Different from Orlando, Silvius pursues Phoebe day and night, and begs that she would accept him, while Orlando is just expressing his love without even the courage to go see Rosalind face to face. But the love between Silvius and Phoebe is one sided. We can tell this after Silvius said she is like “the common executioner, whose heart th’accustom’d sight of death makes hard” begging her to go easy on him, but just in return receives Phoebe’s mocking. She mocks him about his hyperbolic language and says “now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee”. During the whole scene, she only said Silivius’s name once, showing that she does not even spare him a glance.
Not only is their love one sided, Phoebe acts really irritated and is very cruel with the words she chose to use. Like “if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee”, suggests that she would rather kill him than to give him a little of her love. Although she says cruel things, but she never kicked Silvius or physically hurt him. She also never said anything like “stay away”, I think is because she likes to feeling of being “popular”, and the amount of attention Silvius is giving her. I think she mistook that every man is like Silvius, only crying for her love, and falling before her knees, that’s why she acts like a queen. This shows that Phoebe actually has very little contacts with people outside even the others in the forest.
Phoebe actually is very inexperienced with love. Although she didn’t say openly, but saying “I had rather hear you chide than this man woo” to a man which she has just saw reveals her affections. Shakespeare here uses dramatic irony, because Phoebe doesn’t know that Ganymede is actually a women in disguised. And denying her own love is just like the actions of a child towards his or her first love, so I think she is very inexperienced in love.
The love Orlando holds for Rosalind is very inconsiderate. As Rosalind says, he “haunts the forest that abuses out young plants with carving ‘Rosalind’ on their bards; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, defying the name of Rosalind”. He doesn’t care how much trouble he is causing to the forest and other people that lives in the forest, just for the sake of his “quotidian of love”. He didn’t care about Rosalind’s feelings whose name is written by him all over the forest, which makes her widely known, just for the sake of his “love”.
Orlando is very childish, naive, and venire. He wants the whole world to believe that he is in love with Rosalind, even the “Ganymede” for which he has only seen. He said, “fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love” and “I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that unfortunate he”. From his urgent tone, we can tell that how much a stranger’s word weighs on his heart, in order for him to swear. “White” using to describe a person’s skin can mean that he or she is ill, but I think Orlando mean no harm, but this is just the word he can find to describe Rosalind. So, again, we can see the big difference in education between Rosalind and Orlando. He said the verses above right after Rosalind (now as Ganymede) said he doesn’t look like he is in love, so he reacted greatly from just a stranger’s words. Just from one side of the story, without questioning the truth, Orlando accepted the “help” of a stranger, without even knowing that person. If it was a trap, Orlando would be dead by now, so he is very naïve.
As a woman, Rosalind loves Orlando by heart. By the way she questions Celia about Orlando, “answer me in one word” shows that Rosalind is very urgent about everything that is about Orlando. Although she loves him, she doesn’t show it very much, denying the “love rule” in Shakespeare’s plays, which when characters fall in love hard and fast, they would be desperate and reacts greatly.
Rosalind’s love is very self-contradicting. She says “love is merely a madness” when she also, is madly in love. She says as if she was very experienced with love, but actually she doesn’t hold much experience than Orlando does. These contradictions only happen when she is dress as a man, showing the difference in gender can bring much difference in the way of talking and gestures.
Rosalind is a very ironic character. She comments on love from two different points of views when she is having two different identities. She uses her identities to her greatest benefits, but in return receives a self-contradictory image about love. It is because in Shakespeare’s period, all actors were men. Imagine a man playing a woman who plays a man in order to win a man’s love, the neat borders of gender becomes hopelessly muddled. I think Rosalind’s “Ganymede” identity is use to show that men is actually not much better than women, because the things men can do, women can also do if they want.
Shakespeare displays love in many different angles, showing to the audience that love cannot be too realistic like Touchstone, but cannot be too imaginative like Orlando; love is a poison that can bring suffer like Silvius and Phoebe, but can also bring sweetness. The love in “As You Like It” is far to unrealistic that they are not likely to happen, but this is just a hyperbolic play, suggesting that it might occur in another form. Like Rosalind’s identities, love need to strike a balance; otherwise they would create problems for others and themselves.
