Act One
Scene 1
- Orlando "keeping... differs not from the stalling of an ox?" - Animistic imagery (negative)
- Orlando and Oliver "sir" - false politeness/ sarcasm
- Orlando "the courtesy of nations... takes not away my blood"
- Oliver "boy!" - offensive and talking down to Orlando
- "that she would have followed her to exile" - foreshadowing
- "Forest of Arden" - like the garden of Eden
- "Golden world" - like the Golden Age and Classical Greece
- "merry men" and "robin hood" - classical allusion, refer to something in the previous era i.e. Classical Greece
- "fleet time carelessly" - carefree/pastoral theme
- Oliver "stubbornest young fellow of France... villainous contriver against me" - all of the characteristics of Oliver - dramatic irony
- Oliver "I shall see an end of him" - Oliver wants Orlando dead
- Oliver "Yet he is gentle, never schooled and yet learned, full of noble device" - Orlando's true characteristics
- "Rosalind" means beautiful Rose
- Oliver "I am altogether misprized" - Oliver feels undervalued because of Orlando, envious
Scene 2
- "bountiful blind doth most mistake her gifts to women" - women don't get the same as men
- "mayst in honour come off again" - women need to protect their reputation
- "There is Fortune too hard for Nature, when Fortune makes Nature's natural cutter-off of Nature's wit" - Destiny stop's women's intelligence and potential
- "Hercules" - Greek mythology
- "tyrant duke unto tyrant brother"
Scene 3
- "Cupid have mercy"
- "how full of briars is this working-day world!"
- "thou diest for it" - threatening and danger of the court
- "innocent as grace itself" - the words which traitors speak pretend to be in the Duke's opinion
- "like Juno's swans"
- "she robs thee of thy name"
- "beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold"
- "To liberty and not to banishment"
Act Two
Scene 1
- "brothers in exile" - equals in the forest of Arden
- "painted pomp" "envious court" "this is no flattery"
- "Here feel not the penalty of Adam" - Garden of Eden, Fall from Grace reference
- "the seasons difference"
- "churlish chiding of the winter's wind"
- "sweet are the uses of adversity" - hardships are worth it in the forest
- "sermons in stones" - like Fern-Hill
- "good in everything"
- "weeping in the needless stream" - Jaques
- "we are mere usurpers, tyrants" - there is a natural order in the forest
Scene 2
- No quotes worthy of annotations
Scene 3
- "humorous duke" - changes his emotions quickly
- "to some kind of men their graces serve them but as enemies" - good qualities attract envy
- "constant service of the antique world" - old values, Golden Age, nostalgia
- "thou art not for the fashion of these times" - Adam doesn't belong in the new world because the values have changed
- "none will sweat but for promotion" - the modern world is only about currency and profit
- "some settled low content" - Orlando will escape to the woods so he will be free living a simple life
- "truth and loyalty"
Scene 4
- "comfort the weaker vessel" - now that Rosalind is Ganymede she must act like a man and be strong
- "in thy youth thou wast as true a lover"
- "I think did never a man love so"
- "we that are true lovers run into strange capers"
- "all is mortal in Nature" - everything has a time that must end
- "your betters, sir" - Touchstone is reminding Corin of the social hierarchy of the court
- "most welcome"
- "willingly waste my time in it" - pastoral of carefree
Scene 5
- No quotes worthy of annotation
Scene 6
- "I must have liberty" - there is still wanting in the forest, Jaques wants more
- "your gentleness shall force more than your force move us to gentleness" - parallel phrase
- "welcome"
- "thought that all things had been savage here"
- "gentleness"
- "like a doe, I go to find my fawn"
- "pure love"
- "all the world's a stage"
- "most friendship is feigning"
- "most loving mere folly"
Act Three
Scene 1
- "we seize into our hands" - the court is a place where possessions are valued high and selfishness is prominent
Scene 2
- "thy huntress' name" - Dianna, Greek mythology
- "the fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she" - triadic structure, public deceleration of love
Scene 3
- "in respect of itself, it is a good life"
- "it is a shepherd's life it is naught"
- "in respect that it is not the court, it is tedious"
- "one is a natural philosopher" - sarcastic response from Touchstone due to Corin's lack of intelligence
- "thou are in a parlous state, shepherd" - as Corin hasn't been in court he is damned
- "good manners in court are ridiculous in the country"
- "you have too courtly a wit for me" - Corin gives in to Touchstone
- "I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness" - values of the forest
- "her worth being mounted on the wind, through all the world bears Rosalind" - hypobolic language
- "the tree yields bad fruit" - biblical reference, and a joke
- "Helen's cheek" "Cleopatra's majesty" "Atalanta's better part" "Lucretia's modesty" - Greek references
- "I live and die her slave" - exaggerated sacrifice
- "so you may put a man in your belly" - reference to sex, bawdy humour
- "answer me in one word" - women ask impossible things, humour
- "when I think, I must speak" - stereotypical woman - comical
- "there was no thought in pleasing you when she was Christianed" - Orlando is witty like Touchstone
- "Tis a fault I will not change for your best virtue" - Orlando about love
- "no clock in the forest" - outside human constructions
- "time travels in diverse paces"
- "youth"
- "I thank God I am not a woman" - dramatic irony, humour
- "careless desolation"
- "as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any other"
- "moonish youth" - moody
Scene 4
- "poet honest Ovid was among the Goths" - Roman poet
- "would you not have me honest" - virtuous, pure
- "sluttishness may come hereafter" - bawdy humour, innuendoes
- "not being well married, it will be a good excuse for me hereafter to leave my wife"
Scene 5
- “I will weep” – stereotypical female
- “Diana” – goddess of chastity
- “I think he is not in” – Celia is quite cynical about love
- “the oath of a lover is no stronger than the word of a tapster”
- “swears brave oaths and breaks them bravely”
- “complexion of true love”
- “red glow of scorn”
Scene 6
- “will you sterner be than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?” hyperbolic language
- “lie not to say mine eyes are murderers” – Phebe lacks literary knowledge and takes him to be speaking literally
- "the wounds invisible" - hurt his feelings
- "who ever loved that not at first sight?"
- "I in such poverty of grace... think it a most plenteous crop" - metaphor is natural
Act Four
Scene 1
- "melancholy of mine own" - Jaques is an individual
- "you talk in blank verse!" - brake frame, the illusion of the play has been broken
- "for now I am in a holiday humour" - Rosalind said how she would change her emotions to be 'like a woman'
- "in [six thousand years] there was not any man that died in his own person" - no man has ever died for love
- "men have died for time to time... but not for love" - Rosalind tries to stop Orlando from speaking in hyperbolic terms as she wants to understand the truth behind what he is saying
- "when then, can one desire too much of a good thing?"
- "the wiser, the waywarder" - the wiser a woman is the more fickle
- "make the doors upon a woman's wit and it will out the casement... the keyhole... the chimney" - metaphor for the domestic sphere
- "time is the old justice that examines all"
Scene 2
No quotes worthy of annotation
Scene 3
- "she was writing of it, it bears an angry tenor" - dramatic irony, as he believes that Phebe is cross with Ganymede
- "love hath made thee a tame snake"
- "unnatural" - means cruel
- "conversion" - the forest makes people change
Act Five
Scene 1
- "a fool doth think he is wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool"
- "tremble and depart" - Touchstone has values of the court, is cruel and talks down to William when he threatens him
Scene 2
- "and you fair sister" - Oliver knows that it is Rosalind
- "no sooner looked, but they loved"
- "oh how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes"
- "I can live no longer by thinking"
- "passion" "wishes" "adoration" "observance" "humbleness" "patience" "impatience" "purity" - all values of love
Scene 3
- "sweet lovers love the spring"
Scene 4
- "dulect diseases" - Sweet weaknesses
- "retort courteous" "quip modest" "reply churlish" "reproof valiant" "lie circumstantial" "lie direct" -seven strategies of lying, these long speeches are there to save time for Rosalind and Celia to change, dramatic technique
- "Hymen" - Roman God of Love, supernatural entity in the play
- "sing" "questioning" - Hymen is a supernatural creature and talks in rhyme as its spell-like
- "Juno" - Goddess of marriage
- "converted" - Duke Frederick went through a similar conversion to Oliver, the bad convert to good in the fores
- "rustic revelry" - celebration, all the good are rewarded and the bad have changed
- At the end Rosalind breaks frame and talks to the audience where she teaches them the moral that men and women should both be nice to each other