Objective
I’m going to analyze the characters of Rosalind, Viola and Portia; they have one thing in common, the three of them have disguised themselves as boys. I will try to establish the similarities and differences among these three women.
Introduction
Rosalind is the daughter of the exiled Duke of Burgundy. She lives with her uncle (who’s the one who has usurped the throne from Rosalind’s father) because she is very fond of Celia, her cousin, and they have to be together. She falls in love with Orlando. Rosalind and Celia exile themselves because Celia’s father, Frederick, doesn’t want her niece near him. In their exile they try to find Rosalind’s father. They decide to disguise themselves as men in order to travel more freely in the woods. They find Orlando there and the girls know that he is spreading his love for Rosalind by means of poems. Rosalind, disguised as the youth Ganymede, approaches Orlando and questions him about his love for her. She pretends to be able to cure him of this love he feels and asks him to treat her as if he/her was Rosalind. At the end Orlando knows that Ganymede is Rosalind and they merry.
Viola’s only family is her brother Sebastian. In a shipwreck they part from each other not knowing if the other one is alive. She arrives safely to Illyria and has to disguise herself as a boy in order to work in the household of Duke Orsino. She adopts the name of Cesario. Being with the duke she falls in love with him but she cannot express her feelings because she is thought to be a boy. Besides, Orsino is in love with Olivia, and Cesario /Viola is told to woo her in the name of Orsino. Olivia falls in love with Cesario/Viola and then starts a kind of love triangle. At the end, Sebastian appears in Illyria. Olivia marries him and Viola shows Orsino her real nature, and they are also going to marry.
Portia is a rich heiress. Her father is dead but his will obliges her to choose a suitor through a casket game. She doesn’t like any of the suitors except Bassanio, who chooses the right casket. He has to go to help Antonio, a friend who is in trouble. In order to help him she disguises as a young lawyer and she is able to save Antonio from death.
Similarities and differences
Disguise and families
They all three disguise themselves but what is the relation they maintain with their families while they are wearing their boy masks?
Rosalind seems very little preoccupied for her father. She does not take a great effort in order to find him. She seems to be more interested in testing Orlando’s love for her. After days without seeing him, the first words we see her addressing her father are spoken in the name of Ganymede:
ROSALIND: (…) You say, if I bring in your Rosalind, [to the DUKE]
You will bestow her on Orlando here? (As You Like It, Act V, Scene IV, lines 6-7).
She doesn’t appear as a woman eager to tell her father that she is there and eager to hug him. She talks mysteriously and just concerned about telling everyone what is going to happen.
She has a deep relation with her cousin Celia. I think this relationship is closer to friendship, because sometimes friendship bonds are stronger than family ones. I will comment this relationship later, on the friendship section.
Viola has a brother, Sebastian. There are alone in the world and their fraternal love is the only thing that’s important for them. We can notice this when we see that Viola gives money to the Captain just for saying that Sebastian could be alive.
When the part of the disguise comes Sebastian is not there. We don’t know what she would have done if the two of them would have landed on Illyria. We don’t know if the disguise would have been necessary. I don’t think so. In my opinion the situation that Viola faces, being alone in a foreign place, makes more necessary for her to find some shelter, and to disguise herself as a boy seems the only option she came across.
Portia is also alone. She has no family. So, when she disguised herself there’s nothing in the family that influences her, or takes part in the play.
Contrasting the three characters I can say that the family matter is only significant to the role of Viola, because she is alone in a strange place. That could be a reason for masking her personality behind a boy appearance.
Disguise and friendship
In this case, we see that Viola is again the one that differs most from the other two characters.
Rosalind starts her journey through the woods with the company of her cousin Celia. She also decides to disguise herself but her costume is closer to herself, because it’s the disguise of another lady, Aliena. They are so fond of each other; they love each other so much that they do this together. Rosalind is the one that decides that she would dress as a man because she is very tall.
ROSALIND: Were it not better,
Because that I am more than common tall,
That I did suit me all points like a man? (As You Like It, Act I, Scene III, Lines 111-113).
They cannot live without each other, so it’s logic that they also share this disguise thing.
Portia is not alone when she disguises herself, she takes Nerissa with her. Portia is the one who comes up with the plan, and she doesn’t ask Nerissa if she wants to take part in it.
PORTIA: Come on, Nerissa; I have work in hand
That you yet know knot of; (…) (The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene IV, Lines 56-57)
I think it’s understandable because they are not at the same social level. But at the same time I think that Nerissa is more than a maid for Portia, is part of her family is a friend. It seems very logic and plausible that Portia wants to have her by her side when she defends Antonio.
Finally Viola. She is alone in this experience. The only character that knows Viola intention to disguise herself as a boy is the captain but he is not there when she is suffering the consequences of her decision (or only option).
Here we find again that Viola is alone in this matter. She has no friend around her to share this masquerade subject.
Disguise and love
Love is very important in Shakespeare. This case is not different. Each of these women are involved in a love plot, and the disguises are all related to this feeling.
Rosalind plays in a way with Orlando when she is disguised as Ganymede. She knows that Orlando is in love with her because he is hanging poems dedicated to her on the trees. She talks to him and she plans to play the knave with him, making fun of him.
ROSALIND [aside to Celia]: I will speak to him like a saucy lackey, and under
That habit play the knave with him (…) (As You Like It, Act III, Scene II, Lines 298-299).
With the disguise on, Rosalind freely explores Orlando’s feelings for her. He does not know that he is talking to her, so he opens his heart and is able to say exactly what he feels. She makes this possible in a way because she is all the time talking to him about his love for her. I think she likes to hear it, though she does not say it clearly. She convinces Orlando that love is a madness, that he needs to be cured and that she/he is the answer to this problem. At first Orlando doesn’t accept Rosalind’s proposal but he ends up accepting and treats Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, as if she was Rosalind. This is a strange thing because she is in fact Rosalind. She knows that, the audience knows that but Orlando does not. Sometimes it’s difficult to know if Orlando is talking to Ganymede or to Rosalind. I mean than sometimes it’s difficult to know if Orlando is pretending or just knowing that everything is just a farce. Through the text we infer the truth, he does not know anything:
ROSALIND: Why, then, to-morrow I cannot serve your turn
for Rosalind?
ORLANDO: I can live no longer by thinking.
In the case of Portia love is also very important because she disguises as a boy to help Bassanio’s friend, Antonio. She does not know him, but she wants to help him, to help Bassanio and have the opportunity to be close to him.
Portia also plays a little with Bassanio. He wants to offer her/him a present in gratitude for having save Antonio’s life. Portia asks for a ring that Bassanio is wearing, a ring that she had given him before. She is in a way testing his love. Bassanio does not want to get rid of the ring, but at last he gives the ring to Portia, but just because Antonio tells him. He seems to exert some power over him.
Viola’s case is again different. Love plays an important part on her story, but in a more painful way. She falls in love with Orsino when she is already disguised as a boy. He is in love with Olivia and he has never seen Viola as she really is, a young woman. So, she knows that the affection she feels for him in quite impossible to get in return.
At the end of the play Orsino accepts without problems that Olivia has married Sebastian, and that Cesario is in fact Viola, whom he is going to marry. This is in my opinion a little weird, and the only explanation (apart that it’s a comedy and it has to have a happy ending), is that Orsino’s love for Viola started when she was Cesario but he didn’t want to express it.
We cannot see this clearly in the play. We only know the complicity the two of them have, and the trust Orsino puts on Cesario.
Aim of the disguise
Each one of them has a different objective.
Rosalind needs to disguise herself because the forest is not safe for her and her cousin Celia.
ROSALIND: Alas, what danger will it be to us,
Maids as we are, to travel forth so far!
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold. (As You Like It, Act I, Scene III, Lines 105-107).
And as we have seen before, she decides to dress as a man because she is tall and it would suit her.
Portia doesn’t need to disguise herself, because she doesn’t need to go to the trial. She wants to go there to help Bassano’s friend. We don’t know the exact reason why she has to disguise herself, but in my opinion she has to disguise as a boy because as a young woman no one would have taken her seriously.
NERISSA: Why, shall we turn to men? (The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene IV, Line 79).
Nerissa asks this to Portia, a question that the reader, spectator, is also making to himself. But Portia does not answer then, we know the answer later when we see Portia in action.
Viola has no other choice; she is alone in a strange land. She would have preferred to serve Lady Olivia, but the captain tells her that the lady does not admit anyone.
VIOLA: (…). I’ll serve this duke:
Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him. (Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene II, Lines 55-56)
We can see that the aim of these women is different in each case.
Objective fulfilled
Rosalind and Viola’s objective, though different, have a common point; they want to hide their real characters. They achieve this. Portia also gets what she wants, she saves Antonio.
Other
I will now expose some opinions I have found, author’s opinions, and I will contrast them with my own opinions.
Mrs. Anna Jameson says that Portia has a lively wit; “but as she has never known want, or grief, or fear, or disappointment, her wisdom is without a touch of the somber or the sad”. I think that Mrs. Anna Jameson can have some basis in saying this. Portia is a rich girl, she has always had everything she wanted and this may have forge a character with great security. This could explain the way she enters the courtroom and is able to create arguments without doubt and fear. But, at the same time, I think that a girl in her circumstances should have had to have some pressure upon her, because her father is the only one who’s taken her decisions even when he’s dead.
As Lee Lady point out, we cannot know if Shakespeare’s intention (making that these characters played by boys disguised themselves as boys) was to create ambiguities, and challenge the paradigms of his society, but I agree with him that at certain point that had to be the effect.
On the other hand, probably Elizabethan audience was used to this kind of things.
Lee Lady quotes comments from Ann Barton and John Doebler regarding Rosalind and the fact that she keeps man clothes when it’s not necessary for her to do it. Ann Barton sees this as a way for Rosalind to keep the freedom man’s clothes allow her to have. And John Doebler sees the same act as a way for Rosalind to make Orlando aware that a woman is not perfect, that her lover can have mistakes, and she is not a goddess. In mu opinion the most important thing for her to maintain man’s clothes is based on the story, to be able to play a part in the subplot of Phebe and Silvius.
Conclusion
Looking at these three characters I have approached Shakespeare in a different way. I don’t know what was his position regarding woman, but I don’t think he considered them as inferiors or less valued people. I think he just thought that man and woman could be equally compared. If this was not so he would have not devoted so many lines to these amazing characters that express their intelligence in a very open way.
In the Blackwell Guides to Criticism, there is a quote from Juliet Dusinberre that expresses this in a way: “[Shakespeare] did not divide human nature into the masculine and the feminine, but observed in the individual woman or man an infinite variety of union between opposing impulses”.
Resources
- Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1996.
- Shakespeare’s Comedies edited by Emma Smith. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing LTD, 2004.
- Shakespeare, William, The Merchant of Venice. United States of America, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. (A Norton Critical Edition, edited by Leah S. Marcus, Vanderbilt University), 2006
- Routledge Who’s Who in Shakespeare, England: T. J. Press (Padstow) Ltd Cornwall, 1973.
- <http://www2.hawaii.edu/~lady/lit/shakespeare/> , 25 mayo 2007, Lee Lady.
Academic Year 2006/2007
© a.r.e.a. / Dr. Vicente Forés López
© Laura Rumí Pérez
Universidad de Valencia Press
