A DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN SCHOLARS.

A DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN SCHOLARS. Marjorie Garber and James Shapiro, two brilliant Shakespeare scholars, seem to disagree completely about what happens in the courtship between Rosalyn and Orlando in AS YOU LIKE IT. When does Orlando realize that the boy Ganymede is really Rosalyn in disguise? Garber says, only in the final wedding scene. Shapiro says, much earlier, certainly when they clasp hands during the mock marriage. There is support in the text for either view. I prefer to think, with Shapiro, that Orlando figures it out when they clasp hands and that the lovers are complicit thereafter (I take Kate’s final speech in TAMING OF THE SHREW the same way, that the lovers are finally complicit, instinctively united against the world).