play before they can be together. Fortunately,As You Like It is a comedy (unlike Romeo and Juliet), so the characters in this play are able to reunite in the end and live happily ever after.

Orlando meets Rosalind early in the story and falls deeply in love with her, but they are separated early on, as both of them have to flee Duke Frederick and travel through the forest. Throughout the play, they struggle to reunite and evade the Duke's wrath. In the end, they are successful.

Although Shakespeare expresses many different types of love in As You Like It, the relationship between Rosalind and Orlando represents the ideal of romantic love and is expressed through poetry, symbolic actions, and courtly manners. In true romantic fashion, the two, who meet early in the play, fall in love quite quickly. Before their journey can end in marriage, however, the two will have to face many obstacles: fleeing the evil Duke Ferdinand, overcoming self-doubt, and even encountering a would-be lover in disguise.

Other types of love explored by Shakespeare in his comedy are physical (sexual) love, such as that between Touchstone and Audrey; filial or family love, such as that seen between cousins Celia and Rosalind; and, lastly, the unrequited love of Silvius and Phoebe.

Rosalind and Orlando in Shakespeare's classic comedy As You Like It are essentially the personification of true love (although this love seems more like infatuation). They appear to fall in love with each other at first sight, and, in the end, the audience sees them get their happily ever after.

The most interesting aspect of their relationship, however, is that they seem to love each other as they are, without having to hide their true selves, which is ironic, as Rosalind is actually disguised as a man for most of the play.

When Rosalind is banished to the Forest of Arden, she disguises herself as a young man (Ganymede) to ensure her safety. Eventually, she encounters Orlando and manages to convince him that she can help him learn the true meaning of love, hoping to see how he truly feels about her. It is never specifically revealed whether or not Orlando knows that Ganymede is actually Rosalind, but he plays along. Thus, the two begin to explore their personalities and characters, revealing their deepest thoughts and emotions layer by layer and ultimately falling in love with each other even more.

The beauty of this relationship, therefore, lies in the fact that Orlando sees Rosalind as a man—as someone who can be his close friend—instead of as someone who can be his lover. Because of this, the two get the chance to really get to know each other as friends and as people first, then as potential lovers. They essentially get the opportunity to truly understand each other and be honest about their feelings rather than be blinded by love.

In the end, they end up marrying each other for love, which was quite rare in Shakespearean times, as many marriages were arranged.

Rosalind and Orlando first meet early on in the play when he is to take on the champion of wrestling in a match held publicly. it seems to be love at first sight for the two of them and they remember each other fondly up until they meet again in the forest. Ironically, Rosalind is in men's clothing in order to secure her safety while traveling in exile with Celia and Touchstone. She then decides to use her disguise to delve deeper into discovering how true Orlando is to his feelings for her by suggesting that they role-play together and act out the romance. Orlando doesn't want to at first, but Rosalind cons him into by saying that she can cure him of his madness.

"Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as
well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by counsel" (III.ii).

After Rosalind piques his interest by saying this, she describes how she supposedly cured another fellow of his love-sickness. As Orlando and Rosalind role-play in later scenes, she falls more in love with him. For audiences to see two men acting out love for each other is certainly comedic! For Shakespeare's time, it must have been much more hilarious to see a boy, playing a girl, playing a boy, acting like he was a girl in love with a boy. The romance is founded upon sight, but built on experience however weird or uncommon as it may seem.

Shakespeare certainly does portray many different types of love in As You Like It with varying types of intensity. Rosalind and Orlando's love for each other certainly is one example of intense love at first sight. However, interestingly, due to a warning Celia gives her, Rosalind decides to test the strength and depth of Orlando's love by maintaining her disguise as Ganymede.

We witness Rosalind develop feelings of love for Orlando at first sight the first time she meets him the moment he fights with Charles the court wrestler. However, Rosalind's feelings of love seem to stem from more than just Orlando's looks and his display of strength and valor. One of the first things Orlando says to her is that he is the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys, a name that means a great deal to Rosalind. Rosalind is well aware that her father, usurped and exiled by Duke Frederick, very much loved and admired Sir Rowland and so did her father's entire court. Hence, when she sees Orlando, Rosalind is also seeing her own father as well as the character traits her father admired in Sir Rowland, showing us that, even if her love is intense and at first sight, it is grounded on what she believes to be Orlando's character. Nevertheless, Celia later counsels Rosalind very wisely when she warns Rosalind that just because Rosalind's father loved Orlando's father and that Sir Rowland was full of good qualities, it does not necessarily logically follow that Orlando is also full of the same good qualities and equally deserving of Rosalind's love as Sir Rowland was, as we see in Celia's lines:

Doth it therefore ensue that you should love his son dearly? By this kind of chase, I should hate him, for my father hated his father dearly; yet I hate note Orlando. (I.iii.31-34)

In other words Celia is warning Rosalind to be more cautious, to not let her emotions run away with her, and to carefully consider Orlando's worthiness. We know that Rosalind takes her advice because next we see her decide to play a trick on Orlando by pretending to be Ganymede. In her disguise, she gets him to confide in her about his deepest feelings for her as Rosalind, confidences that she could not so easily have tricked him into saying had she approached him as a woman for the simple fact that men confide in fellow men much more easily than they confide in women. Furthermore, she does not disclose her true identity until she hears him proclaim that he would rather die than continue to be without Rosalind, which confirms exactly what she was hoping to confirm, that his feelings for her certainly are deep and sincere.

Hence, while both Rosalind and Orlando do fall in love at first sight, Rosalind also decides to govern her feelings with reason and be patient in deciding if the relationship is truly right for her.