Love In Ganymede's As You Like It

It seems for Phoebe that there is no possible hope to find the true pastoral view of love, because it is simply ridiculous. However, there is an ironic twist when Phoebe falls for Ganymede, who himself is a pastoral character from myth. Ganymede has shown nothing but disdain for Phoebe, even outwardly pointing out her “foulness”, which made Phoebe “fall in love with” Ganymede’s “anger” (3.5.67-69). Despite Ganymede’s pleas for Phoebe to “not fall in love” with her because she is “falser than vows made in wine” and blatantly “likes [her] not” (3.5.72-74), Phoebe falls for Ganymede in a rather comedic situation. This turn of events brings about a similar situation shown in the pastoral, where there is permanently unrequited love between characters;

This is prevalent in her exchange with Orlando when she denies the kiss, stating it would be “better” for Orlando to “speak first”, and to “take the occasion to kiss” only after he has been “graveled for the lack of the matter” (4.1.67-69). Again, the pastoral passion is dismissed for a more temperate and safe situation, since Rosalind does not want to be with Orlando, without having a sense of who he is, and rush into kissing him. Nor does she completely want to dismiss the idea of kissing him. Rather, Rosalind wants to find a middle ground, shown through her patience in making Orlando wait, which is not typical in the all or nothing approach that the pastoral is known for, such as in Ovid and Virgil’s pieces. However, there is no reason here for Orlando and Rosalind not to be together, with the sight of marriage set in sight very soon. Here, Rosalind is very similar to Touchstone in the idea of temperance, in which she does not want to fall straight into the idea of passionate love with Orlando, nor does she want to renounce love for him at completely. Instead, she tries to find the middle ground of first talking. This situation, similar to Touchstone’s decision to find a balance between his desires and his morals, finds a middle ground in marriage. Thus, the temperate and safe approach that both Touchstone and Rosalind take is because

This full circle also brings about the reason for a happy ending including the characters, because their story, in terms of their love life, is actually complete. However, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, there is not really a full story, since only a few sections of the story are fully presented. Without the full circle of the plot for Acis and Galatea’s love story, only the tragedy is highlighted, with no real room for any additional information about what truly happened within the text, as with Virgil’s Eclogues. Shakespeare takes pastoral ideas and tropes and reformulates them to fit into the genre of comedy, such that one could even say that he creates a hybrid genre of pastoral-comedy, eliminating the idea of the lack of fulfillment or permanent longing associated with pastoral works. The idea of a comedy encompassing an ending in marriage is a leading reason to why As You Like It has the ability to transition from the traditional pastoral views that have been observed in texts such as Ovid and