class were:

"Alliances were normally arranged for sons just as for daughters - the distinction here is

between fathers or guardians and children, not between the sexes" (Orgel, 13). The

youngest son Orlando has as little control over his life as the female Rosalind. Both Orgel

and Greenblatt consider boys to be acceptable substitutes for women in the Renaissance,

but do not consider the implications of such a substitution. A boy existed in the liminal

space between the undifferentiated yet feminine state of childhood (in which all children

were dressed in skirts and kept in the company of women) and the masculine adult world;

to equate boys with women was to grant women this same liminality and possibility for

transfOlmation.

This liminality is expressed through Rosalind's capricious attitude towards her

own gender..:.--whether she identifies herself as being male or female depends only on her

mood and the situation at hand. Upon arriving in Arden, Rosalind declares, "I could find

in my heart to disgrace my man's apparel and to cry like a woman, but I must comfort the

weaker vessel, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat" (AYLI,

II.iv.4-7). The implication is that gender results from costume rather than the other way

around: an appropriate gender perfonnance is one which matches the costume; the

37Zoia Alexanian

appropriateness of the costume itself is not judged against the body beneath it. Rosalind's

"doublet and hose" is simultaneously a disguise and the "natural" (i.e., conventional)

attire of the boy playing her part; Celia's petticoat is customary for her but a disguise for

her actor. Rosalind's statement greatly simplifies the matter: proper actions are divorced

from bodies and linked only to clothing. At other moments in the play, however,

Rosalind denies that her appearance has any control over her "interior" state. Anxious for

Celia to tell her news of Orlando, Rosalind exclaims, "Good my complexion! Dost thou

think, though I am caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?"

(AYLI, III.ii.189~91). "Complexion" refers to "both the colour of the face and

temperament" (Dusinberre, 250). While berating Celia for assuming that her "doublet and

hose" has any bearing on her "true" self, Rosalind undermines this self by swearing on a

male face painted in female colors; and a temperament that could (as Ganymede's later

comment to Orlando makes clear) belong to a youth of either sex..

The male/female: dichotomy breaks down further precisely because there are no

"proper" women in this play. Renaissance ideology continually stressed the spiritual

nature of men and the physical nature of women, but in As You Like It there is a strange

focus on the male bodies left exposed by the feminine clothes. In describing Phoebe,

Ganymede states that "1 saw her hand - she has a leathern hand, / A freestone~coloured

hand" (AYLI, IV.iii.24~25). In mocking Silvius's idealizations of his beloved shepherdess,

Ganymede also brings attention to the worn hands of the apprentice actor playing

Phoebe's part. Similarly, Orlando's 'idealizations of Rosalind-which he expresses

poetically throughout the Forest of Arden-·prompt Touchstone to tryout his own

rhymes: "He that sweetest rose will find / Must find love's prick - and Rosalind" (AYLI,

38Zoia Alexanian

IlI.ii.108-9). Should Orlando attempt to undress Rosalind and find her "rose" (deflower

!

! • . i

her), he will come acrloss a "prick"! insteadi

a reminder to the audience of the inevitable

conclusion to any marriage between the tWo lovers.

Contrary to Twelfth Night-·in which there is no viable, male self-in As You Like

! i !

It there is no viable f~male Other. Greenbl~tt and Orgel say as much in their respective

!

essays, but do not ex~mine the problems that result in this Otherless economy: as the self

can only be defined in terms of its relations to the Other, when the Other disappears, the

"selves" of As You Like It lose their constraints and can impose a "natural" order only by

assuIPing an "unnatu~al" place within it. Rather than absence and splitting, here there is

, . i

only multiplicity and Fxcess. There are twq plots of brothers betraying brothers, two

I

exiled heroines, two Rosalinds; a proliferation of both poetry and prose. Ganymede

"him"self is an excess, for "excess, that w~ich overflows a boundary, is the space of the

transvestite" (Garber, 28). Ganymede excepds even the limits of the male costume, taking

on the role of Orlando's Rosalind without revoking his doublet and hose, and arguing that

all women are, in a way, transvestites, for they all overflow any boundaries imposed on

them by men: "Make the doors upon a wo~an's wit and it will out at the casement. Shut

that and 'twill out at tpe keyhole. Stop thati, and 'twill fly with the smoke out at the

chimney" (AYLI, IV.i.I5IA). Woman's \V~t-and her desire for pleasure, which that wit

,

allows her to enjoy sans censure--eanriot ~e contained.

i

And in imposing boundaries-in tr~ing to idealize women and define them in

i

, !

Petrarchan terms-men turn their "se]ves"iinto Others, limiting themselves to acting as

mirrors in which the idealized image can b~ represented. After scolding Silvius for his

I

love of Phoebe, Ganymede tells him that "you are a thousand times a properer man /

39Zoia Alexanian

Than she a woman" and. that "'tis not her glass but you that flatters her, / And out of you

she sees herself more proper / Than any of her lineaments can show her" (AYLI, III.v.52-

3,55-7). Ganymede's statement is the literal truth: Silvius is a more proper man than the

cross-dressed boy playing Phoebe a woman. Silvius, by attempting to construct the

Phoebe required by the dictates of courtly love, succeeds only in constructing himself

along those terms. Unlike the lrigarayan conception of the woman in masculine

discourse, in this instance it is the man who is necessary for the woman to appear as she

should. lrigaray writes that "'femininity' is a role, an image, a value, imposed upon

women by male systems of representation. In this masquerade of femininity, the woman

loses herself, and loses herself by playing on her femininity. The factremains that this

masquerade requires an effort on her pmt for which she is not compensated" (Irigaray,

84). Yet here, as Silvius dutifully takes on the role of the classic male lover with little

hope for recompense, masculinity becomes the masquerade through which the

"feminine" can be more firmly established-and yet not. Silvius has no identity outside

of his love for Phoebe; Phoebe,caught between Silvius's ardent love for her and

Ganymede's strange contempt, is much more enigmatically portrayed.

Phoebe, like Malvolio in Twelfth Night, is disparaged for actions which echo the

very deeds for which the heroine is (at least superficially) rewarded. Viola transgresses

gender boundaries and gains a Duke; Malvolio attempts to transgress class boundaries

and is tormented by Sir Toby and his crew. With Phoebe, the class difference between

her and Rosalind is also crucial: "Sell when you can, you are not for all markets" (AYLI,

III.v.61), Ganymede advises. While the Duke's daughter is free to market herself as male,

40Zoi a Alexanian

female, rustic, educated, and even magical, the shepherdess must limit herself to her one

role.

Thus, Ganymede abuses Phoebe despite sharing her views on love. "I am sure

there is no force in eyes / That can do hurt" (AYLI, IILv.26-7), Phoebe tells Silvius, in

response to his conviction that her frowning eyes are "murderers" (AYLI, III.v.l9). Later,

Ganymede informs Orlando that "men have died from time to time and worms have eaten

them, but not for love" (AYLI, IV.i.97-9). When Ganymede scorns Silvius for his

continued adoration, s/he asks: "Wilt thou love such a woman? What, to make thee an

instrument and play false strains upon thee? Not to be endured! Well, go your way to her,

[...] and say this to her: that if she love me, I charge her to love thee" (AYLI, IV.iii.66-

70). Ganymede is disgusted with Phoebe for "playing false strains" upon Silvius, and yet

s/he could be accused of doing the same thing with Orlando. Ganymede's final orderthat Phoebe must love Silvius if she loves Ganymede--fulfills the standard function of

the cross-dressed performance, which (as stated earlier) "produces a field of heterosexual

love objects at the same time as it produces a domain of those whom it would be

impossible to love" ("Melancholy," 177). Phoebe falls in love with Ganymede precisely

for "his" liminality: "He'll make a proper man. The best thing in him / Is his complexion"

(AYLI, IILv.116-7). And while the function of this liminality is, as Butler argues, the

ordering of individuals according to heterosexual norms, such an ordering seems to be

reserved for shepherds and shepherdesses only. Ganymede's interactions with Orlando,

startlingly different from those s/he has with Phoebe, provide evidence that perhaps

cross-dressing can serve a different purpose as well.

41Zoia Alexanian

'Whereas Viola chooses to cross-dress for very specific reasons, Rosalind's

rationale for disguising herself as a male is merely that she is tall and that it would be

dangerous for twb women to make their way to the Forest of Arden alone-a legitimate

concern, but one that is superfluous after the two decide that Touchstone will accompany

them on their trayels. Once in the Forest, Rosalind has no reason to stay cross-dressed:

her noble father is there, Orlando is covering the trees with declarations of his love for

her, and certain shepherdesses are beginning to be affected by the disguise. But

Ganymede has powers which Rosalind does not: apart from the "magical abilities," slhe

can openly converse with Orlando, tease him, and take an active role in their interactions.

Rosalind is the object of Orlando's adorations, whereas Ganymede can subject him to

"her" whims. In doing so, Ganymede confuses all of the major systems of relations in

early modern England: those between men and women, men and men, appearance and

reality, and, ultimately, gender and desire.

Ganymede convinces Orlando to woo "him" as if slhe were Rosalind-though

Orlando does not need much convincing. He agrees to openly flirt with a boy, and not

just any boy, but a "Ganymede." As Smith explains, "'Ganymede'-the commonest

epithet in early modern England for a homosexual male-refers to the passive partner, to

the male who bends to the other's pleasure" (Smith, 196). To an early modern audience,

Rosalirid-as-Ganymede is disconcerting because a woman is taking an active role in her

own courtship, while Ganymede-as-Rosalind is disconcerting because "the passive

partner" in male-male relationships is taking an active role in "his" own courtship (while

pretending to be a woman,' no less). Ganymede is also ostensibly a shepherd-inuch

lower in rank to Orlando regardless of Oliver's machinations-and as malelmale