Orlando: The Hero Who Writes Very Bad Poetry

Orlando opens the play complaining that his older brother Oliver has denied him any education or income, keeping him 'rustically at home' while their father's estate goes elsewhere. He then throws a professional wrestler called Charles and falls in love with Rosalind in the same afternoon. His practical abilities are real; his emotional vocabulary is borrowed from bad love poetry.

In the forest he nails verse to trees. The verse is terrible. Touchstone parodies it effortlessly. Rosalind, who has read it all, pretends to be shocked. His devotion is genuine but the expression of it is the kind of thing a teenager does when they have read too many sonnets and not enough actual conversations.

The Ganymede game straightens him out. By Act 4 Scene 1, arguing with a young man who keeps telling him that women are difficult and love does not actually kill anyone, he is being pushed toward a version of love based on knowledge of the other person rather than a romantic idea. The play gives him Rosalind as a reward for having been genuinely improved by her.