Throughout the course of the play, Shakespeare examines the extent to which gender is a performance. While many Shakespeare plays feature women who dress as men (Twelfth Night, Merchant of Venice, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Cymbeline) or men who disguise themselves as women (The Merry Wives of Windsor, Taming of the Shrew), the self-referential cross-dressing in Shakespeare’s As You Like offers more of a commentary on gender roles in Shakespeare’s time.

Rosalind becomes the male Ganymede to protect herself in the forest. Once there, Ganymede pretends to be Rosalind in order to teach Orlando how to woo. This act of triple cross-dressing is further complicated by Elizabethan politics: The character Rosalind would have been played by a man on the Elizabethan stage, because women were forbidden from acting. The many layers of crossdressing, and the willingness of all characters to accept each performed gender, suggests that Rosalind was written to blur gender lines and to draw attention to its performative nature.

Because Shakespeare wrote during the time of Queen Elizabeth, the cross-dressing in his plays can be interpreted as commentary on the queen’s reign. Elizabeth distanced herself from her gender, exclaiming in one speech at Tilbury, “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.” Elizabeth’s reign challenged the patriarchal order of Early Modern England. She proved that a woman didn’t need a husband and could rule with the power of a king. Elizabeth remained conservative towards the rights of women throughout her reign and worked to separate her reputation from her gender. Shakespeare’s tendency to play with gender in his plays demonstrates a public fascination with the performative nature of gender, which may have extended to the queen’s performance of those roles.