Rosalind (As You Like It) Rosalind (As You Like It) Rosalind is the heroine and protagonist of the play "As You Like It" (1600) by William Shakespeare. She is the daughter of the exiled Duke Senior and niece to his usurping brother Duke Frederick. Her father is banished from the kingdom, breaking her heart. She then meets Orlando, one of her father's friends' son and falls in love with him. After angering her uncle, she leaves his court for exile in the Forest of Arden. Disguised as a shepherd named Ganymede, Rosalind lives with her sweet and devoted cousin, Celia (who is disguised as Ganymede's
As You Like It since the two Orlando epics, Orlando Innamorato and Orlando Furioso, have other connections with the play. In the Orlando mythos, Arden Wood is the location of Merlin's Fountain, a magic fountain causing anyone who drinks from it to fall out of love. The Oxford Shakespeare edition rationalises the confusion between the two Ardens by assuming that "Arden" is an anglicisation of the forested Ardennes region of France, where Lodge set his tale) and alters the spelling to reflect this. Other editions keep Shakespeare's "Arden" spelling, since it can be argued that the pastoral mode depicts a fantastical world in which