This brief scene functions as a comic interlude that simultaneously advances the subplot of Touchstone's courtship and satirises the conventions of romantic rivalry. Shakespeare strips the love-triangle of all sentiment: William is so thoroughly inarticulate and passive that no genuine conflict exists, and the scene's energy derives entirely from Touchstone's performance of superiority. The scene thus parodies the earnest wooing scenes elsewhere in the play by replacing passion with pedantry.Touchstone's extended mock-rhetoric — translating the simple command 'leave her alone' into a cascade of synonyms, pseudo-logical syllogisms, and classical allusions — is the scene's centrepiece. His rhetorical figure about drink being 'poured out of a cup into a glass' mimics scholastic disputation while saying nothing meaningful, and his citation of 'ipse' (Latin for 'himself') parodies the learned discourse of the court. This linguistic excess enacts the play's broader theme of language as power: those who command elaborate speech can dominate those who do not, regardless of the actual merit of their argument.The fool-wisdom paradox is crystallised in Touchstone's quotation — 'The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool' — which is directed at William but rebounds ironically on Touchstone himself, whose...
Act V, Scene 1
Scene Summary
Touchstone and Audrey enter the forest, Touchstone reassuring her that they will find a proper time to marry. Audrey mentions that William, a young forest-dweller, has a claim on her affections, and William promptly arrives to greet them. Touchstone subjects William to a mock-philosophical interrogation about his age, name, wealth, and wit, deploying elaborate rhetorical nonsense to establish that he, Touchstone, is the rightful suitor.
Touchstone then delivers a comically inflated ultimatum, threatening William with poison, the bastinado, and a hundred and fifty other deaths if he does not abandon Audrey. William, entirely unruffled, bids them good evening and exits. Corin arrives to summon Touchstone and Audrey back to their master and mistress, and the trio departs.
"It is meat and drink to me to see a clown: by my troth, we that have good wits have much to answer for; we shall be flouting; we cannot hold." — Touchstone (5.1)
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." — Touchstone (5.1)
"Then learn this of me: to have, is to have; for it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other; for all your writers do consent that ipse is he: now, you are not ipse, for I am he." — Touchstone (5.1)
"abandon,--which is in the vulgar leave,--the society,--which in the boorish is company,--of this female,--which in the common is woman; which together is, abandon the society of this female, or, clown, thou perishest" — Touchstone (5.1)
"I will deal in poison with thee, or in bastinado, or in steel; I will bandy with thee in faction; I will o'errun thee with policy; I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways: therefore tremble and depart." — Touchstone (5.1)
"God rest you merry, sir." — William (5.1)
"Trip, Audrey! trip, Audrey! I attend, I attend." — Touchstone (5.1)
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