Comparing Rosalynde and As You Like It :: comparison compare contrast essays

Thomas Lodges Rosalynde is an unwieldy piece, the romance is thick, heavy, and conventional. Yet when Shakespeare took it in hand, to remake the tangled web of disguise and romance into As You Like It, he changed a great deal of the emphasis, by both altering and adding characters. Rosalynde is a celebration of hunch forward As You Like It, a philosophical discourse on love..   Shakespeare cuts to the chase, eliminating much of the prologue to Rosalynde. We hear of old Sir Roland de Boys (Lodges John of Bordeaux) only through Orlandos opening speech, non the lengthy deathbed collection of aphorisms Lodge provides (though this shade of Polonius perhaps influences old Adams verbose style). Likewise, the extended ruminations are cut entirely or, for the forest scenes, condensed into tighter dialogue. Lodges grand tournament, with the jousting intrepidity of the anonymous Norman (proto-Charles) happens offstage, and we see only a wrestling match. Lodges supplanter favors Ros ader after the tournament, but Shakespeares Frederick spurns Orlando for his parentage and Oliver plots more quickly against his brother, further excising the plot-perambulations of the cum and removing the months of tension and reconciliation that plague Saladin and Rosader.   But Shakespeare also takes care to unbosom his villains, more in the spirit of a playful comedy than Lodges sometimes grim pastoral. His Charles is relatively innocent, deceived by Oliver sooner than entering willingly into his establish (as the Norman does with Saladin). Oliver, in turn, is not such a relentless enemy as Saladin he has no cronies to assist in binding up Orlando, he does not so mistreat his brother before us as happens in Lodges pastoral. Even the usurper Duke, Torismond/Frederick, does not exile his suffer daughter in Shakespeares play (only remonstrating her with You are a fool). And he is not killed in battle at the end of the play, but rather converted to a holy life, in much th e same extremity that Lodges Saladin plans for himself in remorse (I sh both wend my way to the Holy Land, to end my age in as many virtues, as I have pass my youth in wicked vanities. (p.273)).   In contrast, Shakespeare darkens his heroes they are not all the blithe, pastoral folk Lodge paints. Celias single Is it not a clot bird that defiles its own nest? (p. 245) early in Rosalynde becomes Celias more extended harangue at the end of IV.