42Zoia Alexanian

relations were tolerated in Elizabethan England only so long as they supported

hierarchical stratifications, Ganymede's linguistic "topping" of Orlando in these scenes is

all the more bewildering.

More bewildering than the flirting itself is the level it reaches, culminating in a

wedding ceremony between Ganymede and Orlando, "the closest Shakespeare would

ever come to staging an espousal" (Schapiro, 213). Traub describes how in Shakespeare's

time, ceremonial words "possess a ritualistic power to enact what is spoken. Insofar as

ritual was still popularly believed to be imbued with magical power, the fact that Orlando

does not hesitate, but eagerly responds in the precise form of the Anglican marriage

ceremony [...] suggests the degree to which the play legitimates the multiple desires it

represents" (Traub, 103). And in legitimating a multiple, "feminine" economy of desire,

the play also endorses a multiplicity of sexual identity. Such a multiplicity not only

collapses the distinction between male/femaleibodies, heterosexual/homosexual desire,

but erases the distance between truth and fiction: "As both a performative speech act and

a theatricalisation of desire, the maniage is both true and fictional at once" (Traub, 103).

To happily wed Ganymede, Orlando must have "the ability to hold in suspension a dual

sexuality that feels no compulsion to make arbitrary distinctions between kinds of

objects" (Traub, 103)-he must be able to see objects as neither truly nor falsely

anYlhing.

The "compulsion to make arbitrary distinctions between kinds of objects" is one

which the play forces the audience to revoke as well. It is never entirely clear who is

speaking when Ganymede speaks: Rosalind, Ganymede, or Ganymede's Rosalind. How

can one differentiate between the boy actor playing one Rosalind and the "boy" playing

43Zoia Alexanian

the other, or betweetl the two Rosalinds being played, when all these are ultimately

contained within theIsame form? With Ganymede on the stage, any simple distinction

between "male" and "female" or "real" and "pretend" becomes impossible to see.

Orlando only compl~cates the matter-in a theater where appearance is the surest

signifier of identity, neither he nor "his Rosalind" looks the part. Ganymede is dressed as

Ganymede, even Whrn pretending to be Rosalind; Orlando, according to Ganymede, does

not look at all like a lover should: "There is none of my uncle's marks upon you. He

taught me how to knrw a man in love, in which cage of rushes I am sure you are not

prisoner" (AYLI, III.ii.355-7). Orlando does not have the haggard look of a lover, nor

I

does he keep his promises to meet with Ganymede at the appointed times.

I

Orlando's attbmpt to establish himself as a true lover in the face of this

criticism-"I swear Lthee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am he, that

I

unfortunate he" (AYLI, III.1i.378-9)-only highlights the difficulty of being any coherent

I

"I" in Ganymede's ~resence. In the very first act, before anyone falls in love, Touchstone

establishes that "if ybu swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn" (AYLI, I.1i.74-5).

Orlando swears "by lhe white hand of Rosalind"-by a body that cannot exist on this

I

stage. When Orlando exclaims that "I would not have my right Rosalind of this mind, for

I

I protest her frown might kill me" (AYLI, IV.1.100-1), Ganymede answers that "by this

I

hand, it will not kill fly" (AYLI, IV.i.102). "Rosalind's white hand" is juxtaposed

against Ganymede's "hand"; the "right Rosalind" against the one Ganymede portrays.

Truth and fiction become completely tangled up in each other. Ganymede is a myth, but

"his" hand-the hand of a boy-is, truly, the hand of a boy, and s/he speaks the truth (a

44Zoia Alexanian

frown cannot kill) but under the guise of a lie that is indeed true but only within the

fictions of the play.

Orlando's identity is further destabilized by Ganymede's love for him. As Silvius

describes what it means to love, and the lovers name the objects of their desire in tum,

Ganymede concludes each chorus by stating: "And I for no woman" (AYLI, V.ii.84). To

end the proceedings entirely, Ganymede promises that all will be resolved the following

day, telling Orlando that "as you love Rosalind, meet"; Silvius that "as you love Phoebe,

meet"; and finally "as I love no woman, I'll meet" (AYLI, V.ii.114-5). S/he repeatedly

equates Orlando with "no woman," and the desire s/he feels for him is expressed as a

desire for lack-paradoxically, in defining Orlando as "no woman," as an absence,

Ganymede treats him the same way that the feminine Other is treated in masculine

discourse. Orlando is still the most virulently masculine character in the play-he defeats

Charles the wrestler against great odds, rescues his brother from both snake and lioness

(off-stage, of course; these dangerous female bodies cannot exist in this theater), and

ambushes Duke Senior's party in his desperate search for food. However, the threatening

veneer Orlando presents during this ambush, he soon admits, is nothing more than

masquerade: "I thought that all things had been savage here I And therefore put I on

strong countenance" (AYLI, II.vii.lOS-9). He bases his performance on his assumption of

what is "natural" in the Forest of Arden, and after he learns that "your gentleness shall

force I More than your force move us to gentleness" (AYLI, II.vii. 103-4), he presents

himself in a markedly different manner: "Then but forbear your food a little while, I

"Whiles like a doe I go to find my fawn, I And give it food" (AYLI, II.vii.l28-30). In

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Arden, Orlando is as much a gentle, maternal doe as he is a swashbuckling hero; he is

both the epitome of masculinity and a skewed version of femininity.

If there are doubts regarding even Orlando's "true" masculinity, then any notion

of a "true" gender is very tenuous indeed. lrigaray writes that "the 'feminine' is never to

be identified except by and for the masculine, the reciprocal proposition not being 'true'"

(Irigaray, 85). A "true" man cannot be identified as such by the feminine, but perhaps the

feminine can expose his falseness. And the feminine economy of the play does unravel

and destabilize the "truth" of gender, placing it perilously atop one little word which

undermines any and all truth: if. This word is "repeated about once a minute in the play"

(Schapiro, 228), and Rosalind's re-entry into patriarchy depends wholly on its discretion:

"I'll have no father, if you be not he. / I'll have no husband, if you be not he. / Nor ne'er

wed Woman, if yoube not she" (AYLI, V.iv.120-2). With the power of "if," Rosalind is

equally available to her father, Orlando, and Phoebe-or, more accurately, she is equally

unavailable, for her very identity is based on an "if." "If there be truth in sight, you are

my daughter"; "If there be truth in sight, you are my Rosalind"; "If sight and shape be

true, / \Vhy then, my love adieu" (AYLI, V.iv.1l6-9). Rosalind's return requires that

"sight and shape be tme"-a condition which is decidedly not met in a play so full of

disguise and masquerade.

Though Ganymede is no longer on the stage, "his" presence still lingers, as

preCisely that which throws the validity of both sight and shape into confusion. Crossdressing, according to Butler, inevitably unmasks the truth through which gender

attempts to hide: "If the inner truth of gender is a fabrication and if a true gender is a

fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genders can be