Essay On Rosalind As You Like It

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-Rosalind, As You Like It, (3.2.200-01) William Shakespeare’s plays plow various topics that have focused on sexuality, from gender reversal to adultery to bestiality. But perhaps the most reproducible and emphasized topic is homoeroticism. This focus on homoeroticism proceeds from the prohibition of women on the English stage and the subsequent female roles young boys would play. In As You Like It, desires manifest and play out in identity rather than chaotically circulating in a magical setting. The play focuses on the formation of identity and how identity—particularly social and gender identities—dictates and validates desire. Shakespeare’s play sheds the light on female amity, for heterosexual love and desires disrupt Rosalind and Celia’s relationship. Amity between same-sex friends does not necessarily suggest a homoerotic relationship: for “the question…was not, am I heterosexual or am I homosexual, but where do my greater emotional loyalties lie, with other men or with women” (Smith 65). Though the play contains homoerotic elements, the representation of homoeroticis...

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