As You Like It – Act Three – “… sell while you can; you are not for all markets.”

As You Like It – Act Three – “… sell while you can; you are not for all markets.”

This act of ‘As You Like It’ is one that can get confusing when you think about it too much. So don’t. It would have even more confusing for an Elizabethan audience who would see a boy playing a woman who pretends to be an educated country man who in trying to win the heart of another man (a real one), by having that man pretend that he (who is really a she) is the woman the real man loves, whilst fighting off the affections of a real country lass who has fallen in love with the young man who is really a woman pretending to be a man but is in fact played by a boy.

So, with this in the wings, of course the act starts simply with Duke Frederick who want to locate Orlando. The Duke finally decides that threats work and says he will take all of Oliver’s land and fortune unless he is able to find Orlando within a year.

Meanwhile, Orlando is using his time well, running throughout the forest putting love poems to Rosalind on every tree. Corin and Touchstone enter and do not notice the verse vines choking the forestry because they are comparing court life to country life.

Ganymede, who is really the fair maid Rosalind in disguise enters, reads one of love poems naming her Rosalind with out knowing who has written them. Touchstone mocks the verse, with rude and crude and sometimes clever metaphors. Aliena, who is really Celia in disguise, enters and she knows that Orlando has written the poems. She teases Rosalind before finally telling her that her love is in the forest, turning every tree into a distribution network for his verse. Rosalind is, needless to say, reduced to the status of a love-smitten school girl.

Orlando and Jaques enter and Celia and Rosalind hide themselves away and listen to the conversation. Jaques rebukes Orlando for his defiling of the trees with sentimental love verse and Orlando mocks Jaques’s melancholic demeanour. Jacques exits and Rosalind dressed as Ganymede confronts Orlando and claims that she can cure him of his love if he was to pretend that he, Ganymede, is Orlando’s true love Rosalind (who in fact she really is). “I would cure you if you would but call me Rosalind and come every day to my cot, and woo me.“ Orlando bizarrely agrees.

Love is certainly in the air in Arden for we next comes across Touchstone and Audrey, a goat keeper and Touchstone is trying to either woo her. Jacques is secretly eavesdropping. When Oliver Martext, who Touchstone has pre-arranged with to perform a wedding ceremony, we know Touchstone seems serious. Oliver Martext requires someone to give away the woman and suddenly Jacques appears. Eventually Jacques convinces Touchstone that this ceremony and this vicar would make for an ill wedding and an ill-fated marriage and the three leave a rather perplexed Oliver Martext alone – a vicar with no purpose.

Orlando doesn’t keep his first date or rather his first lesson in falling out of love. Rosalind is very upset and Celia’s attempts to placate her by telling her that Orlando is untruthful and looks like Judas, doesn’t really help. Then Corin enters and they then witness the love-struck country lad Silvius being rejected by his love Phoebe. Phoebe mocks and ridicules Silvius so eventually Rosalind, dressed as Ganymede decides to intervene and chastise Phoebe, claiming that because she is ill mannered and lacks beauty that she is very lucky to have the love of an honest man such as Silvius. Phoebe definitely needs therapy because when she is put down by a person she thinks is a young man, she falls instantly in love with him. As Rosalind and Celia exit, Phoebe (who probably can’t write herself) is trying to get Silvius to write for her what she claims will be “a very taunting letter” to Ganymede. We know otherwise and the plot becomes as thick as the Forest of Arden was, before the Romans and medieval woodcutters became a little over enthusiastic.