As You Like It · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in As You Like It by William Shakespeare.
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Rosalind
major
Also known as Rosalind Ay, Rosalind Gentleman, Rose, Rosalind O Jupiter, Rosalind Nay, Rosalind Proceed, Rosalind Marry, Rosalind Peace, Rosalinda, Rosalind Dear Celia, Rosalind Alas, Rosalind Orlando
Rosalind begins the play as the quick-tongued companion of her cousin Celia, trading wit in her usurping uncle's court until his suspicion drives her into exile. In the Forest of Arden she trades her gown for a man's coat, and the disguise becomes a laboratory: she can say what a woman cannot, test Orlando's love, and mock the very conventions of romance she is falling into. Her pleasure in play and her ache for her father pull against each other, and her voice—sharp, tender, restless—sets the whole comedy's temperature.
Celia
major
Also known as Celia Alas, Celia Ay, Celia Dear sovereign, Celia Prithee, Celia Well, Celia O Lord, Celia No, Celia for Aliena, Aliena
Celia is the daughter of Duke Frederick, which makes her Rosalind's cousin and, by the play's strange arithmetic, the one person whose loyalty cuts against her own father's interests. When Frederick banishes Rosalind, Celia refuses to be left behind, trading a palace for a forest and a name for a costume. Her devotion is the play's quiet counterweight to all the scheming around her: she is the witness who keeps Rosalind honest, the friend who laughs at her own father's cruelty, and the woman whose love story with Oliver arrives as a kind of afterthought—proof that in Arden even the practical can be surprised.
Orlando
major
Also known as young Orlando, Orlando Of, Orlando Ay, Orlando Virtue, Orlando Forbear, Orlando Fair youth, O poor Orlando
Orlando opens the play pinned under his elder brother Oliver's cruelty—kept at home like a farm animal while his education and birthright are withheld. He answers with his body: he wrestles the duke's champion, wins, and falls instantly and speechlessly in love with Rosalind. When Oliver's malice turns murderous, Orlando flees to Arden, where he hangs love poems on trees and lets a boy named Ganymede lecture him on the art of wooing. His earnestness is the joke and the point: he is the play's proof that a good man can be taught.
Jaques
supporting
Also known as The melancholy Jaques, the melancholy Jaques, Jaques God, Jaques Why, Monsieur Jaques, quoth Jaques, Jaques More, Enter Jaques, Exeunt Jaques, Jaques De boys
Jaques is the courtier who chose the forest but refuses to be cheered by it, preferring his own compounded sadness to anyone else's joy. He meets a fool in the woods and envies him; he watches a deer die and moralizes; he wants a motley coat so he can speak his mind with impunity. He is not a villain and not quite a friend—he is the play's running counter-argument, the voice that asks whether any of this pastoral happiness is real, and the character whose absence from the final dance is the sharpest thing about him.
Touchstone
supporting
Also known as Touchstone God, Master Touchstone, Touchstone Aside, Touchstone One that old Frederick, good Touchstone, Touchstone Mistress, Holla Touchstone, Holla
Touchstone is the licensed fool whose job is to say what courtiers cannot, and he takes that license into the forest like a man carrying a weapon he intends to use. He falls for Audrey, a woman he describes in terms of meat and dishes, and his courtship is a parody of every romantic convention the play otherwise indulges. He matters because he keeps the comedy honest: while Orlando hangs sonnets on trees, Touchstone is negotiating a marriage under a bush with a hedge-priest, and his cynicism is not the opposite of love but one of its many dialects.
Phebe
supporting
Also known as Silvius Sweet Phebe, Phebe Youth, Phebe Dead Shepherd
Phebe is the beautiful, hard-hearted object of Silvius's devotion, and she treats his love as an inconvenience until she meets a sharper tongue in the forest. When Ganymede mocks her, she mistakes contempt for godhead and writes him a letter that Rosalind reads aloud with delight. Her sudden passion is both a joke about the arbitrariness of desire and a mirror held up to Orlando: she is what happens when love is refused, and her eventual surrender—reluctant, embarrassed, real—is one of the play's quieter satisfactions.
Silvius
supporting
Also known as gentle Silvius, Silvius Phebe, Silvius O Corin, Enter Silvius, Exit Silvius, Silvius Sweet Phebe
Silvius belongs to the working forest world of Arden, a shepherd whose entire emotional life orbits a woman who will not have him. When Corin advises that his pining only makes Phebe scorn him more, Silvius insists the old man cannot possibly understand a passion this total — and then proves his point by bolting mid-sentence, crying her name. His ridiculous, sincere devotion mirrors Rosalind's own lovesick state and gives the play its measuring stick for how love makes fools of everyone.
Duke Senior
supporting
Also known as Duke Senior Welcome, Duke Senior Come, Duke Senior That would I, Duke Senior Fie, Duke Senior Most mischievous, Duke Senior Sit, Duke Senior Go
Duke Senior rules a makeshift court of loyal followers in the forest after his brother seized his dukedom. He greets hardship with philosophy and song, finding the woodland life sweeter than the false flattery of palaces, yet his contentment is shadowed by the memory of betrayal. When he recognizes Orlando as the son of an old friend, his warmth sets the play's central refuge in motion — Arden as the place where the dispossessed can begin again.
Duke Frederick
supporting
Also known as Frederick, Duke, Exeunt Duke Frederick, Duke Frederick Ay, Duke Frederick Mistress
Duke Frederick holds the throne his brother lost, ruling through suspicion and threat. He cannot tolerate Rosalind's patience and silence, convinced they steal the people's love from his own daughter Celia, and he ignores Celia's fierce plea that they are inseparable. His cold decree — leave or die — forces the flight to Arden and sets the whole comedy in motion, making him the hard edge of court life against which the forest is measured.
Oliver
supporting
Also known as Oliver Orlando, Oliver Many, good Master Oliver, O brave Oliver, Sir Oliver Martext, Sir Oliver, Sir Oliver Martext Truly
Oliver inherits the estate and the power to make his younger brother's life miserable, denying him education and plotting his death. He arrives in Arden hunting Orlando and instead becomes the ragged sleeper beneath the oak, saved from snake and lioness by the very man he wronged. His confession to Rosalind and Celia — that he is not the man he was — turns him into one of the play's most striking conversions and ties the court's cruelty to the forest's capacity for change.
Adam
supporting
Also known as Adam Sweet masters, Adam O unhappy youth, Adam Master, Adam What
Adam has watched over the house of Sir Rowland since he was seventeen, and his loyalty outlasts the family's good fortune. Overhearing Oliver's plot to burn Orlando in his bed, he warns his young master and presses five hundred crowns of saved wages into his hands, begging to come along even though he is old and the road is long. His devotion — service for duty, not reward — gives the exile its moral anchor and a tender counterweight to Oliver's treachery.
Audrey
supporting
Also known as Audrey Well, sweet Audrey, Audrey Ay, Audrey Faith
Audrey is a goatherd of few words and no illusions, drawn into Touchstone's absurd plan to marry her under a tree with Sir Oliver Martext officiating. She parries his jests about beauty and honesty with simple, disarming candor — she is not fair, so she prays to be honest — and never pretends to be anything she isn't. Her earthy pragmatism contrasts sharply with the courtiers' romantic posturing, and her impending marriage becomes a comic mirror of the play's many weddings.
Corin
supporting
Also known as Corin Fair sir, Corin Sir, Exeunt Corin
Corin belongs to the working countryside of Arden, where he tends sheep, hires out his labor, and speaks for a life of plain dealing against Touchstone's courtly sophistry. His quiet pride — to see his ewes graze and his lambs suck, owing no man hate — becomes a moral counterweight to the exiles' romantic and cynical talk. When he shelters Rosalind and Celia, he anchors the play's middle movement in real pastoral work rather than mere literary fantasy.
Amiens
minor
Also known as Amiens Happy, my Lord of Amiens, Amiens Who doth ambition
A lord attending Duke Senior who sings several songs in the forest.
Charles
minor
Also known as Oliver Good Monsieur Charles, Oliver Charles, good Charles, the sinewy Charles, Charles No
The court wrestler whom Orlando defeats in a match.
Le Beau
minor
Also known as Monsieur Le Beau, Enter Le Beau
A courtier who delivers news of the wrestling match to Rosalind and Celia.
William
minor
Also known as William Ay, William God
A country youth who vies for Audrey's affection.
Hymen
minor
Also known as Enter Hymen
The god of marriage who appears to bless the final couplings.
Dennis
minor
Also known as Exit Dennis
Oliver's servant who delivers a message to Charles.
Jaques de Boys
minor
Also known as Jaques De boys
The second son of Sir Rowland de Boys who brings news of Duke Frederick's conversion.
Sir Rowland de Boys
minor
Also known as Rowland de Boys, Sir Rowland, Rowland, old Sir Rowland
The deceased father of Orlando and Oliver, honored in memory.
