Shakespeare's Style by Maurice Charney

Author:Maurice Charney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Jaques as Satiric Observer

in As You Like It

Shakespeare has a number of characters who function as satiric observers and commentators in their plays: Lucio in Measure for Measure, Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, and Apemantus in Timon of Athens. These are not particularly attractive characters, but they serve as truth-speakers in their respective plays. Jaques is like Touchstone, the clown, in satirizing artificial pastoral conventions and romantic affirmations. They are clearly not like the exiled Duke Senior, who speaks so positively of his pastoral existence in the Forest of Arden:

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything. (2.1.12–17)

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