Shakespeare’s Rosalind

Abstract This chapter argues that Shakespeare’s Rosalind is distinguished from Lodge’s in three principal ways: cultivation of a more fully modern ennui; a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between truth claims and power; and an interest in appropriating power and the language of power. The first section traces the buildup of tensions around homoeroticism and appropriations of tyrannical power; the second section traces forces marshaled to meet that power. In doing so, it argues that Shakespeare takes a quintessential pastoral moment—the meeting of strangers in the countryside—and brings not only complete technical control, but also the dynamics of translation and conversion, including different versions of religious and erotic conversion. Thus, in a moment that recalls the “rustling” of Adorno’s concept of the power of passive art, Rosalind meets a poetry that she likes so well that it momentarily causes her to lose consciousness before recollecting herself.