As You Like It | Themes

At the conclusion of As You Like It, Rosalind remains on stage to end the play with a standard epilogue. After acknowledging that it is unusual to assign the epilogue to a female character, she sends the audience home with the words, "My way is to conjure you and I begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of the play as please you; and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women … that between you and the women the play may please" (V.iv). This upbeat but very slight final word is consistent with Shakespeare's primary...

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