FINAL REMARKS

Comments from Shakespeare Critics

Harold Bloom in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human ranks Rosalind as one of William Shakespeare’s greatest inventions (along with Hamlet and Falstaff) and states the following about her:

“Shakespeare has been so subtle and so careful in writing Rosalind’s role that we never quite awaken to her uniqueness among his (or all literature’s) heroic wits. A normative consciousness, harmoniously balanced and beautifully sane, she is the indubitable ancestress of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, though she has a social freedom beyond Jane Austen’s careful limitations.”