Main content

Michelle Terry on As You Like It

The Globe's artistic director, Michelle Terry, chooses a speech from a play first published in the Folio. In Act 3, Scene 2, Rosalind is disguised and talks of love cures.

400 years after the publication of William Shakespeare's First Folio, five writers are each asked to pick a speech from one of the Folio's plays, tell it what they think it means, and what it means to them. In the second essay of this series, Michelle Terry, actor and artistic director at Shakespeare's Globe, chooses a speech by Rosalind - a character she played.

Rosalind appears in As You Like It - a play which was first printed in the 1623 Folio. In the scene Michelle selects, Rosalind is disguised as Ganymede and is speaking to her estranged love Orlando in the Forest of Arden. She tests his love for her by posing as a love doctor and offering to cure him of his love.

Michelle tells us how she first found the part a challenge but when she delved into the text and into the Folio, she found subtle clues which revealed an "intelligent and now liberated woman tumbling her way through long sentences." She reveals how when she played Rosalind, she learned to trust Shakespeare and to trust the words on the page.

Produced by Camellia Sinclair for 麻豆社 Audio in Bristol
Mixed by Suzy Robins

Available now

14 minutes

Broadcast

  • Tue 18 Apr 2023 22:45

Death in Trieste

Death in Trieste

A 1760s murder still informs ideas about aesthetics, a certain sort of sex, and death.

Watch: My Deaf World

Watch: My Deaf World

Five compelling experiences of what it is like to be deaf in 21st-century Britain.

The Book that Changed Me

Five figures from the arts and science introduce books that changed their lives and work.

Download The Essay

Download The Essay

Download all the episodes from the series and listen at your leisure.

Podcast