Rosalind shifts tactics again when she asserts that she will not accept Orlando as her lover (at line 79). Instead of being agreeable, she is now being disagreeable.
Orlando asserts that he would die if his Rosalind denied him, and Rosalind then criticizes this foolish statement and notes that in the history of the world no man has ever died for love. Rosalind’s comments reflect those uttered by Phoebe in the previous act (Act III, Scene 5). Just as Phoebe was the disagreeable lover to Silvius, Rosalind now plays the part of the disagreeable lover to Orlando.
To justify her position, Rosalind cites the examples of two great lovers in literature, Troilus and Leander. The tragic tale of the lovers Troilus and Cressida is set in the time of the Trojan War (although the story was created in the Middle Ages). The tale of Hero and Leander is a Greek myth in which the young man, Leander, falls in love with the Greek priestess named Hero. In both stories, the male lover dies, but not because of a broken heart.
William Shakespeare wrote a tragic play about Troilus, entitled Troilus and Cressida, in 1602. This play, then, came after he wrote As You Like It, which was written in 1599 or 1600. Shakespeare had several sources to draw upon, notably Geoffrey Chaucer’s own Troilus and Criseyde, which was written in the 1380s.
Shakespeare also was an admirer of the story of Hero and Leander. The story appears in Ovid’s