It is to be all made of fantasy,In this play, Shakespeare associates love with many characteristics. Love is often associated with selflessness in this play. Part of the answer to the question of love is also selflessness. And an important part of love is truth. Love embodies all of the greatest characteristics of a person: truthfulness, selflessness, and faithfulness.
All made of passion and all made of wishes,
All adoration, duty, and observance,
All humbleness, all patience and impatience,
All purity, all trial, all observance ... (V.ii).
Part of love is selflessness. Throughout the play, many of the characters demonstrate selflessness which in turn reflects their love for one another. Orlando is one such character. He and the ever-faithful Adam are wandering through the forest of Arden, for Adam had warned Orlando of certain death. Orlando's elder brother, Oliver, had harbored a deep hatred towards Orlando, a hatred which had grown to immense proportions. If Orlando had his home, he would have been killed. Adam was able to persuade Orlando to flee, and now they are in the forest. Once here, though, Adam can go no further, for his is but an old man. "I die for food! Here I lie down and measure out my grave" (Adam II.vi). Orlando leaves Adam and finds a camp about to eat. Risking his own life, he tells them not to eat any food, then explains why:
There is an old poor man,Orlando is not merely being selfless, he is being selfless to help out a servant, a member of a lower social class. There are few names with such a reputation, and one of them is the legendary Robin Hood. In this way Shakespeare shows the selflessness of love.
Who after me hath many a weary step
Limp'd in pure love: till he be first sufficed,
Oppress'd with two weak evils, age and hunger,
I will not touch a bit (II.vii).
Shakespeare through Orlando again shows selflessness, this time not for a loving subordinate, but for his hateful brother. Orlando is walking through the forest, and catches a glimpse of "a wretched and ragged man, o'ergrown with hair" asleep at the base of an old oak tree (IV.iii). A snake crawls down from the man, then slithers under a bush, where a lioness crouches, ready to leap at the first movement of the man. Orlando see the man to be none other than his elder brother. "Twice did he turn his back and purpos'd so [to leave him there]/ But kindness, nobler ever than revenge ... Made him give battle to the lioness" (IV.iii). Orlando chooses to save his brother at great risk to himself, and is indeed injured in the process. By placing the good, and even more paramount, the life, of another before the his own good and life, Orlando shows the greatest possible display of selfless love that he can. It is interesting to note that as Orlando approaches brother, the snake (a snake being a traditional symbol for evil) wrapped around Oliver's neck sees Orlando, and then quickly glides away; this is symbolic that all hostility has left the relationship of the two brothers. But the one thing that saves both Oliver and therefore the relationship was Orlando's selfless love.
Orlando is not the only one to demonstrate a selfless love for another. Celia, daughter of the usurping Duke Frederick, tells of her love many times to her cousin Rosalind, the daughter of the banished duke.
Herein I see thou lovest me not with the fullMore than just talk about her love for Rosalind, though, Celia proves it by following her voluntarily into exile. "Rosalind then lacks love/ which teacheth the that thou and I am one/ ... No: let my father seek another heir" (Celia I.iii). Celia's love for Rosalind is so great that nothing can separate the two; their love is stronger than the "natural bond of sisters" (Le Beau I.ii). This love was apparent to all who knew her, for as Charles the wrestler mentions, Celia "so loves her ... that she would have followed her into exile" (I.i). This selflessness shown by Celia is part of Shakespeare's definition of love.
weight that I love thee. If my uncle, thy
banished father, had banished thy uncle, the
duke my father, so thou hadst been still with
me, I could have taught my love to take thy
father for mine (Celia I.ii).
Faithfulness helps form Shakespeare's definition of love. Besides its mention early in the play when Charles tells Oliver "how 'three or four loving lords' have given up 'lands and revenues' to go to the forest of Arden and live there with the old duke in 'voluntary exile'" (Brown 75), faithfulness can also be found later in the character of Adam. Adam was once the servant of Sir Rowland de Boys, the father of Oliver and Orlando. It is clear, however, that Adam prefers Orlando, as he greets him as such: "What, my young master! O my gentle master,/ O my sweet master, O you memory/ Of old Sir Rowland" (II.iii). Faithful both to his old master's memory and his old master's son, Adam gives up his life savings of five hundred crowns, which he had planned to use to take care of himself in his old age, when his "old limbs lie lame" (Adam II.iii). He hands it all over to Orlando, asking only that he remain in Orlando's service. Adam is faithful in the extreme. Through his character, Shakespeare portrays love as faithfulness.
Shakespeare also shows the faithful aspect of love through Orlando. Not always so dependable, Rosalind notes that Orlando "Break[s] an hour's promise in love" (IV.i). Rosalind, as Ganymede, however, teaches him better, "putting Orlando through his paces as a suitor" and "instructing him on the nature of true love" (Barber 233) (Vaughn 122). The next time he arranges a meeting with "Ganymede" he is determined not to let his Rosalind down: even after he saves his brother from a lioness, getting wounded in the process, he will not disappoint his Rosalind. Fainting from the loss of blood, he sends Oliver to Rosalind with a bloody handkerchief, to let her know that had circumstances allowed, he would have come himself. This faithfulness to a person whom he does not truly think to be the real Rosalind proves that his love for Rosalind is true.
Truth, as Shakespeare saw, is an important part of the definition of love. Indeed, real love is often called "true" love. It is no surprise then that Shakespeare focused much on this point, and even the exact opposite in this play. In As You Like It, there are several aspects of love as truthfulness. One such aspect is the questioning of the quickness with which the couples in the play fall in love, as to whether their love is true. Orlando asks Oliver, "Is't possible ... That, but seeing, you should love her [Celia]?" (V.ii). But "one can point out that it is really no swifter than the speed with which Rosalind and Orlando fall in love: all four couples experience love at first sight" (Barnet 120). However, by this point in the play, Orlando has learned much about the nature of love with help from others, and has found that he is truly in love. Part of Orlando's learning experience was to learn faithfulness, another was to be true, including in speech:
Orlando. Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind.As stated, though, Orlando does catch on quickly and indeed finds himself truly in love. Not all the rest of the couples are so sure about their own love and its being true.
Jaques. Nay then, God b'wi' you an you talk in
blank verse. (4.1.28-30)
Here Jaques draws attention to Orlando's
artificial mode of speaking (Lifson 95).
At first thought, it might seem that should Shakespeare be writing about being true in love, that he is only making matters worse by having characters in disguise interact with other characters, including those whom they love and are loved by. He is doing this, but more as well. by portraying the exact opposite of his point in a humorous way, he is serving to strengthen his own point. It is true that Rosalind's disguise "complicates the plot, causing Phoebe to fall in love with her," (Wilson 161) but Shakespeare gives Rosalind these words with which she replies, "I pray you , do not fall in love with me,/ For I am falser than vows made in wine" (III.v). With this simple response, Shakespeare makes an important point: for love to work, a relationship must be based on truth. In this way, Shakespeare emphasizes the truthfulness that is involved in love.
Included in Shakespeare's definition of love are selflessness, faithfulness, and truthfulness. The actions of Orlando and of Celia show selfless love. Orlando and Adam display the faithful quality of love. Truthfulness of love is emphasized by questioning the quickness of falling in love and by the use of characters in disguise in the story. Taken separately, each quality presents a fractional view of love, but taken together, they form a more complete view of love, love as Shakespeare saw it.
Barnet, Sylvan. "'Strange Events': Improbability in As You Like It." Shakespeare Studies. 4 (1968): 119-124.
Brown, John Russell. "Love's Order and the Judgement of As You Like It." Twentieth Century Interpretations of As You Like It. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Lifson, Martha Ronk. "Learning by Talking: Conversation in As You Like It." Shakespeare Survey. 40.2 (1987): 93-98.
Salinger, Leo. Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy. London: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. Hypertext (HTML) Document, http://www.gh.cs.usyd.edu.au/~matty/Shakespeare/texts/comedies/asyoulikeit.html. [date not supplied].
Vaughn, Jack A. Shakespeare's Comedies. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1980.
Wilson, John Dover. Shakespeare's Happy Comedies. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1962.