Act 2, Scene 5

Another part of the Forest.

[Enter AMIENS, JAQUES, and others.]
[SONG]
Amiens
785 Under the greenwood tree,
786 Who loves to lie with me,
787 And turn his merry note
788 Unto the sweet bird's throat,
789 Come hither, come hither, come hither;
790 Here shall he see
791 No enemy
792 But winter and rough weather.
Jaques
793 More, more, I pr'ythee, more.
Amiens
794 It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques.
Jaques
795 I thank it. More, I pr'ythee, more. I can suck melancholy
796 out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs. More, I pr'ythee, more.
Amiens
797 My voice is ragged; I know I cannot please you.
Jaques
798 I do not desire you to please me; I do desire you to sing.
799 Come, more: another stanza. Call you them stanzas?
Amiens
800 What you will, Monsieur Jaques.
Jaques
801 Nay, I care not for their names; they owe me nothing.
802 Will you sing?
Amiens
803 More at your request than to please myself.
Jaques
804 Well then, if ever I thank any man, I'll thank you: but
805 that they call compliment is like the encounter of two dog-apes;
806 and when a man thanks me heartily, methinks have given him a
807 penny, and he renders me the beggarly thanks. Come, sing; and
808 you that will not, hold your tongues.
Amiens
809 Well, I'll end the song.—Sirs, cover the while: the duke will
810 drink under this tree:—he hath been all this day to look you.
Jaques
811 And I have been all this day to avoid him. He is too
812 disputable for my company: I think of as many matters as he;
813 but I give heaven thanks, and make no boast of them. Come,
814 warble, come.
[SONG]
[All together here.]
Jaques
815 Who doth ambition shun,
816 And loves to live i' the sun,
817 Seeking the food he eats,
818 And pleas'd with what he gets,
819 Come hither, come hither, come hither.
820 Here shall he see
821 No enemy
822 But winter and rough weather.
Jaques
823 I'll give you a verse to this note that I made
824 yesterday in despite of my invention.
Amiens
825 And I'll sing it.
Jaques
826 Thus it goes:
Jaques
827 If it do come to pass
828 That any man turn ass,
829 Leaving his wealth and ease
830 A stubborn will to please,
831 Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame;
832 Here shall he see
833 Gross fools as he,
834 An if he will come to me.
Amiens
835 What's that "ducdame?"
Jaques
836 'Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle. I'll
837 go sleep, if I can; if I cannot, I'll rail against all the
838 first-born of Egypt.
Amiens
839 And I'll go seek the duke; his banquet is prepared.
[Exeunt severally.]

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Notes

TLN 785cultural context
“Under the greenwood tree, Who loves to lie with me”
Amiens sings the play's first forest song, celebrating Arden as a place without enemies except 'winter and rough weather.' The 'greenwood' is the traditional English folk-name for a forest where outlaws and free men live beyond the reach of court and law — the world of Robin Hood — and Duke Senior's exiled company has been likened to that tradition in Act 1. The song enacts rather than argues the play's pastoral ideal.
historical Robin Hood and the greenwoodclassical The Golden Age
TLN 795cultural context
“I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs”
Jaques describes his ability to drain a song of all its sadness the way a weasel drains an egg — sucking out the nourishing part and leaving the empty shell. The boast defines his character: where others hear cheer in the forest songs, Jaques extracts gloom, because he cultivates melancholy as a deliberate pose. In Elizabethan medical theory, melancholy was caused by excess black bile and was considered both a disease and a mark of deep intelligence.
historical Melancholy and the malcontent
TLN 805archaic vocab
“that they call compliment is like the encounter of two dog-apes”
'Compliment' here means the formal exchange of thanks and courtesies — what we might call polite small talk or social ritual. Jaques dismisses it as no better than two dog-apes (male baboons) sniffing and grimacing at each other: the bodily ritual of the animal world dressed up as manners. The joke is that thanking someone 'heartily' feels to Jaques like the greeter is offering a beggarly coin and expecting gratitude in return.
TLN 811archaic vocab
“He is too disputable for my company”
'Disputable' means 'argumentative' or 'inclined to dispute' — Duke Senior engages too readily in philosophical debate and Jaques, who hoards his own gloom privately, finds this irritating. Jaques says he thinks just as much, but keeps it to himself and gives heaven thanks. The irony is that Jaques is himself the play's most relentless arguer; what he dislikes in the Duke is the cheerful, grateful version of his own brooding.
TLN 831wordplay
“Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame”
When Amiens asks what 'ducdame' means, Jaques answers deadpan: ''Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle.' The word is Shakespeare's own coinage — it appears nowhere else — and Jaques is joking. The 'Greek invocation' is a mock-learned explanation for a nonsense refrain, and the 'fools' called into the circle are the lords who have abandoned wealth and ease to follow a banished duke into the forest, including Jaques himself.
TLN 837biblical allusion
“rail against all the first-born of Egypt”
If Jaques cannot sleep, he says he will 'rail against all the first-born of Egypt' — meaning he will curse everything indiscriminately, as dramatically as possible. The 'first-born of Egypt' refers to the tenth and worst of God's plagues on Pharaoh: God killed the first-born child in every Egyptian household in one night to compel Pharaoh to release the enslaved Israelites. To 'rail against' such victims is to rage against the most grievously afflicted — Jaques threatens to howl at maximum volume at maximum misfortune.