Summary:
William's Shakespeare's As You Like It is both a gentle, pastoral comedy and a complicated, dark debate on the the relationship between love, power and gender construction. Through the character of Rosalind, Shakespeare is able to both critique and transgress prescribed gender roles.
Transgressing prescribed gender roles in As You Like It
Shakespeare's As You Like It is both a gentle, pastoral comedy and a complicated, dark debate on the relationship between love, power and gender construction. At the centre of the play is Rosalind, arguably one of Shakespeare's most engaging, witty, intelligent, and lovable female characters. Rosalind is the epitome of Elizabethan femininity: beautiful, chaste, and charitable; and yet she is able to transcend traditional gender boundaries to become a powerful masculine figure, allowing Shakespeare to call into question the serious nature of gender and identity, while also adding to the comic relief of the play through the use of dramatic irony.
The serious potential of transgressing gender roles is explored through Rosalind's ability to subvert the limitations that society imposes on her as a woman (Howard 221) and gain.....
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