Return to search

"To You I Give Myself, for I Am Yours": Editorial Giving and Taking in Shakespeare's <em>As You Like It</em>

In As You Like It 5.4.107-08 we receive Rosalind returning as herself—a woman—no longer in the guise of Ganymede, the "boy" page. Her first lines upon returning are repetitive: "To you I give myself, for I am yours [To Duke Senior] / To you I give myself, for I am yours [To Orlando]." However, comparing Folio versions of these lines produces a provocative variant. In the third and fourth folios, these lines are no longer a repetitious patriarchal pledging, but a tender dialogic exchange—much like vows—between Rosalind and Orlando. While none of our modern Shakespeare editions make a note of this variant emendation, this article traces the editorial history and mystery surrounding As You Like It 5.4.107-08 from seventeenth-century editors to our modern ones—with an emphasis on the shift in Shakespeare editing during the eighteenth century—to suggest the variant emendation warrants consideration for text and performance. Furthermore, the article examines the plausibility of the third and fourth folio's emendation in congruence with Early Modern conceptions of companionate marriage, parental consent, and marriage rites.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-8227
Date01 December 2017
CreatorsThorup, Jennifer Jean
PublisherBYU ScholarsArchive
Source SetsBrigham Young University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations
Rightshttp://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Page generated in 0.0021 seconds