Rosalynde’s Cottage

“I wander in this forest to light on some cottage… to live low, and content me with a country life… they drunk without suspicion, and slept without care…”

Rosalynd’s Cottage is so called because, more than anywhere, it speaks to the happy retreat found in the Forest of Arden by Celia and Rosalynd in As You Like It. Nestling on the southern skits of Soulton Wood, its small, original sixteenth century core, Rosalynd’s Cottage has sat, quietly among oaks and bluebells where literature took its inspiration of Orlando/Rosader, Rosalynde for centuries, waiting for you to find it…

Here Land, Literature, and Lives Collide

The ancient, bohemian Forest of Arden traditionally stretched from Stratford-upon-Avon to Shrewsbury. The woodlands on the estate of Old Sir Rowland, a character immortalized in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”, were the setting of the boyhood of Thomas Lodge Jr., who penned “Rosalynde” in 1590, the inspiration for Shakespeare’s beloved comedy. Learn how documents and events within the woodland setting of this cottage incubated extraordinary literature under Elizabeth I.