Her thoughts and musings on the nature of love are the main subject of As You Like It and in a flirtatious finale she calls on the applause of the audience: 

'I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you. And I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women - as I perceive by your simpering none of you hates them - that between you and the women the play may please.'

Shakespeare's Rosalind is a fun-loving character who enjoys teasing Orlando, the man she loves, about his clichéd love poems.

Rosalind is a favourite character for women actors. She is completely pivotal to the story of As You Like It in a way that very few other Shakespearean women characters are. In a recent production (2000) directed by Gregory Doran, Rosalind was played by Alexandra Gilbreath (photo 1). Juliet Stevenson (1985), Janet Suzman (1968 - photo 3), Vanessa Redgrave (1961 - photo 2) and Peggy Ashcroft (photo 4) have all played this popular role.

In an essay about playing the roles, both Stevenson and Shaw wrote a joint essay outlining their interest and excitement with Shakespeare's characters: 'He writes of female friendship, but rarely between women of the same age and status, and the women are never so centrally placed in the play.' (Fiona Shaw and Juliet Stevenson, Celia and Rosalind in ‘As You Like It, Players of Shakespeare 2’, CUP, 1988, Edited by Russell Jackson & Robert Smallwood, p. 56).