Corin. And how like you this shepherd's life, Mr. Touchstone?
Clown. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life;
but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. In
respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect
that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is
in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in
the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, took you, it
fits my humour; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes
much against my stomach.
Zimmennan's celebrated work on Solitude discovers only half the
sense of this passage.
There is hardly any of Shakespeare's plays that contains a greater
number of passages that have been quoted in books of extracts, or a
greater number of phrases that have become in a manner proverbial.
If we were to give all the striking passages, we should give half
the play. We will only recall a few of the most delightful to the
reader's recollection. Such are the meeting between Orlando and
Adam, the exquisite appeal of Orlando to the humanity of the Duke
and his company to supply him with food for the old man, and their
answer, the Duke's description of a country life, and the account of
Jaques moralizing on the wounded deer, his meeting with Touchstone
in the forest, his apology for his own melancholy and his satirical
vein, and the well-known speech on the stages of human life, the old
song of 'Blow, blow, thou winter's wind', Rosalind's description of
the marks of a lover and of the progress of time with different
persons, the picture of the snake wreathed round Oliver's neck while
the lioness watches her sleeping prey, and Touchstone's lecture to
the shepherd, his defence of cuckolds, and panegyric on the virtues
of 'an If.
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