As You Like It Orlando Quotes

Orlando

Quote 1

I would not have my right Rosalind of this 
mind, for I protest her frown might kill me (4.1.14-15)

Say what?  Rosalind's frown might "kill" Orlando? Not likely. Like Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, Orlando acts like a typical "Petrarchan" lover when he falls in love with Rosalind. What the heck's a Petrarchan lover? A guy who mopes around sighing dramatically, moaning about the fact that his crush wants nothing to do with him, and reciting cheesy poetry about a girl who's got eyes like stars and lips like luscious cherries, and who fills men with icy-fire. The concept comes from the 14th-century poet Petrarch, whose sonnets were all about an unattainable mistress named "Laura" who went around stomping on men's hearts. 

Orlando

Quote 2

I protest her frown might kill me. (4.1.115)

Say what? Rosalind's frown might "kill" Orlando? Not likely. Orlando has some pretty ridiculous ideas about what it means to be in love with a woman but Rosalind tries to straighten him out when she says "Men have died from time to/ time and worms have eaten them, but not for love."

Orlando

Quote 3

ORLANDO
Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you.
I thought that all things had been savage here,
And therefore put I on the countenance
Of stern commandment. (2.7.111-114)

Orlando assumes everything in the forest is brutal, so he tries to be brutal too.  He means to contrast the court to the forest, but the irony is that the court has proved more brutal to him than the forest could ever be.