Rosalind
Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her.
Orlando
Forever and a day.
Rosalind
Say ‘a day’, without the ‘ever’. No, no, Orlando. Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen, more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more new-fangled than an ape, more giddy in my desires than a monkey. I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry. I will laugh like a hyena, and that when thou art inclined to sleep.
Rosalind is saying that men are far less interested in women once they have been to bed with them. She goes on to explain how women become increasingly changeable, crying when the man is happy and laughing noisily when he wants to sleep.
Orlando
But will my Rosalind do so?
Rosalind
By my life, she will do as I do.
Can you explain why this line is funny for the audience, but not for Orlando?
Orlando
O, but she is wise.
Rosalind
Or else she could not have the wit to do this: the wiser, the waywarder. Make the doors upon a woman’s wit and it will out at the casement. Shut that and ’twill out at the key-hole. Stop that, ’twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.
Shut the door on a woman's wit and it will come out of the window. Shut that and it will come through the keyhole. Fill the keyhole and it will come out of the chimney with the smoke. Rosalind is basically saying a woman’s wit is unstoppable.
Orlando
A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say ‘Wit, whither wilt?’
Rosalind
Nay, you might keep that check for it till you met your wife’s wit going to your neighbour’s bed.
Orlando
And what wit could wit have to excuse that?
Rosalind
Marry, to say she came to seek you there. You shall never take her without her answer, unless you take her without her tongue. O, that woman that cannot make her fault her husband’s occasion, let her never nurse her child herself, for she will breed it like a fool.
Orlando
For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee.
Rosalind
Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours.
Do you think this is still Rosalind speaking as Ganymede, or is this what Rosalind really feels?
Orlando
I must attend the duke at dinner. By two o’clock I will be with thee again.