186 AS YOU LIKE IT
the sight” of him (4.1.205–206).
Indeed, she is more in love with him
at this moment than he is with her,
despite his protestations and poems.
At this moment, Orlando is more in
love with love than with Rosalind,
and she must remain as Ganymede
to teach him how to actually love
her. She is high-spirited, insightful,
witty, and passionate—but she can
only stop playing Ganymede when
Orlando stops playing at love.
Love is dressed in many
guises in the play. Curmudgeonly
Touchstone suddenly finds his heart
with Audrey. The once-mean brother
Oliver falls in love at first sight with
Celia. Even Silvius’s absurd poems
and declarations bear fruit with
Phoebe. Yet beneath it all, love is
shown to be real and important.
The world’s a stage
The best known speech in As You
Like It is Jaques’s speech, which
begins: “All the world’s a stage, /
And all the men and women merely
players. / They have their exits and
their entrances, / And one man in
his time plays many parts”
(2.7.139–142).
The speech suggests that we
are all merely playing parts, and
describes the seven stages of life,
from infancy to decrepit old age.
This simple metaphor for life is
often quoted out of context, and
taken as Shakespeare’s theme for
the whole play and its theatricality.
Its message about the pointless
artificiality of life seems strangely
bleak, though. Indeed, it’s not
so different from desolate Macbeth’sview when he says, “Life’s but a
walking shadow, a poor player /
That struts and frets his hour upon
the stage / And then is heard no
more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury, / Signifying
nothing.” (Macbeth 5.5.23–27).
But of course the speaker is
Jaques, whose name, as the jester
Touchstone slyly reminds us in
dubbing him “Monsieur What-
ye-call’t” (3.3.66), is pronounced
“jakes,” Elizabethan slang for toilet.
It’s a reminder that Jaques may as
well be talking “crap.” In fact, in the
character of Jaques, Shakespeare
is making fun of a stereotype of
Elizabethan times—the melancholy
young philosopher with his
fashionably jaded outlook on life.
In his meandering observations,The seven ages of man
Jaques’s speech (2.7.139–166) is somewhat
maudlin in its depiction of the tragedy of life.
Much of the play counteracts this with its wit
and spirit, and portrayal of passions in the forest.
- Infant
“Mewling and puking
in the nurse’s arms” - Schoolboy
“creeping like a
snail unwillingly
to school” - Lover
“Sighing like
furnace, with a
woeful ballad” - Justice
“Full of wise saws
and modern
instances” - Sixth age
“a world too
wide for his
shrunk shank” - Oblivion
“Sans teeth, sans
eyes, sans taste,
sans everything” - Soldier
“Jealous in honour, sudden,
and quick in quarrel”