SOURCE: “‘To You I Give Myself, For I Am Yours’: Erotic Performance and Theatrical Performatives in As You Like It,” in Shakespeare Reread: The Texts in New Contexts, edited by Russ McDonald, Cornell University Press, 1994, pp. 147-69.

In the following essay, Wofford considers the role of language in establishing meanings about gender in As You Like It.

More than almost any other of Shakespeare's comedies, As You Like It is the play of proxies, of actions enacted in or undertaken by an alternative persona. Whereas in The Comedy of Errors Shakespeare's Adriana says, “I will attend my husband … for it is my office / And will have no attorney but myself” (5.1.98-100),¹ in As You Like It one can woo, marry, and even die by attorney—indeed, at least in the case of wooing and marrying one not only can but must, or so the play suggests. This essay...