This brief scene functions as a narrative hinge, propelling Orlando from the corrupt court world into the Forest of Arden. Shakespeare compresses exposition and character revelation into a single encounter, using the urgency of Oliver's plot to motivate the play's central pastoral displacement. The scene also quietly mirrors the earlier wrestling match: just as Orlando's physical virtue made him a target, here his moral virtue — his gentleness, valour, and popular grace — is the very cause of his danger, a bitter paradox Adam articulates with precision.Adam's opening speech develops the play's central paradox of virtue as liability. His image of "sanctified and holy traitors" frames goodness as self-betraying in a corrupt world, and the metaphor of venom — "what is comely / Envenoms him that bears it" — introduces the play's sustained interrogation of whether natural excellence can survive hostile social environments. This prepares the thematic contrast between the treacherous court and the restorative forest.Adam himself embodies the play's idealised vision of loyal service. Orlando's praise of "the constant service of the antique world, / When service sweat for duty, not for meed" explicitly codes Adam as a relic of a pre-commercial ethics, set against a present age where...
Act II, Scene 3
Scene Summary
Outside Oliver's house, Adam intercepts Orlando with an urgent warning: Oliver, envious of his brother's celebrated virtues and popularity, plans to burn Orlando's lodgings that very night with Orlando inside, and has other murderous schemes in reserve. Adam refuses to name Oliver as a true brother or son of Sir Rowland, so thoroughly does he condemn him.
Orlando despairs, unwilling to beg or turn to highway robbery, yet reluctant to remain. Adam resolves the crisis by offering his life savings of five hundred crowns and pledging his own service, insisting his temperate youth has left him still vigorous. Orlando praises Adam's old-world fidelity and accepts, promising they will seek modest contentment together; Adam vows to follow his master to his last breath.
"O, what a world is this, when what is comely / Envenoms him that bears it!" — Adam (2.3)
"Your virtues, gentle master, / Are sanctified and holy traitors to you." — Adam (2.3)
"Take that, and He that doth the ravens feed, / Yea, providently caters for the sparrow, / Be comfort to my age!" — Adam (2.3)
"Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, / Frosty, but kindly." — Adam (2.3)
"O good old man, how well in thee appears / The constant service of the antique world, / When service sweat for duty, not for meed!" — Orlando (2.3)
"But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree, / That cannot so much as a blossom yield / In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry." — Orlando (2.3)
"To the last gasp, with truth and loyalty. / From seventeen years till now almost fourscore / Here lived I, but now live here no more." — Adam (2.3)
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