Despite its brevity, Act IV, Scene 2 performs a significant structural function within the play. Positioned between the emotional intensity of Rosalind's mock-marriage to Orlando and the pathos of Oliver's arrival with the bloody napkin, this scene provides comic relief and a rhythmic pause. Its pageant-like quality—a procession, a crowning, a communal song—recalls the festive rituals of carnival and holiday, reinforcing the Forest of Arden's identity as a space where social hierarchies are playfully inverted.The central image of the deer's horns operates on multiple levels simultaneously. On the surface the horns are a hunter's trophy, a 'branch of victory' in Jaques's mock-heroic framing. Yet the song immediately exploits the Elizabethan commonplace that horns signify cuckoldry—the condition of a man whose wife is unfaithful. By insisting 'Take thou no scorn to wear the horn,' the forester democratises the shame: every man's father and grandfather bore it, making infidelity a universal, almost comic condition of marriage rather than a personal disgrace.Jaques's role here is subtly self-revealing. His instruction that the song need only 'make noise enough' regardless of whether it is 'in tune' gestures toward his characteristic cynicism and detachment from conventional standards of beauty or propriety. Yet his enthusiasm for the...
Act IV, Scene 2
Scene Summary
In this brief interlude in the Forest of Arden, Jaques and a group of lords and foresters gather to celebrate the lord who has killed a deer. Jaques proposes that the successful hunter be presented to Duke Senior like a Roman conqueror, with the deer's horns placed on his head as a trophy of victory.
At Jaques's prompting, a forester leads the company in a song honouring the kill. The song declares that the hunter should proudly wear the horn, arguing that cuckoldry's emblem—the horn—is an ancient, inherited mark carried by fathers and forefathers alike, and therefore nothing to be ashamed of. The scene ends with the whole party exiting together.
"Let's present him to the duke, like a Roman conqueror; and it would do well to set the deer's horns upon his head, for a branch of victory." — Jaques (4.2)
"'tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make noise enough." — Jaques (4.2)
"What shall he have that kill'd the deer? His leather skin and horns to wear." — Forester (4.2)
"Take thou no scorn to wear the horn; It was a crest ere thou wast born:" — Forester (4.2)
"Thy father's father wore it, And thy father bore it:" — Forester (4.2)
"The horn, the horn, the lusty horn Is not a thing to laugh to scorn." — Forester (4.2)
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