ROSALIND: To you I give myself, for I am yours.

ROSALIND: [To ORLANDO] To you I give myself, for I am yours.

Indeed. Rosalind was right all along. Do what it takes to get the man of your dreams. Even if it means dressing up as one. But in an actual Elizabethan production, it would have been a little more complicated, because women's roles were in fact played by adolescent boys. So the audience would see a boy, impersonating a woman impersonating a boy. Tricky?

But in As You Like It, Rosalind also keeps wearing her disguise long after she has to. Why? Some critics claim it is because of the freedom it gives her. In her male persona, she escapes the limitations of being a woman, the obvious object of Orlando's love and that in the process, she learns a lot about herself, about him, and about the nature of love itself.

That could just be critics being critics. I doubt that Shakespeare ever thought of gender conventions while writing his plays, because his target audience saw them as pure entertainment, a bit like masala Bollywood films. Rosalind is an amusing character, and her male guise allows her to have the kind of cheeky fun that would not have been possible if she was openly female. She doesn't show her true identity because it's much more entertaining for her to go on fooling people. Would an actual woman behave like that in Shakespeare's time? Definitely not, but that's exactly what makes the play amusing to watch.

However, the play is not all fun and games; the comedy does, in fact, make some clever observations about real male-female interaction, and the games we play, both psychological and emotional. Because it wouldn't be as funny if it was all make-believe, like A Comedy of Errors and Two Gentlemen of Verona are.

Now, back to the opening line. This post wouldn't be a post if it wasn't circular, right? :) What did she actually mean by it? Wasn't it more than just pledging to be Orlando's wife, as a sort of informal wedding vow? Because she hardly says three lines after these in the play, mutely accepting her place as devoted daughter and wife. We are led to believe that Orlando must be taught that love is a madness, of which he must be cured, not of loving Rosalind, but of worshiping her with unrealistic expectations, that will only lead to disillusionment. And surely, by the end, he has learnt this.

But how did the cheeky trouble-maker make the rapid transition? Or is there still a sly glint in her eye as the curtain comes down? Maybe she has also collected a lesson or two on love, along the way. Perhaps she is 'his', in that she has finally understood him and love in a way that she can truly offer herself to him, who knew not if her reciprocal feelings. In essence, she is already his, from the moment she understands the nature of love itself, not by knowing that he feels the same. And this is the ultimate moment of revelation to both him and her father, of gender, of identity and of love.

gk*