SOURCE: “Women in As You Like It: Community, Change, and Choice,” in Essays in Literature, Vol. 14, No. 2, Fall, 1987, pp. 151-69.

In the following essay, Carlson refutes earlier critics who claim that As You Like It reflects sexual equality. She argues that patriarchal norms persist, especially in the play's ending.

At the end of As You Like It, when Hymen teases Phebe that she cannot love Ganymede—“You to his [Silvius's] love must accord, / Or have a woman to your Lord” (V.iv.127-28)¹—he reminds us of the comic mileage Shakespeare has gotten from Rosalind's disguise as Ganymede. Also, less obviously, he reminds us of the most steady love of the play, that between two women, Celia and Rosalind. His mockery of such love and the uncharacteristic silence of the women which accompanies it are two final indications of the way women are treated throughout the play. We...