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As You Like It
by
“There is a foolish lover,” said Rosalind, “who haunts these woods and hangs sonnets on the trees. If I could find him, I would soon cure him of his folly.”
Orlando confessed that he was the foolish lover, and Rosalind said–“If you will come and see me every day, I will pretend to be Rosalind, and I will take her part, and be wayward and contrary, as is the way of women, till I make you ashamed of your folly in loving her.”
And so every day he went to her house, and took a pleasure in saying to her all the pretty things he would have said to Rosalind; and she had the fine and secret joy of knowing that all his love-words came to the right ears. Thus many days passed pleasantly away.
One morning, as Orlando was going to visit Ganymede, he saw a man asleep on the ground, and that there was a lioness crouching near, waiting for the man who was asleep to wake: for they say that lions will not prey on anything that is dead or sleeping. Then Orlando looked at the man, and saw that it was his wicked brother, Oliver, who had tried to take his life. He fought with the lioness and killed her, and saved his brother’s life.
While Orlando was fighting the lioness, Oliver woke to see his brother, whom he had treated so badly, saving him from a wild beast at the risk of his own life. This made him repent of his wickedness, and he begged Orlando’s pardon, and from thenceforth they were dear brothers. The lioness had wounded Orlando’s arm so much, that he could not go on to see the shepherd, so he sent his brother to ask Ganymede to come to him.
Oliver went and told the whole story to Ganymede and Aliena, and Aliena was so charmed with his manly way of confessing his faults, that she fell in love with him at once. But when Ganymede heard of the danger Orlando had been in she fainted; and when she came to herself, said truly enough, “I should have been a woman by right.”
Oliver went back to his brother and told him all this, saying, “I love Aliena so well that I will give up my estates to you and marry her, and live here as a shepherd.”
“Let your wedding be to-morrow,” said Orlando, “and I will ask the Duke and his friends.”
When Orlando told Ganymede how his brother was to be married on the morrow, he added: “Oh, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.”
Then answered Rosalind, still in Ganymede’s dress and speaking with his voic–“If you do love Rosalind so near the heart, then when your brother marries Aliena, shall you marry her.”
Now the next day the Duke and his followers, and Orlando, and Oliver, and Aliena, were all gathered together for the wedding.
Then Ganymede came in and said to the Duke, “If I bring in your daughter Rosalind, will you give her to Orlando here?” “That I would,” said the Duke, “if I had all kingdoms to give with her.”
“And you say you will have her when I bring her?” she said to Orlando. “That would I,” he answered, “were I king of all kingdoms.”
Then Rosalind and Celia went out, and Rosalind put on her pretty woman’s clothes again, and after a while came back.
She turned to her father–“I give myself to you, for I am yours.” “If there be truth in sight,” he said, “you are my daughter.”
Then she said to Orlando, “I give myself to you, for I am yours.” “If there be truth in sight,” he said, “you are my Rosalind.”
“I will have no father if you be not he,” she said to the Duke, and to Orlando, “I will have no husband if you be not he.”
So Orlando and Rosalind were married, and Oliver and Celia, and they lived happy ever after, returning with the Duke to the kingdom. For Frederick had been shown by a holy hermit the wickedness of his ways, and so gave back the dukedom of his brother, and himself went into a monastery to pray for forgiveness.
The wedding was a merry one, in the mossy glades of the forest. A shepherd and shepherdess who had been friends with Rosalind, when she was herself disguised as a shepherd, were married on the same day, and all with such pretty feastings and merrymakings as could be nowhere within four walls, but only in the beautiful green wood.