What happens in As you like it

Orlando, the youngest son of a dead nobleman, has been kept poor and unschooled by his cruel elder brother Oliver, who controls the family fortune. Desperate to make his mark, Orlando enters a wrestling match at the corrupt court of Duke Frederick and throws the duke’s champion. In the crowd is Rosalind, daughter of the rightful duke whom Frederick has exiled and banished to the Forest of Arden. She and Orlando fall for each other at a glance, and she gives him a chain from her neck. But the new duke distrusts Rosalind for her father’s sake and abruptly banishes her too. Her cousin Celia, Frederick’s own daughter, refuses to be parted from her. The two women flee together, Rosalind disguised as a young man called Ganymede, Celia as a peasant girl named Aliena, with the court jester Touchstone in tow.

Orlando flees as well, warned by the loyal old servant Adam that Oliver means to burn him in his bed. Master and servant stumble into Arden half-starved and find shelter with the exiled duke’s woodland company, who live simply and contentedly under the trees. Among them broods the melancholy Jaques, who watches the world and delivers his famous account of the seven ages of man. Orlando, lovesick, begins pinning bad love poems to Rosalind on every tree in the forest.

Rosalind, still dressed as Ganymede, finds the poems and then finds their author. Rather than reveal herself, she proposes a game: she will pretend to be Rosalind, and Orlando may practice his courtship daily on her until he is “cured” of love. He agrees, never guessing he is wooing the real woman. The disguise lets her test his heart and tease out his feelings while hiding her own. Around this central game, the forest fills with mismatched couples. Touchstone courts a plain goatherd named Audrey. The shepherd Silvius pines for the scornful shepherdess Phebe, who promptly falls in love with Ganymede, leaving Rosalind to manage a tangle her own disguise has created.

The wider world keeps intruding. Oliver arrives in Arden hunting for Orlando, only to be saved by him from a lioness while he sleeps. The rescue shames Oliver into a complete change of heart, and he and Celia fall instantly and deeply in love. Orlando, his arm wounded in the fight, sends word to Ganymede, and Rosalind faints at the sight of his bloody cloth, nearly giving herself away. With Oliver and Celia set to marry the next day, Orlando admits he can no longer bear to play at love when he longs for the real Rosalind.

So Rosalind ends the games. As Ganymede she promises Orlando that the true Rosalind will appear at the wedding, and she pins down every loose promise: Phebe will marry Silvius if she cannot have Ganymede, and Orlando will have his Rosalind. The next day she slips away and returns as herself, presented by Hymen, the god of marriage. Phebe, freed of her impossible love, accepts Silvius. Four couples join hands at once: Rosalind and Orlando, Celia and Oliver, Silvius and Phebe, Touchstone and Audrey.

News caps the joy. Duke Frederick, marching into the forest to destroy his brother, met an old hermit at its edge and underwent a conversion, abandoning his throne and his ambitions. The rightful duke is restored, lands and titles returned to their owners. Only Jaques declines the celebration, choosing to stay among the converted and the contemplative, while the rest dance.