As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Act 2 - Scene 1
The Forest of Arden
(stage directions) : Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS, and two or three LORDS, like foresters
Duke : Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
[p]Hath not old custom made
this life more sweet
[p]Than that of painted pomp? Are not these
woods
[p]More free from peril than the envious court?
[p]Here feel we
not the penalty of Adam,
[p]The seasons' difference; as the icy
fang
[p]And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
[p]Which when it
bites and blows upon my body,
[p]Even till I shrink with cold, I smile
and say
[p]'This is no flattery; these are counsellors
[p]That
feelingly persuade me what I am.'
[p]Sweet are the uses of
adversity,
[p]Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
[p]Wears yet a
precious jewel in his head;
[p]And this our life, exempt from public
haunt,
[p]Finds tongues in trees, books in the running
brooks,
[p]Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
[p]I would not
change it.
Amiens : Happy is your Grace,
[p]That can translate the stubbornness of
fortune
[p]Into so quiet and so sweet a style.
Duke : Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
[p]And yet it irks me the poor
dappled fools,
[p]Being native burghers of this desert
city,
[p]Should, in their own confines, with forked heads
[p]Have
their round haunches gor'd.
First Lord : Indeed, my lord,
[p]The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;
[p]And, in
that kind, swears you do more usurp
[p]Than doth your brother that
hath banish'd you.
[p]To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself
[p]Did steal
behind him as he lay along
[p]Under an oak whose antique root peeps
out
[p]Upon the brook that brawls along this wood!
[p]To the which
place a poor sequest'red stag,
[p]That from the hunter's aim had ta'en
a hurt,
[p]Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,
[p]The wretched
animal heav'd forth such groans
[p]That their discharge did stretch
his leathern coat
[p]Almost to bursting; and the big round
tears
[p]Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
[p]In piteous
chase; and thus the hairy fool,
[p]Much marked of the melancholy
Jaques,
[p]Stood on th' extremest verge of the swift
brook,
[p]Augmenting it with tears.
Duke : But what said Jaques?
[p]Did he not moralize this spectacle?
First Lord : O, yes, into a thousand similes.
[p]First, for his weeping into the
needless stream:
[p]'Poor deer,' quoth he 'thou mak'st a
testament
[p]As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
[p]To that which
had too much.' Then, being there alone,
[p]Left and abandoned of his
velvet friends:
[p]''Tis right'; quoth he 'thus misery doth
part
[p]The flux of company.' Anon, a careless herd,
[p]Full of the
pasture, jumps along by him
[p]And never stays to greet him. 'Ay,'
quoth Jaques
[p]'Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;
[p]'Tis just
the fashion. Wherefore do you look
[p]Upon that poor and broken
bankrupt there?'
[p]Thus most invectively he pierceth through
[p]The
body of the country, city, court,
[p]Yea, and of this our life;
swearing that we
[p]Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's
worse,
[p]To fright the animals, and to kill them up
[p]In their
assign'd and native dwelling-place.
Duke : And did you leave him in this contemplation?
Second Lord : We did, my lord, weeping and commenting
[p]Upon the sobbing deer.
Duke : Show me the place;
[p]I love to cope him in these sullen fits,
[p]For
then he's full of matter.
First Lord : I'll bring you to him straight. Exeunt
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Next: Act 2 - Scene 2
