orn for love as she expresses to Orlando by declaring, Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do. This she says but minutes after proclaiming her adamant love for Orlando. The faade she dons in relation to her feelings on love conversely reinforces the image of her as an earnest romantic. It attests to the lengths she will go to for the requital of her love for Orlando. Likewise, Shakespeare also depicts Orlando as a hopeless romantic. However, he seems to be more easily swayed by peoples opinions than Ganymede, and thus allows him to act as Rosalind would as a test of his love. It seems at though Rosalind, as Ganymede would not need that type of affirmation; she probably would have denied the offer proclaiming her love true and needing no test to prove itself. Orlando on the other hand, seems to either need this test to prove to himself that his love for Rosalind is enduring or he truly wishes to rid himself of his ardor, the former being the more likely of the two in my opinion. Though outwardly he professes his love with gusto as he does in his response to Ganymedes inquisition as to who had been carving love poems on the forest trees, through some of his actions (i.e. allowing Ganymede to attempt to cure him of his sickness) and some of his lines, he exudes a certain innocent insecurity when speaking of his love. Rosalind is constantly correcting the ways in which he allows his love for Rosalind to manifest itself, showing that he was never shown proper courting ritual while living with Oliver. In the last few scenes several of the characters feelings on marriage either change dramatically, or are made known, or both as was probably the case with Oliver the reformed villain. With Olivers reform, that included more compassion and less hatred and maltreatment toward people, came a new outlook on love. In previous scenes, he had only been portrayed as a spiteful cruel authoritarian...
