{"id":188,"date":"2018-11-05T13:05:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T13:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/?p=188"},"modified":"2019-05-21T12:39:59","modified_gmt":"2019-05-21T11:39:59","slug":"battle-of-the-petticoats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/2018\/11\/05\/battle-of-the-petticoats\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle of the Petticoats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ladies and gentlemen, today, and only today, we present to you a fight of extraordinary forces. A clash of ladies the likes of which has never been seen before. For today not two, but four dames will step into the ring. In the red corner, from\u00a0Thomas Lodge<\/a>\u2019s Rosalynde<\/em>, we have the ladies Rosalynde and Alinda. In the blue corner, coached by Shakespeare<\/a> himself, As You Like It<\/em>\u2019s Rosalind and Celia. Who is the superior female character? Who is the true strong, independent woman who don\u2019t need no man? Let the Battle of the Petticoats begin!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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When it comes to scepticism Rosalind certainly takes the win over Rosalynde. Orlando may try to woo her as much as he likes, but she doesn\u2019t give in easily. She could give Petrarch\u2019s Laura a run for her money when it comes to being a cold-hearted ice-queen. Rosalynde, on the other hand, is swept of her feet without much fuss. A few pretty words of Rosader in their Eclogue and she \u201cwill grace thee with her love.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It is Alinda, however, who beats Celia in scepticism when we look at the other ladies. She is not impressed by Rosader\u2019s wooing nor his sonnets. While Rosalynde falls for it quite easily Alinda remains the voice of reason, needling Rosader with sarcastic comments. But it is not just Rosader she is critical of, she doesn\u2019t hold her tongue around Rosalynde either. Celia, on the contrary, doesn\u2019t show this level of cynicism. The commenting on Rosader\u2019s sonnets is left to the character of Touchstone instead.<\/p>\n

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Over all, Celia is much less eloquent than Alinda in the first place. Alinda spends pages trying to convince her father not to banish Rosalynde from the court, and when he still does so a few pages more to comfort her friend. Celia only has a few lines in which she pleads with her father after which she gives up immediately. Of course Shakespeare had to condense Lodge\u2019s romance into a play, which often means cutting content. He did not just cut Alinda\u2019s lines, however, he added two other male characters\u2014Jaques and Touchstone\u2014and gave part of Alinda\u2019s role to them, leaving Celia to often just stand by and watch.<\/p>\n

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And for the final blow, by putting Celia in the background so much, Shakespeare has diminished the importance of Rosalind and Celia\u2019s friendship. Because Celia doesn\u2019t interact as much with Rosalind, they do not seem to be as close as Alinda and Rosalynde are. Although romance is certainly a crucial part of Lodge\u2019s Rosalynde<\/em>, a large part of his story centres around this female friendship. Shakespeare\u2019s As You Like It<\/em>, unfortunately, does not keep this up.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare is generally known for his strong female characters, however, in As You Like It<\/em> they seem to be inferior to him poking fun at the pastoral conventions. Therefore we have a clear winner here. Our Battle of the Petticoats Champion 2018 is Thomas Lodge\u2019s Rosalynde<\/em>!<\/p>\n

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Written by Marije van Lankveld based on study group discussion.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ladies and gentlemen, today, and only today, we present to you a fight of extraordinary forces. A clash of ladies the likes of which has never been seen before. For today not two, but four dames will step into the ring. In the red corner, from\u00a0Thomas Lodge\u2019s Rosalynde, we have the ladies Rosalynde and Alinda. … Continue reading Battle of the Petticoats<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3967,"featured_media":323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gender","category-sources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3967"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}