A VIRTUAL AS YOU LIKE IT?

A VIRTUAL AS YOU LIKE IT? Marjorie Garber says that in AS YOU LIKE IT each character who enters Arden experiences it differently. Duke Senior finds it joyful; Orlando finds it threatening. The time may have come for a virtual AS YOU LIKE IT with an avatar for each character entering a computerized forest world—something like the virtual world of WORLD OF WARCRAFT. That world could differ for each avatar. The avatars could also handle the courtship between Orlando and Rosalyn. Rosalyn pretends to be a boy, “Ganymede.” Rosalyn, as “Ganymede”, tells Orlando she will pretend to be Rosalyn, and thus their courtship proceeds. Imagine that Ganymede is Rosalyn’s male avatar. The courtship scenes between the avatars would work. And having a female heroine acting through a male avatar would also preserve the ambiguous sexuality of the original. Shakespeare was a few hundred years ahead of the technology.