“Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure.”
However, her loss is soon forgotten when she meets Orlando. This represents that young adults are attached to their parents to a certain extent, but are often forgotten when other interests come into play, for example love interests. Critics could argue that this suggests that this family relationship is not particularly important in ‘As You Like It’. However, this relationship allows the play to progress, when Rosalind and Celia set out into the Forest of Arden to search for Duke Senior. In addition, Rosalind only finds true happiness with Orlando once she has found her father again, so it seems that her happiness in love is dependent on her contentment with her family relationships. Therefore, I personally think that this conveys the importance of their relationship in ‘As You Like It’.
The relationship between Duke Frederick and Celia appears to be less valued than that between Rosalind and her father, because when Duke Frederick decides to banish Rosalind, Celia unhesitatingly joins her, showing her strength of character to be able to leave her father:
“Duke Frederick: … Firm and irrevocable is my doom
Which I have pass’d upon her; she is banish’d.
Celia: Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege.
I cannot live out of her company.”
Family relations are even to blame for Rosalind’s banishment, and Duke Frederick’s dislike for Orlando, because he discovers that Orlando’s father was Sir Rowland who was very close to Rosalind’s usurped father. This complicated set of family connections depicts the nature of the play, and how it conveys the conflict between generations due to relations.
Rosalind’s relationship with Celia has all the traits of a family relationship, and they are closer to each other than they appear to be to their own families. Their relationship is a portrayal of the harmony within generations, and how friendships can exceed the importance of a family bond in life as well as in ‘As You Like It’. Shakespeare conveys their close relationship in the ease in which they adopt a brother-sister relationship when they enter the forest.
The relationship between Rosalind and Orlando eventually becomes a family relationship in the final scenes of ‘As You Like It’. Their relationship blossoms under the pretence that Rosalind is a man named Ganymede. This may suggest that strong relationships can be forged without the people involved realising it. The harmony between the pair is conveyed by Shakespeare to represent the importance of healthy friendships and relationships in ‘As You Like It’, as the play is essentially about love in many different forms. Celia and Oliver wed at the same time as Rosalind and Orlando, Phebe and Silvius, and Audrey and Touchstone. Shakespeare suggests that the style of each pair’s relationships will vary because of the character’s personalities – for example the audience does not doubt that the purpose of Audrey and Touchstone’s marriage is more sexual than that of Rosalind and Orlando, who seem to be marrying for true love. Therefore, the purpose of family relationships in ‘As You Like It’ is also to indicate the personalities of the characters. Consequently, relationships are vital in the play because they allow the audience to appreciate more fully the disposition of each individual in ‘As You Like It’.
I personally believe that ‘As You Like It’ reveals how family relationships are often a lot more difficult to maintain than friendships, yet friendships seem to be more valuable to the characters; nevertheless each character still strives to create their own, chosen families by marrying.
