Rosalind/Ganymede/Rosalind: travestimento, gioco, enigma in As You Like It di William Shakespeare

In As You Lile It the dramatic situation is already clear at the beginning of the second act. The two female protagonists – Rosalind and Celia – have fled to the forest of Arden where the former has taken up a male disguise as Ganymede, while the latter the name Aliena. In Arden Rosalind meets Orlando who, as already known to the audience, is in love with her and goes around the forest sticking his doggerel love verses to the trees. She proposes to cure his love sickness by feigning to be Rosalind. From now on, Ganymede resumes her female role in a complex mirroring game, both on the rhetorical and diegetic level. The article analyses the dramatic phases in which single and redoubled disguise show the intricacies of a riddle whose solution remains unknown to Orlando, whereas the audience is led through a fascinating semiotic game also involving other characters, till the end when all masks are dropped.