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‘Tis like the howling of Irish wolves against the moon. (To Silvius.) I will help you if I can. (To Phoebe.) I would love you if I could.—Tomorrow meet me all together. (To Phoebe.) I will marry you if ever I marry a woman, and I’ll be married tomorrow. (To Orlando.) I will satisfy you if ever I satisfy man, and you shall be married tomorrow. (To Silvius.) I will content you, if what pleases you contents you, and you shall be married tomorrow. (To Orlando.) As you love Rosalind, meet. (To Silvius.) As you love Phoebe, meet.—And as I love no woman, I’ll meet. So fare you well. I have left you commands.
(Act 5, scene 2, lines 115–27)
Rosalind speaks these words in act 5, scene 2, where she makes the final arrangements for the suite of weddings that are scheduled to take place the following day. Throughout the play, Rosalind has shown herself to be the person who is most capable of maintaining a balanced perspective on life and love. Though she herself has been prone to outbursts of foolishness due to her infatuations, she has taken it upon herself to educate Orlando as well as the young shepherd Silvius and the object of his affection, Phoebe. Of course, Rosalind’s schooling can only go so far. After all, she remains disguised as Ganymede, which means that her relationship with Orlando is obscured by her playacting as a boy. Moreover, her a disguise has now accidentally attracted the affections of Phoebe. Frustrated by all this complication, Rosalind takes decisive action. After complaining that all these lovers are acting like wolves made mad by a full moon, she makes the necessary arrangements that will ultimately result in what she believes are the most appropriate love matches. Once Rosalind reveals her true identity, Phoebe will relent and agree to marry Silvius, thus enabling Rosalind to marry Orlando.
Rosalind’s efficient and decisive arrangements demonstrate definitively that she is the play’s great moderator. As she’ll put it two scenes later, “I have promised to make all this matter even” (5.4.18). And indeed, she does ensure that everything works out for the best. Significantly, Rosalind’s capacity to “make all this matter even” relates closely to her ability to remain open-minded and to stay in what we might call a space of the hypothetical. As a woman disguised as a man, Rosalind has come to understand the different constraints and possibilities associated with being a member of either sex. As such, she has also been able to experiment in a way that has temporarily freed her from a fixed gender identity. Put differently, she has been able to inhabit a range of different possibilities—of different “if”s. These “if”s have allowed her to navigate the various confusions of love that have run rampant in Arden. Here in this passage she demonstrates her mastery of hypotheticals in a cascading series of “if”s. So carefully orchestrated are Rosalind’s hypothetical that they are assured to make the most appropriate love matches—which is to say, her “if”s will result in the best possible “then”s.
