The phrase “freewheeling sexuality” is so perfect to
describe Rosalind and Orlando’s relationship (as well as Gannymede and
Orlando’s relationship). When reading the play, I imagined Rosalind as
Gannymede wearing a hat, perhaps, or something at least to hide her hair. In addition, I
imagined her using a gruff voice. This would make it more believable that
Orlando truly did not realize until the end that Gannymede was in fact a woman,
and not only that, but “his” Rosalind. When watching the play, however, I was
shocked to see that Rosalind as Gannymede hardly hid her hair. And while the
actress who played her had a deep voice already, which made it a little more
realistic that Orlando, among others, believed her to be a man, I still
expected her to make it a little deeper. The fact that she did neither of these
things supports my theory that Orlando would have loved Gannymede or Rosalind. I
think that the director of this production is using sexuality as a way to
mirror early English theatre, as Tosh said. I think that showing a woman as a
man, but barely disguising her hearkens back to men dressing as women, but not
fooling the audience. I think this is one way in which this production portrays
the idea that gender doesn’t matter.
The fluidity of sexuality is clear in the fact that Orlando
was willing to pretend that Gannymede was Rosalind. He even almost kissed Gannymede
in one scene. Since that is not written in the text, I think it shows that the
director wanted to portray the idea that Orlando was not confined to gender
roles in that he had to be with a woman. I dare to argue that Orlando would
have loved Rosalind as Rosalind or as Gannymede. It gets tricky here because in
the scene where Orlando almost kisses Gannymede, it’s hard to speculate if he
is doing it because he has figured out that Gannymede is Rosalind, because he
is still imagining Gannymede to be Rosalind, or because he has fallen for
whomever he thinks that Gannymede is. Regardless of the reason, in one of the
final scenes in which Gannymede promises to bring Rosalind to Orlando and to
marry Phebe unless she decides she does not want him, Orlando speaks to Gannymede
as if he is in love with him and not as if he is in love with Gannymede pretending
to be Rosalind. Again, the same three aforementioned options apply here, and
while I personally think that in this particular production Orlando discovered
Gannymede’s secret, it still stands to argue that he could have simply been
falling for Gannymede. The conclusion that comes out of this is that Orlando
does not care. He has fallen for this woman he spoke with once and has now
fallen for a man who is pretending to be her. He has fallen for the idea of
Rosalind, and he seems to have found it in Gannymede. This strong relationship
between Gannymede and Orlando is one of the strongest aspects of this
production because it really makes the audience think about the concept of gender and whether or not it really matters.
Concerning the marriages at the end, I think that they were better
than some of the other ones that Shakespeare has written (e.g. Isabella and the
duke’s) because I felt like only one person was unhappy with the outcome (Phebe). Audrey
and Touchstone’s marriage seemed normalizing. After seeing their relationship
acted out, the two at least seem attracted to each other as they cannot keep
their hands off of each other, and they obviously get along very well, but
Touchstone makes it clear that he thinks that he should be married as a normal
societal custom. To say that they are getting married for any reason other than
to have sex would be a bit of stretch. For Phebe and Silvius, I would also deem it to be normalizing. Phebe is a terrible person, but it seems that she
thinks she must be married (as a normal societal custom, much like Touchstone) given the fact that she wanted to marry Gannymede
just minutes after meeting him, but, given his lack of interest, chooses to
keep Silvius around just in case. After she finds out that she cannot marry Gannymede,
she settles for the only other guy giving her any attention. Assuming that she
genuinely doesn’t want to marry Silvius, she is obviously settling for him,
even though he loves her. This also touches on the fact that Phebe is an
unlikable character. In Galatea, the sexes of the two girls did not matter to
them. I argue that Rosalind/Gannymede’s sex did not matter to Orlando. If Phebe
truly loved Gannymede, she would have fought for Rosalind when she reappeared.
For Orlando and Rosalind, this is a choice that both of them
have made on their own. Is it a little weird that Rosalind dressed as Gannymede
and then offered to pretend to be Rosalind for Orlando? Yes. Should Orlando be
creeped out? Maybe. That being said, he still loved Rosalind, or the idea of
her, and he seemed to have fallen in love with Gannymede, though whether he
knew Gannymede was actually Rosalind is still up for debate. Rosalind is able
to be free, though, because her father has taken his throne back, she is no
longer exiled to the forest, and most of all she is free to be whom she wants
to be. Whether it is fair to say that she took on her Gannymede personality so
much so that she wishes to remain him is not for me to say. However, the fact
that, on her wedding day, she reveals her pants under her hoop skirt symbolizes
that she is a strong woman and she was able to provide for herself in the
forest, so her gender does not matter. She can be who she wants to be and she
can be with whom she wants to be. Also, the fact that she got Orlando to fall
for her both as Rosalind and as Gannymede shows this fluidity of sexuality. For
Rosalind specifically, her marriage to Orlando was a freeing experience, unlike
other marriages, such as the (potential) marriage of Isabella to the duke,
where we can assume it will not be an equal union. For Rosalind, we can assume
that she will have equal say in the marriage.
Now the tricky analysis comes when looking at Celia’s
marriage to Oliver. Yes, it’s love at first sight, but we can’t use that as any
kind of judgment because it’s Shakespeare, and this is not unusual. However,
Celia is about to lose her best friend whom she followed in the woods. Could
she even return to her father’s kingdom after such an act of defiance? It is
hard to say. Although I do not personally like Celia because I think that she
is a weak female character and that she would be completely lost without
Rosalind, I don’t think that her union to Oliver was normalizing or
emancipatory. I think it was somewhere in between and this is the only union
that I would say is “easy” in this play. It doesn’t leave Celia all alone in
the woods or without her best friend. It makes her happy, so one could argue
that it’s normalizing; a woman must eventually get married, after all, why not
to this handsome man. One could argue that it’s emancipatory because she is
freeing herself from Rosalind, but, let’s be honest, she will become just as
dependent on Oliver as she was on Rosalind. This is the most complicated union
of them all, which is why I deem it as such.
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