Act 2, Scene 7

Another part of the Forest.

[A table set. Enter DUKE Senior, AMIENS, and others.]
Duke Senior
854 I think he be transform'd into a beast;
855 For I can nowhere find him like a man.
First Lord
856 My lord, he is but even now gone hence;
857 Here was he merry, hearing of a song.
Duke Senior
858 If he, compact of jars, grow musical,
859 We shall have shortly discord in the spheres.
860 Go, seek him; tell him I would speak with him.
First Lord
861 He saves my labour by his own approach.
[Enter JAQUES.]
Duke Senior
862 Why, how now, monsieur! what a life is this,
863 That your poor friends must woo your company?
864 What! you look merrily!
Jaques
865 A fool, a fool!—I met a fool i' the forest,
866 A motley fool;—a miserable world!—
867 As I do live by food, I met a fool,
868 Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,
869 And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms,
870 In good set terms,—and yet a motley fool.
871 'Good morrow, fool,' quoth I: 'No, sir,' quoth he,
872 'Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.'
873 And then he drew a dial from his poke,
874 And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
875 Says very wisely, 'It is ten o'clock:
876 Thus we may see,' quoth he, 'how the world wags;
877 'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine;
878 And after one hour more 'twill be eleven;
879 And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
880 And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
881 And thereby hangs a tale.' When I did hear
882 The motley fool thus moral on the time,
883 My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
884 That fools should be so deep contemplative;
885 And I did laugh sans intermission
886 An hour by his dial.—O noble fool!
887 A worthy fool!—Motley's the only wear.
Duke Senior
888 What fool is this?
Jaques
889 O worthy fool!—One that hath been a courtier,
890 And says, if ladies be but young and fair,
891 They have the gift to know it: and in his brain,—
892 Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit
893 After a voyage,—he hath strange places cramm'd
894 With observation, the which he vents
895 In mangled forms.-O that I were a fool!
896 I am ambitious for a motley coat.
Duke Senior
897 Thou shalt have one.
Jaques
898 It is my only suit,
899 Provided that you weed your better judgments
900 Of all opinion that grows rank in them
901 That I am wise. I must have liberty
902 Withal, as large a charter as the wind,
903 To blow on whom I please; for so fools have:
904 And they that are most galled with my folly,
905 They most must laugh. And why, sir, must they so?
906 The 'why' is plain as way to parish church:
907 He that a fool doth very wisely hit
908 Doth very foolishly, although he smart,
909 Not to seem senseless of the bob; if not,
910 The wise man's folly is anatomiz'd
911 Even by the squandering glances of the fool.
912 Invest me in my motley; give me leave
913 To speak my mind, and I will through and through
914 Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,
915 If they will patiently receive my medicine.
Duke Senior
916 Fie on thee! I can tell what thou wouldst do.
Jaques
917 What, for a counter, would I do but good?
Duke Senior
918 Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin;
919 For thou thyself hast been a libertine,
920 As sensual as the brutish sting itself;
921 And all the embossed sores and headed evils
922 That thou with license of free foot hast caught
923 Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world.
Jaques
924 Why, who cries out on pride
925 That can therein tax any private party?
926 Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea,
927 Till that the weary very means do ebb?
928 What woman in the city do I name
929 When that I say, The city-woman bears
930 The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders?
931 Who can come in and say that I mean her,
932 When such a one as she, such is her neighbour?
933 Or what is he of basest function
934 That says his bravery is not on my cost,—
935 Thinking that I mean him,—but therein suits
936 His folly to the metal of my speech?
937 There then; how then? what then? Let me see wherein
938 My tongue hath wrong'd him: if it do him right,
939 Then he hath wrong'd himself; if he be free,
940 Why then, my taxing like a wild-goose flies,
941 Unclaim'd of any man.—But who comes here?
[Enter ORLANDO, with his sword drawn.]
Orlando
942 Forbear, and eat no more.
Jaques
943 Why, I have eat none yet.
Orlando
944 Nor shalt not, till necessity be serv'd.
Jaques
945 Of what kind should this cock come of?
Duke Senior
946 Art thou thus bolden'd, man, by thy distress:
947 Or else a rude despiser of good manners,
948 That in civility thou seem'st so empty?
Orlando
949 You touch'd my vein at first: the thorny point
950 Of bare distress hath ta'en from me the show
951 Of smooth civility: yet am I inland bred,
952 And know some nurture. But forbear, I say;
953 He dies that touches any of this fruit
954 Till I and my affairs are answered.
Jaques
955 An you will not be answered with reason, I must die.
Duke Senior
956 What would you have? your gentleness shall force
957 More than your force move us to gentleness.
Orlando
958 I almost die for food, and let me have it.
Duke Senior
959 Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.
Orlando
960 Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you:
961 I thought that all things had been savage here;
962 And therefore put I on the countenance
963 Of stern commandment. But whate'er you are
964 That in this desert inaccessible,
965 Under the shade of melancholy boughs,
966 Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time;
967 If ever you have look'd on better days,
968 If ever been where bells have knoll'd to church,
969 If ever sat at any good man's feast,
970 If ever from your eyelids wip'd a tear,
971 And know what 'tis to pity and be pitied,
972 Let gentleness my strong enforcement be:
973 In the which hope I blush, and hide my sword.
Duke Senior
974 True is it that we have seen better days,
975 And have with holy bell been knoll'd to church,
976 And sat at good men's feasts, and wip'd our eyes
977 Of drops that sacred pity hath engender'd:
978 And therefore sit you down in gentleness,
979 And take upon command what help we have,
980 That to your wanting may be minister'd.
Orlando
981 Then but forbear your food a little while,
982 Whiles, like a doe, I go to find my fawn,
983 And give it food. There is an old poor man
984 Who after me hath many a weary step
985 Limp'd in pure love: till he be first suffic'd,—
986 Oppress'd with two weak evils, age and hunger,—
987 I will not touch a bit.
Duke Senior
988 Go find him out.
989 And we will nothing waste till you return.
Orlando
990 I thank ye; and be blest for your good comfort!
[Exit.]
Duke Senior
991 Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy;
992 This wide and universal theatre
993 Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
994 Wherein we play in.
Jaques
995 All the world's a stage,
996 And all the men and women merely players;
997 They have their exits and their entrances;
998 And one man in his time plays many parts,
999 His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
1000 Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
1001 Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
1002 And shining morning face, creeping like snail
1003 Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
1004 Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
1005 Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
1006 Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
1007 Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
1008 Seeking the bubble reputation
1009 Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
1010 In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
1011 With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
1012 Full of wise saws and modern instances;
1013 And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
1014 Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
1015 With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
1016 His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
1017 For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
1018 Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
1019 And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
1020 That ends this strange eventful history,
1021 Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
1022 Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
[Re-enter ORLANDO with ADAM.]
Duke Senior
1023 Welcome. Set down your venerable burden,
1024 And let him feed.
Orlando
1025 I thank you most for him.
Adam
1026 So had you need;
1027 I scarce can speak to thank you for myself.
Duke Senior
1028 Welcome; fall to: I will not trouble you
1029 As yet, to question you about your fortunes.—
1030 Give us some music; and, good cousin, sing.
[AMIENS sings.]
[SONG]
[I.]
Amiens
1031 Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
1032 Thou art not so unkind
1033 As man's ingratitude;
1034 Thy tooth is not so keen,
1035 Because thou art not seen,
1036 Although thy breath be rude.
1037 Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
1038 Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
1039 Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
1040 This life is most jolly.
[II.]
Amiens
1041 Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
1042 That dost not bite so nigh
1043 As benefits forgot:
1044 Though thou the waters warp,
1045 Thy sting is not so sharp
1046 As friend remember'd not.
1047 Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! &c.
Duke Senior
1048 If that you were the good Sir Rowland's son,—
1049 As you have whisper'd faithfully you were,
1050 And as mine eye doth his effigies witness
1051 Most truly limn'd and living in your face,—
1052 Be truly welcome hither: I am the duke
1053 That lov'd your father. The residue of your fortune,
1054 Go to my cave and tell me.—Good old man,
1055 Thou art right welcome as thy master is;
1056 Support him by the arm.—Give me your hand,
1057 And let me all your fortunes understand.
[Exeunt]

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Notes

TLN 858cultural context
“compact of jars, grow musical, We shall have shortly discord in the spheres”
Duke Senior jokes that if Jaques — 'compact of jars' (made up of quarrels and discords) — has turned musical, then even the heavens must be going wrong. The 'spheres' refers to the ancient idea that the planets were set in concentric crystal spheres whose perfect, silent rotation produced a divine 'music of the spheres.' Discord there would mean cosmic disorder.
TLN 866cultural context
“A motley fool;—a miserable world!”
'Motley' was the parti-coloured coat — patched in two or more colours — that was the official dress of a licensed court jester. Wearing it marked a man as the fool whose job was to speak home truths without being punished. Jaques is thrilled because a 'motley fool' (Touchstone) has been philosophizing about time: the fool's coat is the one garment that gives its wearer absolute licence to criticize.
TLN 873archaic vocab
“he drew a dial from his poke, And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says very wisely, 'It is ten o'clock”
A 'dial' is a sundial or pocket watch (early portable sundials were the era's timepieces). A 'poke' is a bag or pocket. Touchstone pulls out his watch-dial and stares at it with bleary, 'lack-lustre' (dull, lifeless) eyes, then delivers his mock-profound meditation on the passing of time.
TLN 879wordplay
“from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot”
The lines work on two levels at once: the 'hour to hour' rhythm mimics the clock's ticking, and 'ripe / rot' is both literal (fruit ripening and rotting) and a bawdy pun. 'Hour' was pronounced like 'whore' in Elizabethan English, so 'from whore to whore, we ripe and ripe' — we grow by sleeping around and then decay from it — is the joke Jaques hears and laughs so hard at. The pun encodes the fool's whole moral: time passes, pleasure rots.
TLN 883cultural context
“My lungs began to crow like chanticleer”
Chanticleer is the name of the rooster in the medieval beast-fable tradition, most familiar from Chaucer's 'Nun's Priest's Tale' in The Canterbury Tales. To say that Jaques's lungs 'crowed like Chanticleer' means he laughed so hard that his laughter sounded like a cock crowing — a comparison that also gently mocks the self-important crowing of any learned commentator.
TLN 885archaic vocab
“laugh sans intermission An hour by his dial”
'Sans' is simply the French word for 'without,' used freely in literary English of the period. Jaques laughed without stopping ('sans intermission') for a full hour by the fool's watch. The word reappears at the end of the Seven Ages speech — 'Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything' — where the repeated French preposition lends the catalogue a mock-philosophical, chanting quality.
TLN 895rhetorical device
“O that I were a fool! I am ambitious for a motley coat”
Jaques's 'ambition for a motley coat' is a deliberate paradox: ambition (the desire to rise) usually aims at power, wealth, or glory — not a jester's patched uniform. He wants the fool's coat precisely because it lowers its wearer's social status to zero, and in doing so grants total freedom of speech. The wit of the line is that the highest freedom (to speak truth to power) requires wearing the lowest costume.
historical Melancholy and the malcontent
TLN 902archaic vocab
“as large a charter as the wind, To blow on whom I please”
A 'charter' is a written grant of rights and privileges, such as a royal charter that permits a town to hold its own court or market. Jaques wants a charter — a formal grant of licence — as unlimited as the wind, which blows on anyone without asking permission. The metaphor is apt: the wind cannot be sued for libel, and neither should the licensed fool.
TLN 904archaic vocab
“they that are most galled with my folly, They most must laugh”
'Galled' means chafed, stung, or wounded — the image is of a horse rubbed raw by an ill-fitting saddle. Jaques's logic is that the person most hurt ('galled') by the fool's satire is forced to laugh it off: if he shows he is wounded, he reveals that the cap fits him. 'The bob' (TLN 909) means a taunt or blow. 'Anatomiz'd' (TLN 910) means dissected, exposed — the wise man's hidden folly is cut open and displayed by the fool's casual hit.
TLN 919archaic vocab
“thou thyself hast been a libertine, As sensual as the brutish sting itself; And all the embossed sores and headed evils”
Duke Senior punctures Jaques's satirical pose: you have been a 'libertine' — a man of unrestrained, dissolute life — and your proposed satire would only discharge your own vices onto the world. 'Embossed sores' means swollen, festering boils (embossed = swollen, puffed out like a boss on a shield); 'headed evils' are abscesses with a gathered head. The Duke accuses Jaques of suffering from symptoms of syphilis, a venereal disease acquired by his own 'sensual' licence.
TLN 949archaic vocab
“the thorny point Of bare distress hath ta'en from me the show Of smooth civility: yet am I inland bred”
Orlando apologizes for bursting in with a drawn sword: sheer hunger ('bare distress') stripped him of 'smooth civility' (polite manners). 'Inland bred' means raised at a court or town — among cultivated, civil people — as opposed to outlying, uncouth regions. He is saying: I know how to behave; it was desperation, not ignorance, that made me rude. 'Nurture' (TLN 952) means upbringing, education, good breeding.
TLN 992rhetorical device
“This wide and universal theatre Presents more woeful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in”
Duke Senior uses 'theatre' and 'scene' not as metaphors but as the lens through which Jaques's famous speech is cued: the Duke points out that the whole world is a larger stage than the one 'we play in.' The word 'pageants' means shows or spectacles — often the elaborate moveable stages of medieval religious drama. The speech that follows ('All the world's a stage') directly picks up these words.
TLN 995cultural context
“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players”
Jaques's 'Seven Ages of Man' speech weaves together two ancient ideas: the theatrum mundi ('world as a stage'), a commonplace from classical antiquity, and the division of a human life into seven ages, linked to the seven planets. He counts them: infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon (old man), and finally 'mere oblivion.' The speech is a brilliant set-piece, but the play frames it as Jaques's characteristic melancholy: he turns a life into a pageant of decay.
historical The seven ages of man and the world as a stage
TLN 1006archaic vocab
“bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth”
A 'pard' is a leopard (from Latin pardus). The soldier age is defined by a spotted beard, touchiness about honor ('jealous in honour' = hypersensitively defensive of his reputation), and readiness to fight over any slight. 'Bubble reputation' captures how quickly military fame pops: a man will risk death at the cannon's mouth ('even in the cannon's mouth') for a 'bubble' — something hollow and quick to burst.
TLN 1009archaic vocab
“the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lin'd, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances”
The 'justice' (a magistrate or justice of the peace, one of the most important figures of local Elizabethan government) is satirized as fat, pompous, and well-bribed. A 'capon' was a fattened castrated rooster, a gift routinely given to judges and magistrates to secure favorable rulings — so 'capon lin'd' means literally stuffed with bribery. 'Wise saws' are proverbs or maxims; 'modern instances' are up-to-date illustrations or precedents — the justice's speeches are full of clichés.
TLN 1013cultural context
“The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide For his shrunk shank”
The 'pantaloon' was a stock character from Italian commedia dell'arte — a lean, doddering, miserly old man, usually named Pantalone, who wore slippers and spectacles and was the butt of every joke. He kept his old youthful breeches ('hose') but they now hang baggy on his shrunken legs ('shrunk shank'). Jaques imports this stock comic figure to characterize the age of decline — a theatrical type for a theatrical speech.
TLN 1021rhetorical device
“Is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”
Jaques ends the Seven Ages with a figure called anaphora — the same word ('sans') repeated at the head of each clause for emphasis. The four-fold 'sans' strips away the senses one by one, and 'sans everything' leaves nothing. 'Second childishness' means a return to helplessness and dependence, completing the cycle: the speech opened with a mewling infant and closes with someone equally unable to function. 'Mere oblivion' means absolute, total forgetting — the self dissolves.
historical The seven ages of man and the world as a stage
TLN 1031cultural context
“Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude”
Amiens's song compares the hurt of cold weather unfavorably to the hurt of human ingratitude and forgotten friendship: the wind at least is not being 'unkind' on purpose, because it has no mind to intend cruelty. The song voices the play's central court-versus-country theme: the physical hardships of the forest are honest and clean; the 'unkindness' of false friends at court is worse because it is deliberate. 'Heigh-ho' is a sigh or melancholy cry; the holly was an evergreen symbol of endurance through winter.
historical Pastoral and the Forest of Arden
TLN 1044archaic vocab
“Though thou the waters warp”
'Warp' here means to freeze, cause to contract and distort — as frost warps standing water into ice or makes pools ripple and buckle with cold. The song uses the image to measure natural violence (frost warping water) against something worse: a friend who, now that fortune has changed, forgets the kindnesses done for him ('benefits forgot').
TLN 1048archaic vocab
“If that you were the good Sir Rowland's son,— As you have whisper'd faithfully you were, And as mine eye doth his effigies witness Most truly limn'd and living in your face”
Duke Senior recognizes Orlando partly by what Orlando has told him and partly by his face, which carries his father's likeness. 'Effigies' means image or likeness (from Latin effigies, a portrait or representation). 'Limn'd' means painted or drawn — the face is described as a living portrait that 'paints' Sir Rowland's image with perfect fidelity. The recognition scene links Orlando to the Duke's world and explains the warmth of the welcome.