the average folktale hero but still lives out the basic pattern, here mixed with the gender change Shakespeare uses so often as Rosalind, hiding out from her family, dons the garb of a young man and fools even the man who loves her. Apparent in such a story, however, is the fact that on some level, the lover recognizes the fine qualities of his beloved even when hidden behind a different persona. In addition to the balance offered in the contrast between these lovers and the rustics, Celia and Oliver become lovers and also serve to live out ideas about love and how it changes lovers. Still another set of lovers is found in the hired fool, Touchstone, and Audrey.
Rosalind expresses one idea of love when she states, "Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love
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