SOURCE: Garber, Marjorie. “The Education of Orlando.” In Comedy from Shakespeare to Sheridan: Change and Continuity in the English and European Dramatic Tradition, edited by A. R. Braunmuller and J. C. Bulman, pp. 102-12. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986.

In the following essay, Garber contends that Rosalind maintains her disguise as Ganymede throughout most of As You Like It so that she can more easily educate Orlando about love.

When Rosalind learns from Celia that Orlando is in the Forest of Arden, she cries out in mingled joy and consternation, “Alas the day, what shall I do with my doublet and hose?” (3.2.219-20).¹ Members of the audience might perhaps be pardoned were they to answer her, not in the “one word” she demands, but with the familiar chant of the burlesque house, “Take it off!”—either literally (if she has been provident enough to bring a change of...