Characters in As You Like It attending on Duke Senior in the forest of Arden. He agrees with the Duke when the latter says "sweet are the uses of adversity". He is not prepared to exchange his life in the forest with the comfortable life at the court. He is deeply attached to Duke Senior and, therefore, has willingly accompanied him to the forest of Arden. Amiens does not, in any way, contribute to the action of the play. He does however sing two songs that allude to and perhaps clarify the plot. Oliver is the eldest son of Sir Rowland de Boys and the heir
As You Like It a boy, whereupon the rustic Phebe, also played by a boy, becomes infatuated with this "Ganymede", a name with homoerotic overtones. In fact, the epilogue, spoken by Rosalind to the audience, states rather explicitly that she (or at least the actor playing her) is not a woman. In several scenes, "Ganymede" impersonates Rosalind' so a boy actor would have been playing a girl disguised as a boy impersonating a girl. Arden is the name of a forest located close to Shakespeare's home town of Stratford-upon-Avon, but Shakespeare probably had in mind the French Arden Wood, featured in Orlando Innamorato, especially