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 Arden, as shown below: Shakespeare uses prose for about 55% of the text, with the remainder in verse. Shaw explains that as used here the prose, "brief [and] sure", drives the meaning and is part of the play's appeal, whereas some of its verse he regards only as ornament. The dramatic convention of the time required the courtly characters to use verse, and the country characters prose, but in "As You Like It" this convention is deliberately overturned. For example, Rosalind, although the daughter of a Duke and thinking and behaving in high poetic style, actually speaks in prose as