56 pages • 1 hour read
William ShakespeareAs You Like It
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1599A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Act Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaAct V-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act V, Scene 1 Summary
Touchstone tells Audrey to be patient for their marriage. William, who is Touchstone’s rival for Audrey’s love, enters. Touchstone interrogates William, proving himself to be more learned and therefore superior to the country boy, in his estimation. He then orders William to leave Audrey alone. William exits, and Corin enters to tell Touchstone that Ganymede and Aliena need him.
Act V, Scene 2 Summary
Oliver and an injured Orlando discuss Oliver’s newfound and overly hasty love for Aliena. Oliver says that he loves her so much, he will willingly give his money and estate to Orlando so that he can live with Aliena as a shepherd. Ganymede enters, pretending to be Rosalind, and Orlando tells Oliver to prepare for a wedding. Oliver exits.
Ganymede (as Rosalind) and Orlando discuss their ruse, but Orlando is sad that his brother will have a real wedding with Aliena. To comfort Orlando, Ganymede says that tomorrow at the wedding ceremony, he will cause the actual Rosalind to magically appear. Silvius and Phoebe then enter, and Ganymede again orders Phoebe to love Silvius instead of him. All the characters bemoan their troubles with love. Ganymede puts an end to their moaning, saying “’tis like the howling of Irish wolves against the / moon” (V.2.115-116). He then cryptically invites all present to the wedding ceremony tomorrow to get married.
Act V, Scene 3 Summary
Touchstone and Audrey say that they will also get married tomorrow. Two of Duke Senior’s pages then enter and sing a song about love. Touchstone says in criticism of the song, “I count it but time lost / to hear such a foolish song” (V.3.45-46).
Act V, Scene 4 Summary
Duke Senior, Amiens, Jaques, Orlando, Oliver, and Aliena enter. Duke Senior wonders if Orlando truly believes Ganymede will fix everything; Orlando does. Ganymede enters with Silvius and Phoebe, and he reminds everyone of their promises to get married. This includes Phoebe’s promise to marry Silvius if she decides not to marry Ganymede. Ganymede and Aliena then exit.
Duke Senior mentions that Ganymede looks like Rosalind, and Orlando agrees. When Touchstone and Audrey enter, Jaques introduces Touchstone to the Duke, and Touchstone comically insists that he is a man from court. He tells a story about an official quarrel he had about a beard, proving that he is from court.
Hymen, the god of marriage, enters to present Rosalind and Celia to the Duke for marriage. At this point Phoebe realizes that she cannot marry Ganymede. Hymen marries the four couples: Orlando and Rosalind, Oliver and Celia, Phoebe and Silvius, and Audrey and Touchstone.
Jaques de Boys, Oliver and Orlando’s other brother, enters. He announces that after all the familial strife, Duke Frederick has had a religious turn and decided to return his lands to Duke Senior. Jaques decides to attend Duke Frederick in his religious life and exits. Duke Senior concludes the play by saying, “Proceed, proceed. We’ll begin these rites, / as we do trust they’ll end, in true delights” (V.4.207-208). All exit except Rosalind.
Epilogue Summary
Rosalind delivers the epilogue. She immediately comments on the rarity of a female character giving an epilogue, saying “it is not the fashion to see the lady the / epilogue” (Epilogue.1-2). She then charges the women in the audience to enjoy this play, as well as the men, referencing its title: As You Like It.
Act V-Epilogue Analysis
In the final act, Shakespeare begins by again comparing court and country life. The verbal battle between Touchstone and William, which on the surface is a fight over the shepherdess Audrey, represents the play’s larger battle between country and court life. In this conflict, Touchstone aligns court life with education and knowledge, suggesting that country life aligns with ignorance. Ultimately, Touchstone, with his education and witty verbal plays, wins the fight, defeating both William and the country lifestyle he represents.
Act 5 is the denouement—where all the subplots and character conflicts are resolved. Rosalind, continuing to show a level of agency unique for a female character in a Shakespeare play, constructs the plan that will bind the four primary love connections. As she creates this plan, the characters raise the issue of all the pain and suffering that unrequited love can cause. For example, Orlando says, “O, how bitter a / thing it is to look into happiness through another / man’s eyes” (V.2.45-47). By this he means that it will be a bitter thing for him to go to this marriage ceremony and see another happy couple, while he believes his courtship of Rosalind to be a ruse with Ganymede. This falls in line with negative comments made earlier in the play about the deceit or suffering of love. However, As You Like It is a comedy, and the generic expectation of a comedy is that it should end happily. As Rosalind completes her plan and the four couples happily marry, love wins out.
The two sets of familial conflicts are also resolved in Act 5. By the miraculous intervention of a religious man, Duke Frederick conveniently decides to return the family lands to his brother Duke Senior. This restores the expected line of inheritance. In addition, because of the marriages, even the two brothers Orlando and Oliver resolve their familial conflict. Although Oliver previously offered to give up his inheritance to live as a shepherd with Aliena, since Aliena is revealed to be the noble Celia, he no longer has to denounce all nobility and wealth. Orlando, who has married Rosalind, the daughter and only child of the restored Duke Senior, is now the son-in-law of a wealthy, land-owning man. Despite Orlando’s strong criticism of primogeniture at the very beginning of the play, by the end he is positioned to potentially benefit from an extension of this custom, as he is both Rosalind’s husband and the closest Duke Senior has to a son. Therefore, despite the familial conflicts that primogeniture initially raises, by the end of the play the noble characters are all either in positions to benefit from that very custom or, in the case of Duke Frederick, have removed themselves from the custom entirely by taking on a religious life.
Related Titles
By William Shakespeare
