Thou Lov’st Me Not with The Full Weight That I Love Thee

The Complex Nature of the Homoerotic Potential in As You Like It

Abstract

As You Like It by William Shakespeare is a witty and complex comedy that follows a gaggle of courtiers navigating love, class, and gender structures in a fringe forest. While the main action centres on Rosalind disguising as the male shepherd Ganymede to woo courtier Orlando, analyzing the homosexual possibilities between Rosalind and her dearest Celia provides a rich perspective on the art of reading and writing a character. This paper will observe that analyzing homoerotic bonds in As You Like It, like all fictional works, is complex because it is a task that hovers near the supposition that the characters are real people whose desires can be extrapolated. Naturally, then, all homoerotic actions must have been designed by the playwright to deliver a homoerotic relationship. Specifically for As You Like It, I will preface with the rationale for my argumentation, then will argue that Shakespeare designed a homoerotic relationship between Rosalind and Celia but resolved to make it unrequited in the hands of Renaissance-era heteronormativity.