Jaques

Rocío García Viguer
For this paper I have chosen the character of Jaques from the play As you like it, because although being a secondary character, I think it has some concealed importance, given that he has so many lines as does Rosalind, who is the main character of the play. The first thing I am going to do is to describe and try to analyse the parts of the play in which the character of Jaques appears or in which other characters talk about him. To finish the paper I will try to draw some kind of conclusions.

The first time we know of Jaques’ existence is in Act II, scene i, line 26, in an answer to Duke Senior, uttered by one of the lords with him in the Forest of Arden:

“Indeed, my lord,
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.
To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him as he lay along
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish, and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting, and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.”

In this speech we see how they call Jaques “melancholy Jaques” from the very beginning, also that he seems to sympathise with Duke Frederick rather than with Duke Senior as we see at the beginning of the speech: “And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp / Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.” (II.i.29-30). Then, in lines 48-66 we see how Duke Senior and his First Lord are mocking Jaques in some way, given that Duke Senior asks First Lord to take him to Jaques because he finds it amusing to argue with him: “Show me the place; / I love to cope him in these sullen fits, / For then he's full of matter.” (II.i.70-72). Therefore in this scene Jaques is introduced to the readers as a melancholy character and disliking Duke Senior, who considers him an object of mockery.

The next time Jaques appears is in Act II, scene v, where we find another hint to the disliking of Duke Senior when Jaques says, after Amiens has said to him that Duke Senior has been looking for him the whole day, in lines 30-33 : “And I have been all this day to avoid him. He is / too disputable for my company: I think of as many / matters as he, but I give heaven thanks and make no / boast of them. Come, warble, come.”. Also in this scene we find Jaques verses for Amien’s song where he changes the song about the pleasures of the life in the Forest of Arden into a means of mocking the ones who live there (II.v.46-53):

“If it do come to pass
That any man turn ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease,
A stubborn will to please,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame:
Here shall he see
Gross fools as he,
An if he will come to me.”

Here we could say that he is almost like a fool, given that he is critical with the world in which he lives, but he lacks the necessary wisdom to make his criticism revealing.

In scene vii we meet Jaques again at the beginning of the scene when he says to Duke Senior: “A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' the forest, / A motley fool; a miserable world! / As I do live by food, I met a fool.” (II.vii.12-14), which is interesting because he himself is like a “minor” fool, therefore, in a way, we could say that he has met himself (maybe mirrored in the real fool Touchstone). Also in this part of the scene we see how Jaques tells Duke Senior that he wants to be a fool: “O that I were a fool! / I am ambitious for a motley coat.” (II.vii.42-43), and a little bit after he says: “Give leave to speak my mind” (II.vii.59-60) because he knows he will only be able to say whatever he wants if he is considered a fool. But Duke Senior does not want him to be a fool because he thinks that: “Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin: / For thou thyself hast been a libertine, / As sensual as the brutish sting itself; / And all the embossed sores and headed evils, / That thou with licence of free foot hast caught, / Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world.”

To be free to say what he wants seems to be a great feature of this character and this added to his poetical way of speaking could be seen as a great interest in language.

Further in the scene we read the most famous speech in the play (II.vii.142-169):

“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,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

In this speech Jaques begins by stating a very conventional idea in contemporary plays, that the world is a stage. He continues by explaining the seven stages in life from childhood to death, but again (as in II.v.46-53) we see that he lacks the wisdom to make his statements revealing, given that just after the last lines of his supposedly witty speech Orlando enters the scene carrying Adam, Orlando’s old servant, who stands for the contrary of that which Jaques has just uttered: “Is second childishness and mere oblivion, / Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” (II.vii.168-169). Even though he is critical enough to mock mad love, the one that feels Silvius for Phoebe or Pheobe for Ganymede: “And then the lover, / Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad / Made to his mistress' eyebrow” (II.vii.150-152).

In Act III, scene ii, lines 243-283 we see Jaques and Orlando having a conversation, but what we would expect is not what we read: they are insulting each other. For instance, when Jaques says: “The worst fault you have is to be in love” (III.ii.271) or Orlando mocking Jaques’ melancholy: “I am glad of your departure: adieu, good Monsieur / Melancholy.” (III.ii.282). In scene iii we see how Jaques follows Touchstone and Audrey in the forest, maybe spying them, and when they are about to be married the vicar says : “Truly, she must be given, or the marriage is not / lawful.” (III.iii.61-62) and Jaques offers himself to do it but in the end Touchstone decides that he wants to go to the church.

In the first scene of Act IV we see Jaques wanting to know better Ganymede: “I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted / with thee.” (IV.i.1-2). But Rosalind says to him from the very beginning of the conversations such things as “Those that are in extremity of either are abominable / fellows and betray themselves to every modern / censure worse than drunkards” (IV.i.5-7). Then we read what is the kind of melancholy that Jaques suffers (IV.i.10-19):

“I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is
emulation, nor the musician's, which is fantastical,
nor the courtier's, which is proud, nor the
soldier's, which is ambitious, nor the lawyer's,
which is politic, nor the lady's, which is nice, nor
the lover's, which is all these: but it is a
melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples,
extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry's
contemplation of my travels, in which my often
rumination wraps me m a most humorous sadness.”

Therefore Jaques’ melancholy is only experienced by him, no one in the world can experience his kind of melancholy, which he says he has “extracted from many objects” (IV.i.17)

In the second scene we see how Jaques and other lords have killed a deer and they celebrate it singing a song with references to cuckoldry (because of the horns of the deer) (IV.ii.11-19):

“What shall he have that kill'd the deer?
His leather skin and horns to wear.
Then sing him home;

The rest shall bear this burden

Take thou no scorn to wear the horn;
It was a crest ere thou wast born:
Thy father's father wore it,
And thy father bore it:
The horn, the horn, the lusty horn
Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.”

We don’t meet Jaques again till the last scene of the play (V.iv) in the amusing conversation that he has with Touchstone about a fight the latter had (V.iv.39-99) and a bit latter we know that he is going to follow Duke Frederick to the monastery (V.iv.176-181).

Now I will try to draw some conclusions. The first thing I have to say is that Jaques is a melancholy and cynic character, and it serves as a contrary for almost all the characters in some moments: he makes fun of serious things while the others do not and the other way round, what the others consider as funny things he does not… but his great contrary is Rosalind, which is a character full of life and creative, and amusing…

Secondly, we could speak of Jaques as being the fool but as we noted earlier, he lacks the insight or wisdom that Shakesperian fools have as we have seen when he finishes his speech of the seven ages of man and Orlando and Adam enter the scene.

Finally, I only want to note that Jaques has no influence whatsoever in any character and that he is happy with that, but it is interesting how he is only like an observer of the actions that occur in the forest and that he will remain in a monastery while the rest go back to court. He seems to be the same character that he was at the beginning of the play, although the rest of the characters have changed one way or another in the forest, but he has not learned anything.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

- Shakespeare, William Como gustéis in El Mercader de Venecia/Como gustéis. Ed. Instituto Shakespeare (directed by Manuel Ángel Conejero Dionís-Bayer). Madrid: Cátedra/Letras Universales, 1984, 2005.

- http://shakespeare.mit.edu/ for the original play.