There is not a spark of unkindly feeling in Puck when he says to
Oberon, concerning the lovers,--
"Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
But when we overhear Jaques telling Orlando, "By my troth, I was
seeking for a fool, when I found you," there is a tang of seedy beer in
the speech. We suspect his common-sense of having soured: so that when
he says to Orlando, "The worst fault you have is to be in love," we
relish the estimate of Orlando's reply, "'Tis a fault I will not change
for your best virtue."
The melancholy of Jaques is the cynicism of a man who is _blasé_ with
the convictions as well as the manners of society. He enjoys his vein
too well to be melancholy in the modern sense of that word, for being
something more than satirical he is something less than morose, and we
feel that he is secretly pleased with his ability to be displeasing.
Every vice lends a man a feeling of superiority in being different from
other men: he broke through some bounds to acquire it, and this action
contains some spice of originality and independence. He transgresses in
a temper of pity for the less audacious and unchartered souls. So the
cynic who makes his whole vicinity uncomfortable is pleasant company
for himself because he has no mawkishness; you cannot cheat him with
superfine emotions, he happens to have seen the world.
Jaques characterizes the use of the word "melancholy" as applied to
himself, when he says: "It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of
many simples, extracted from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry
contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in
a most humorous sadness." He has also gained his experience at the
expense of having tried various vices of high life, as the Duke hints:
"For thou thyself hast been a libertine." So the arsenic eaters of the
Styrian Alps take the natural poison in small successive doses which
give them a bloated aspect of florid health, but they so affect the
action of the heart that it stops quite suddenly.
The famous speech beginning with, "All the world's a stage," is purely
cynical, and assumes the futility of the parts which the necessity of
living compels us to play. It might be spoken by one who believes that
our little life is rounded by a sleep whose pure oblivion swallows up
our striving.
When Jaques calls for more singing, and is told that it will make him
melancholy, he replies, "I thank it: I can suck melancholy out of a
song as a weasel sucks eggs." We may infer that he sucks music with
the notion of the weasel, who probably regards eggs as being laid on
purpose for his sucking. There is nothing more ferrety than your cynic,
to whom all objects are game for observation. When he hears that Duke
Frederic, the usurper, has restored the kingdom and "put on a religious
life," he goes to find him for the purpose of critical inspection;
for "out of these convertites there is much matter to be heard and
learned." So Jaques surmising that every hole leads to a rat does not
leave one unexplored. In the matter of music Jaques only cares for his
sad reverie, not for the names of the songs. He will thank nobody.
"When a man thanks me heartily, methinks I have given him a penny, and
he renders me the beggarly thanks." So, sing, if you choose to: the
song tracks me to that rat behind the arras.
Compare his scirrhous habit of assimilating music with that of the Duke
in "Twelfth Night." Love has an appetite for music: give me excess of
it to kill the love. Enough: it is not so sweet as before; for love
is like the sea, as vast, as real, as domineering. When the brooks
of music fall into it, sweet as they are, genuine as love, yet the
great sea subdues them to a greater disposition, even in a minute; and
my fancy for Olivia is alone "high-fantastical." Jaques would have
sneered at this Duke for not extracting from the music a suspicion of
the frailty of his love. No matter what a man's gifts may be, this
"vicious mole of nature" that pretends to spread over all surfaces
discolors only the gifts: all virtues, "in the general censure, take
corruption from that particular fault," and to its own scandal; because
the world is a flower that nods upon the stock of reality, and the
particles of its aroma, though invisible, set in motion the nerves of
a corresponding reality, and man does not put his nose to an illusion.
But your debauchee, like Jaques, has scorched and tanned his senses
with misuse, and his abortive sniffing at the roses sours into a sneer.
Still, Jaques in defending himself makes disclaimers of ill-nature: as
thus, Who is hit by my speech? It means so and so. If the coat does
not fit, who is wronged? If a man be above my estimate, "why, then, my
taxing like a wild goose flies, unclaimed of any man."
Yes, but he really delights himself with the conviction that every man
is a wild goose upon the wing, and that virtue is the last game that
ventures to alight and feed on the wild celery of our ponds.
Jaques reserves his last and cruelest thrust for Touchstone, to whom
he predicts a marriage victualled for two months, and wrangling ever
after; which is hard on the wise fool, who has taken up with Audrey
as if to show the under side of court manners and the comparative
cheapness of mere breeding. This ought to have endeared him to the
heart of the cynic.