My only rule for writing these daily blogs is that I don’t do any research at the time of writing. I want to write strictly from what I have retained from listening to the plays and the lectures. This means that I’m going to get some things wrong in the earliest blogs. During the first two or three blogs I may still be trying to sort out the characters. For example, I made the mistake of thinking that Rosalind’s father was recently deceased, but he was just kicked out of the court, banished to the countryside. 

I’m listening to the play each day and then writing a new blog each morning and I plan to do this for seven days for each play. So, as I listen to the play on day three, I might catch something that I had wrong about a character or the plot in an earlier draft. I will likely go back later and edit those posts to accurately reflect the plays’ content, but I think it is interesting to show the process of getting there, too. This is one of the great tricks of literature or any difficult writing. You must make your way through a process of misunderstanding it and by continuing to study and think about the subject you form a clearer and more accurate depiction of the text.

There is a value in leaving a paper trail that shows your growth. Earlier cringy versions of your attempts to express ideas only make the eventual success that much more impactful. There is an innocence expressed in bad writing. Take Orlando in the forest of Arden pining away after his love for Rosalind. Shakespeare uses the scene to make fun of bad poetry, but he is also highlighting his own skill and showing the audience through caricature something about the nature of a certain kind of poetic inspiration. 

Orlando’s buffoonery is also his authenticity. His passion for Rosalind is literally littering the forest with failed attempts to get it right.  Mad with love, he wills himself through the process any artist must undergo. He must learn his craft. His bad writing is only matched by his bad reading as Rosalind convinces him that she is someone else, a man even. He is so consumed with his feelings of unrequited love that he fails to recognize she is right there behind that fake beard talking to him about said love.

In As You Like It, Orlando is transformed from a valiant fighter to an unskilled lover and it is highly entertaining to Rosalind and the audience to watch him stumble with his attempts to understand his feelings. Through staging the scene, she gives the audience view to her own pleasure. Rosalind is a masterful writer. She understands skillful deception and uses it to create a context for comedy. Orlando’s uncontrollable enthusiasm makes him vulnerable to being deceived. Rosalind is a benevolent opportunist, taking full advantage of his impaired state to make fun of him.

The transformation of Orlando shows how important context is. He asserts himself in the court, first through a legal appeal to his inheritance and then through a physical wrestling match. He is actively fighting against the limitations imposed upon him. What he doesn’t expect, though, is to fall in love with an admirer. She got into his consciousness and absolutely destroyed his mind.

He begins a second childhood in the forest stumbling through understanding his feelings hampered by a difficulty with words. Orlando abandons his desire to pursue his rightful portion of family power and instead focuses all his attention on understanding his feelings of love for Rosalind. As a bad writer, a naïve poet, Orlando’s portrait of transformation through romantic attraction shows us how dynamic Shakespeare found humans to be. 

There is also in this interaction a portrait of the positive influence of affinity. As You Like It could refer to the process of growth that occurs as a natural consequence of rooting for something. Being a fan of something or someone is the force that leads to a greater understanding of it. As you like it, you grow to know it and eventually to interact with style, flow, and grace. It shows the strength of the desire to live, the will to love.