that she acquiesced in her former lot of dependence, and was only unsettled in her contentment first by the Duke's taunt against her father, which her true and bold spirit could not endure, and then by her unjust banishment. After this, in her 'doublet and hose,' with Celia in some degree dependent on her, she blazes into energy and vivacity; she has spirit enough for her own affairs, and for half a dozen plots besides, and tact enough to make them all run prosperously up to the time when the fourfold wedding comes to settle all. as great as Beatrice's; but there is none of the malice which has to be got rid of in 'Much Ado about Nothing' by such a course of rigorous discipline. Rosalind never stings without strong and good reason, and in the interest of truth and right. When she does, however, she shews a talent for saying truth 'the next way,' which any professional moralist might envy. Her skill in repartee is The third gradation of cheerfulness appears in the banished Duke. He is happy not by youth and animal spirits, like the two others, but by reflection. His character is such that he is able to maintain his state and dignity in the forest as easily as at the court, controlling his followers without an effort, and correcting their crude reflections in a moment by his superior thought and moral force. His good humour is all embracing; he loves to 'cope' with those whose whole tone of mind is opposed to his own, and at once enters into the 'swift and sententious' spirit of Touchstone, when that eminent person is at last introduced to him, and produces the choicest flowers of his wit, which he had reserved till then; and as a matter of course the Duke has long ago reconciled himself to his life of banishment and deprivation, and learned to find happiness in the very feeling of contact with nature unalloyed. To furnish a marked contrast to these characters-to assail them one after another with attempts to shake their trust in mankind—to whisper sneers against love and happiness-to suggest that their life, simple though it is, still has the taint of the world upon it—and to patronise enthusiastically such rascalities as accident brings there is the part assigned to the melancholy Jaques; a character created, with consummate skill, to throw the whole meaning of the play into a clear light, and to bring out the moral lesson conveyed by it. He has been most profligate in his youth; has travelled in Italy, the mother of all iniquities, to gain experience there; and has spent his estate in so doing. He is therefore persuaded that the knowledge of human nature which he has thus gained will be of great service to the world, if it can only be induced to listen. But how instantly and how humiliatingly is he put to the rout by the three glad hearts which he tries to sour! Orlando absolutely refuses to rail against the world in his company, and reciprocates with a hearty good will, although jocosely, all Jaques' expressions of antipathy to his ways of thinking. Rosalind sarcastically asks him about his travels. What have they done for him? Has he learned to despise home dress and home manners? sold his own lands to see other people's? learned to chide God for making him the countryman he is? And what is this melancholy of which he boasts? Something as bad or worse than the most giddy merriment: something that incapacitates him from action as completely and more permanently than drunkenness. Above all, the Duke' tells him, without the slightest reserve, although with perfect good humour, that his gifts as a moralist can do nothing for the world; that his former life unfits him to be a reformer; that if he attempts such a task, he will only corrupt the world by his experience; and to all these buffetings, right hand and left, Jaques replies in a way which shews that he is incapable of understanding their depth of meaning. He escapes from Rosalind and Orlando because he does not like the 'blank verse' they talk; and shirks the admonition of the Duke and all its serious wisdom, by arguing that no one would have a right to be offended by satire of a general character, or need apply it to himself—as if the Duke had been admonishing him to avoid offending others and not to avoid corrupting others. There are, as remarked in the notes to Act ii. Sc. 1, traces of great family troubles which afflicted Shakspere up to within a few years of the time when this play was written, and probably up to that time. When we read of his own father being 'warned' from Stratford market, and unable to come to church for fear of arrest, this certainly gives much reality to the sad reflection on the 'poor and broken bankrupt' typified by the wounded stag. The deep sorrowfulness of the subjects chosen by the poet in the years following 1600 leads us to follow up the hint thus given: for between this time and his death we have not only the four tragedies above mentioned, but also the gloomy subject of 'Timon of Athens,' and in comedies (if they may be so called), the sterner and severer types of 'Measure for Measure,' and the 'Tempest.' As, therefore, we cannot help seeing that the same struggle against melancholy lasted through Shakspere's life, we shall not be mistaken in seeing the same indications of his nature in 'As you Like it.' This play was therefore one of the earlier attempts made by the poet to control the dark spirit of melancholy in himself, by a process which a great writer, well versed in his subject, has described as hopeless, that of1 'thinking it away.' With this plan in view, he, as it were, held it up to view in many lights, in order to set up a standard for himself against it-with what effect on himself we can only partially judge, from our extreme ignorance of the events of his later life. But even if Shakspere's efforts to free himself from the clinging plague were unavailing, (as we must needs suppose,) they are still calculated to do for others what they could not do for him. Any one who 1 See Boswell's Life of Johnson (on the year 1776). will may learn from 'As you Like it' that the secret of true cheerfulness is to be found by him who can say, in Horace's words, "Mihi res non me rebus subiungere conor;" who treats the state of things in which he finds himself not as a stern unbending order under which his powers as well as his resistance must be crushed, but an arrangement capable of seconding all his endeavours for a high and cheerful life, and of furnishing instruction, help, and encouragement, whenever and wherever they are needed. Adversity is not necessarily ugly or inelegant; it can, if we will, develop grace of its own. It frequently breaks the bonds which fetter and clog the development of character. It leaves a freer field open for reflection, and may suggest thoughts which would never have visited the prosperous. Those who have learned how to use it may find that it brings 'golden times,' which leave no regrets as they 'fleet away,' and finally, if more prosperous times arrive, they may still have reason to look back to these earlier days as times of insight, when they gained the strength which was to enable them for tasks less hard in appearance, but in fact far more exigent and trying: for power and influence are best exercised by those who, even against their will, have been induced to learn the lessons of sympathy. DRAMATIS PERSONE DUKE, living in exile. FREDERICK, his brother, and usurper of his dominions. AMIENS, JAQUES, S lords attending on the banished duke. LE BEAU, a courtier attending upon Frederick. WILLIAM, a country fellow, in love with Audrey. A person representing Hymen. ROSALIND, daughter to the banished duke, CELIA, daughter to Frederick. PHEBE, a shepherdess. AUDREY, a country wench. Lords, pages, and attendants, &c. SCENE: Oliver's house; Duke Frederick's court; and the Forest of Arden. * ** For convenience of reference, the numbering of the lines is that of the Globe Edition. |