Enter DUKE senior, AMIENS, and two or three Lords,

like foresters

OW, MY CO-MATES AND brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this
life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp?
Are not these woods

More free from peril than the
envious court?

Here feel we but the penalty of
Adam,

The seasons' difference; as the
icy fang

And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,

say

Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and
"This is no flattery: these are counsellors

10

That feelingly persuade me what I am."
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 every thing.

I would not change it."

AMI.

"Happy is your Grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune

Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

DUKE S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison? And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,

Being native burghers of this desert city,

Should in their own confines with forked heads

Have their round haunches gored.

14 precious jewel in his head] Cf. Lyly's Euphues: "The foule Toade hath a faire stone in his head" (ed. Arber, p. 53). The ignorant popular belief, that a toad carried a precious stone in its head, which was universal in Shakespeare's day, is apparently derived from the fact that a stone or gem, chiefly found in Egypt, is of the brownish gray colour of toads, and is therefore called a batrachite or toadstone. Pliny in his Natural History (Book 32) ascribes to a bone in the toad's head curative and other properties, but does not suggest that a gem is ever found there. In his description elsewhere of the toadstones of Egypt he only notes their association with toads in the way of colour.

24 forked heads] arrow heads. Roger Ascham, in Toxophilus (ed. Arber, p. 135), mentions that arrow heads, "having two points streching forwards," are commonly called "fork heads." Cf. Lear, I, i, 143, where the arrow-head is called "the fork."

20.

L

FIRST LORD.

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.

DUKE S.

But what said Jaques? Did he not moralize this spectacle?

FIRST LORD. O, yes, into a thousand similes. First, for his weeping into the needless stream; "Poor deer," quoth he," thou makest a testament As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more

To that which had too much": then, being there alone,

44 moralize] Cf. Cotgrave, Fr.-Eng. Dict.: "Moraliser: To morralize, to expound morrally, to give a morall sence vnto." See also infra, II, vii, 29: "moral on the time."

30

40

Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends;

""T is right," quoth he; thus misery doth part The flux of company: anon a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him

And never stays to greet him; "Ay," quoth Jaques,
"Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;
'Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants and what's worse,
To fright the animals and to kill them up
In their assign'd and native dwelling-place.

DUKE S. And did you leave him in this contemplation? SEC. LORD. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting

Upon the sobbing deer.

DUKE S.

Show me the place:

I love to cope him in these sullen fits,

For then he 's full of matter.

FIRST LORD. I'll bring you to him straight. [Exeunt.

62 kill . . . up] Intensitive of "kill,” i. e. exterminate. Cf. Adlington's Apuleius' Golden Asse, 1582, fo. 159: « Killed vp with colde." 67 cope] meet with, encounter. Cf. Venus and Adonis, 889: "They all strain courtesy who shall cope him first."

SCENE II-A ROOM IN THE PALACE

Enter DUKE FREDERICK, with Lords.

DUKE F. Can it be possible that no man saw them? It cannot be some villains of my court

Are of consent and sufferance in this.

FIRST LORD. I cannot hear of any that did see her.
The ladies, her attendants of her chamber,
Saw her a-bed, and in the morning early

They found the bed untreasured of their mistress.
SEC. LORD. My lord, the roynish clown, at whom so oft
Your Grace was wont to laugh, is also missing.
Hisperia, the princess' gentlewoman,
Confesses that she secretly o'erheard

Your daughter and her cousin much commend
The parts and graces of the wrestler
That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles;
And she believes, wherever they are gone,

That youth is surely in their company.

DUKE F. Send to his brother; fetch that gallant hither;

If he be absent, bring his brother to me;

I'll make him find him: do this suddenly,

10

And let not search and inquisition quail
To bring again these foolish runaways.

[Exeunt.

8 roynish] scurvy. Cognate forms "roynous" and "roignous," both meaning "coarse," figure in the Romaunt of the Rose, 11. 987, 6193. The word seems adapted from the French. Cotgrave's Fr.-Eng. Dict. has “rougneux," which is interpreted "scabbie, mangie," and "scuruie." Cf. Macb., I, iii, 6: "rump-fed ronyon [mangy creature]." 20 quail] grow faint, slacken in effort.