Rosalind by Angela Thirlwell

Author:Angela Thirlwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OBERON BOOKS Ltd

Presents more woeful pageants than the scene

Wherein we play in.23

The Duke’s image and his half-line are immediately picked up by Jaques as he sashays into the most often quoted speech of the play, ‘All the world’s a stage…’ referring to the words possibly flown on the flag-pole at the new Globe Playhouse in 1599: Totus mundus agit histrionem – the whole world plays the actor.24 Theatre is life itself, life is theatre, and Rosalind the star in her own drama. Her only counterpart, later, will be Prospero.

Like Prospero, Rosalind is the impresario and organising spirit of her play. To action her love, Rosalind takes control of events in Arden, even when her transvestite situation threatens to become fatally embarrassing. ‘Alas the day!’ she groans when Celia reveals that Orlando is also in the forest, ‘What shall I do with my doublet and hose?’ It is here in Act III at the very epicentre of Shakespeare’s 5-act play that Rosalind and Orlando encounter each other for only the second time. This centrality is significant. For their love is the centre of the play, as poet John Donne’s bed is the centre of his room and of his relationship with his lover.25 Rosalind in role as Ganymede now has the space to test the truthfulness of Orlando’s heart whose poems seem to proclaim the depth of his affection.

Once Orlando admits he is indeed the author of poems in praise of someone called Rosalind, Ganymede can ask him direct the consuming question, ‘But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?’ She could never have asked this as Rosalind, and it’s ‘the absolute crux of the scene,’ thinks actor Rebecca Hall. Then Orlando ‘answers her better than she can possibly imagine: “Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.” And it floors her. And she realises that she’s utterly in love too. The whole thing is terrifying. This next speech is so beautiful and I love it. It’s almost my favourite,’ says Hall.

Rosalind

Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.26

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