(ca. 1599)
The direct source of this popular comedy was Thomas Lodge''s romance Rosalynde (1590). The story,
a pastoral formula, revolves around the roving court of a
banished Duke in the forest of Arden. Rosalind, daughter of the Duke and Orlando, unjustly disinherited son of one of his friends, pursue a conventional but sometimes confused romance with the maiden diguised as a youth for the greater part of the play. She has taken man''s apparel and called herself Ganymede when banished from the
usurping Duke Frederick''s court, and her best friend, Duke Frederick''s daughter Celia, goes with her as a sister under the name of Aliena. Phebe, who has scorned her swain Silvius, falls in love with the pretended man, while the latter persuades Orlando to woo as if her were wooing Rosalind. Oliver comes to the forest with the intention of killing his brother Orlando, but instead is saved from a lioness by him, and repents. Oliver falls in love with Celia, and in the end disguises are cast aside, and the way is paved for reconciliation and reinstatement of Orlando''s inheritance. All is capped by the timely conversion to religious life of the usurping Duke, who restores the dukedom to its rightful lord. The play closes with all romances happily crowned in the celebration of a mass wedding. Notable are the clown Touchstone and the melancholy Jaques, who speaks the lines about "All the world''s a stage . . . "