Comparing Rosalynde and As You Like It

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Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde is an unwieldy piece, the romance is thick, heavy, and conventional. Yet when Shakespeare took it in hand, to rework the tangled web of disguise and romance into As You Like It, he changed much of the emphasis, by both altering and adding characters. Rosalynde is a celebration of love; As You Like It, a philosophical discourse on love..

Shakespeare cuts to the chase, eliminating much of the prologue to Rosalynde. We hear of old Sir Roland de Boys (Lodge's John of Bordeaux) only through Orlando's opening speech, not the extended deathbed collection of aphorisms Lodge provides (though this shade of Polonius perhaps influences old Adam's long-winded style). Likewise, the extended ruminations are cut entirely or, for the forest scenes, condensed into tighter dialogue. Lodge's grand tournament, with the jousting prowess of the anonymous Norman (proto-Charles) happens offstage, and we see only a wrestling match. Lodge's usurper favors Rosader after the tournament, but Shakespeare's Frederick spurns Orlando for his parentage and Oliver plots more quickly against his brother, further excising the plot-perambulations of the source and removing the months of tension and reconciliation that plague Saladin and Rosader.

But Shakespeare also takes care to lighten his villains, more in the spirit of a playful comedy than Lodge's sometimes grim pastoral. His Charles is relatively innocent, deceived by Oliver rather than entering willingly into his pay (as the Norman does with Saladin). Oliver, in turn, is not such a relentless foe as Saladin: he has no cronies to assist in binding up Orlando, he does not so mistreat his brother before us as happens in Lodge's pastoral. Even the usurper Duke, Torismond/Frederick, does not exile his own daughter in Shakespeare's play (only remonstrating her with "You are a fool"). And he is not killed in battle at the end of the play, but rather converted to a holy life, in much the same fate that Lodge's Saladin plans for himself in remorse ("[I shall] wend my way to the Holy Land, to end my years in as many virtues, as I have spent my youth in wicked vanities." (p.273)).

In contrast, Shakespeare darkens his heroes: they are not all the blithe, pastoral folk Lodge paints. Celia's single "Is it not a foul bird that defiles its own nest?" (p. 245) early in Rosalynde becomes Celia's more extended harangue at the end of IV.

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