SOURCE: Berry, Edward I. “Rosalynde and Rosalind.” Shakespeare Quarterly 31, no. 1 (spring 1980): 42-52.

In the following essay, Berry compares Shakespeare's Rosalind in As You Like It with the title figure of Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde, observing that Shakespeare instilled his Rosalind with psychological depth, linguistic brilliance, and compelling virtue.

Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde, the narrative source of As You Like It, provides a particularly instructive guide to Shakespeare's play. As a coherent, engaging, yet thoroughly conventional work, Rosalynde enables us to define with unusual precision some of the differences between skill and genius. Critics have drawn upon it to highlight many distinctive features of As You Like It: its structural integrity, its thematic and linguistic richness, its moral seriousness, its complex development of romantic and pastoral conventions.¹ A reading of Lodge, I believe, also illuminates Shakespeare's conception of his main character, Rosalind. A comparison of the two heroines allows us to...