This brief scene functions as a pastoral interlude that simultaneously celebrates and subverts the conventions of the genre. Amiens's song voices the idealized Arcadian promise—nature as refuge, community as harmony—yet Jaques's intrusion immediately ironizes that vision. His insistence on hearing more music not for pleasure but to "suck melancholy" from it positions him as a figure who inverts pastoral consolation, transforming the genre's therapeutic promise into a vehicle for cultivated despondency.The exchange over compliment and thanks reveals Jaques's misanthropic philosophy in miniature. His comparison of gratitude to the encounter of "two dog-apes" reduces social ceremony to animal reflex, anticipating his later Seven Ages speech. The dismissal of courtesy as hollow performance is a consistent strand of his characterization: he sees through social forms while remaining unable to escape them, since he is himself performing cynicism for an audience.Jaques's counter-song, built on the invented word "ducdame," is the scene's most complex moment. By calling those who flee to the forest "gross fools," he implicates the entire exiled court—and, by extension, the audience—in a collective folly. The nonsense word, which he mockingly labels a "Greek invocation," parodies learned authority and the pastoral convention of the classical retreat, suggesting that the flight from...
Act II, Scene 5
Scene Summary
In the Forest of Arden, the courtier Amiens sings a pastoral song celebrating life under the greenwood tree, free from all enemies except winter and rough weather. Jaques repeatedly demands more verses, confessing that he deliberately extracts melancholy from music. Amiens mentions that Duke Senior has been searching for Jaques all day, prompting Jaques to declare he has spent the day equally avoiding the duke, whom he finds too argumentative.
Jaques then contributes his own sardonic verse, built on the nonsense word "ducdame," which he claims is a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle—a jibe at those who have abandoned wealth and ease for the forest. Amiens departs to find the duke, whose banquet is prepared, while Jaques announces he will sleep or else rail against "all the first-born of Egypt."
"I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs." — Jaques (2.5)
"but that they call compliment is like the encounter of two dog-apes, and when a man thanks me heartily, methinks I have given him a penny and he renders me the beggarly thanks." — Jaques (2.5)
"He is too disputable for my company: I think of as many matters as he, but I give heaven thanks and make no boast of them." — Jaques (2.5)
"'Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle." — Jaques (2.5)
"If it do come to pass That any man turn ass, Leaving his wealth and ease, A stubborn will to please, Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame: Here shall he see Gross fools as he, An if he will come to me." — Jaques (2.5)
"I'll go sleep, if I can; if I cannot, I'll rail against all the first-born of Egypt." — Jaques (2.5)
"More at your request than to please myself." — Amiens (2.5)
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