Gender in Shakespeares As You Like It :: Shakespeare As You Like It Essays

sexual urge in As You Like It   One of the most intriguing aspects of the preaching of love in As You Like It concerns the issue of gender. And this issue, for obvious reasons, has generated a special interest in recent times. The principal reason for such a thematic concern in the play is the cross preparation and role playing. The central love interest between Rosalind and Orlando calls into question the ceremonious wisdom about mens and womens gender roles and challenges our preconceptions about these roles in courtship, tickling love, and beyond. At the heart of this courtship is a very complex equivocalness which it is difficult fully to appreciate without a production to refer to. tho here we have a military personnel (the actor) playing a womanhood (Rosalind), who has dressed herself up as a man (Ganymede), and who is pretending to be a woman (Rosalind) in the courtship game with Orlando. Even if, in modern times, Rosalind is not played by a young mal e actor, the theatrical irony is complex enough.   The most obvious issue raised(a) by the cross dressing is the relationship between gender roles and clothes (or outer appearance). For Rosalind passes herself off easily enough as a man and, in the process, acquires a certain freedom to move around, give advice, and concern as an equal among other men (this freedom gives her the power to set off the courtship). Her disguise is, in that sense, much more significant than Celias, for Celia remains young-bearing(prenominal) in her role as Aliena and is thus for the most part passive (her anonym meaning Stranger or outsider is an interesting one). The fact that Celia is largely passive in the Forest of Ardenne (especially in contrast to Rosalind) and has to wait for smell to deliver a man to her rather than seeking one out, as Rosalind does, is an interesting and important difference between the two friends.   These points raise almost interesting issues. If bec oming accepted as a man and acquiring the freedom to act that comes with that acceptance is simply a matter of presenting oneself as a man, then what do we say about all the enshrined inhering differences we claim as the basis for our different treatment of men and women?