Lodge’s pastoral romance has enjoyed some recognition as the source of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. But the work deserves more than second-hand fame, for Rosalind is an exquisite tale in its own right, arguably the finest prose romance after Sidney’s Arcadia, featuring a balance between the plainer and more embellished styles, an anthology of elegant pastoral lyrics, and a fully worthy prototype of Shakespeare’s memorable heroine. It was Lodge who supplied the male disguise wherein Rosalind teases and tests her man, the baffled Rosader, and then finds herself the object of amorous attention by another woman; Lodge who, out of his medieval source, turned Arden into a world of passage and redemption; and Lodge who worked out the grand comic finale in a triple marriage. It is a masterpiece of prose comic fiction that went through ten contemporary editions.

The Editor

Donald Beecher is Professor of English at Carleton University. In addition to having edited Riche’s Farewell and The Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolphus for this series, he has also translated several Renaissance plays and edited some thirty works of Renaissance music. His current interests include medico-literary relations and Renaissance aesthetics.

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