Page:As You Like It (1919) Yale.djvu/136

124 some outlaws, accompanied by an old retainer named Adam.

In his introduction 'To the Gentlemen Readers,' Lodge states that he wrote his romance on the ocean, a fact further implied by the phrase 'Fetcht from the Canaries' on the title-page. The connection of Rosalynde with the manuscript Tale of Gamelyn would therefore seem to be the result of memory or of a few notes earlier jotted down. Rosalynde is written in the elaborate Euphuistic prose which John Lyly had made famous. Euphuism is perhaps forbidding to modern ears, but there is much charm and delightful pastoral atmosphere in Rosalynde, and excellent material on which to found a pastoral comedy.

In adapting Lodge's novel for the stage, Shakespeare, as usual, so transformed his material as to leave recognizable hardly more than the outlines of certain incidents. His touch lightened and simplified the whole, substituting for the labored Euphuistic phraseology the lively wit of the forest of Arden. Shakespeare made some important additions to the list of characters, additions which are the very life of his comedy. The melancholy Jaques, the inimitable Touchstone, Audrey and William, are, as far as we know to-day, characters of his invention. They are not to be found in Rosalynde. Rosalind herself is the most noteworthy illustration of Shakespeare's character creation. In Lodge's romance she is a typical example of the artificial court ladies of Elizabethan stories, who spin far-fetched verbal fancies and quote often from Ovid and other Latin authors. Shakespeare has humanized her and made her one of his most charming heroines.

The following summary of the beginning of Lodge's Rosalynde, together with the text of Lodge's description of the wrestling match, will give some idea of Shakespeare's material and of the changes he made in it.