Caprice
is and fancy reign and revel here, and stern necessity is banished
to the court. The mild sentiments of humanity are strengthened with
thought and leisure; the echo of the cares and noise of the world
strikes upon the ear of those 'who have felt them knowingly',
softened by time and distance. 'They hear the tumult, and are
still.' The very air of the place seems to breathe a spirit of
philosophical poetry; to stir the thoughts, to touch the heart with
pity, as the drowsy forest rustles to the sighing gale. Never was
there such beautiful moralizing, equally free from pedantry or
petulance.
And this their life, exempt from public haunts,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Jaques is the only purely contemplative character in Shakespeare. He
thinks, and does nothing. His whole occupation is to amuse his mind,
and he is totally regardless of his body and his fortunes. He is the
prince of philosophical idlers; his only passion is thought; he sets
no value upon anything but as it serves as food for reflection. He
can 'suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs'; the
motley fool, 'who morals on the time', is the greatest prize he
meets with in the forest. He resents Orlando's passion for Rosalind
as some disparagement of his own passion for abstract truth; and
leaves the Duke, as soon as he is restored to his sovereignty, to
seek his brother out, who has quitted it, and turned hermit.
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