So turns she every man the wrong side out;
And never gives to truth and virtue that
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.
These were happy materials for Shakespeare to work on, and he has
made a happy use of them. Perhaps that middle point of comedy was
never more nicely hit in which the ludicrous blends with the tender,
and our follies, turning round against themselves in support of our
affections, retain nothing but their humanity.
Dogberry and Verges in this play are inimitable specimens of quaint
blundering and misprisions of meaning; and are a standing record of
that formal gravity of pretension and total want of common
understanding, which Shakespeare no doubt copied from real life, and
which in the course of two hundred years appear to have ascended
from the lowest to the highest offices in the state.
AS YOU LIKE IT
Shakespeare has here converted the forest of Arden into another
Arcadia, where they 'fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the
golden world'. It is the most ideal of any of this author's plays.
It is a pastoral drama in which the interest arises more out of the
sentiments and characters than out of the actions or situations. It
is not what is done, but what is said, that claims our attention.
Nursed in solitude, 'under the shade of melancholy boughs', the
imagination grows soft and delicate, and the wit runs riot in
idleness, like a spoiled child that is never sent to school.
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