On the Reverie of Sadness

James William Wallack as Jacques, print by Johnson, Fry & Co. 1859

When Duke Senior contemplates the adversity of his exile, his open-minded and philosophical disposition allows for the transformation of his spirit and thus the spirit of the Forest of Arden. Suddenly, the wild, unpredictable, and lawless nature speaks to him. He sees “books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” Even Amiens, one of his loyal followers, acknowledges this transformation:

Happy is your Grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune 

Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

The forest of Arden offers its inhabitants the opportunity to change, hopefully, for the better. Like a gentle rain falling on the leaves of trees, it cleanses all that is contaminated and prepares it to return home renewed. This is the happy ending that we get in As You Like It - four marriages are celebrated, the rightful king is restored to his throne, and two brothers find their way back to each other. Harmony is reestablished, and everybody gets what they desire: a peaceful and idyllic resolution fitting for a comedy.

Yet Jaques stands out like a sore thumb amidst this happy ending. He is out of the canon pretty much throughout the whole play. He is the character who undergoes no development whatsoever, and he seems to be the only one unable to achieve his goal of becoming – or at least being recognized by others as – a fool. Instead, he wishes to be a wise man cloaked in a jester’s “motley coat” so he may speak the truth without consequences: “I must have liberty withal, as large a charter as the wind, / to blow on whom I please, for so fools have.”

Jaques’s final decision to stay in the forest and not come back to court life should not be understood as an active choice. Jaques is in no way an active participant in the plot. On the contrary, passivity is what leaves his storyline without a resolution.

Jaques is a melancholic by choice. He is far more suited to be a tragic character than a comedic one. Tragic in the sense that he is unable to achieve his own happiness, because there seems to be a fundamental error in his judgment - Jaques simply does not care to be happy. He revels in his sadness and draws pride when he can witness the devastation of the world: “I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs. More, I prithee, more.” Life can only bring fulfillment to his desires when looked at through a gloomy, broken mirror.

Jaques is essentially a cynic. He has to be one, if he wants to maintain his self-constructed bubble of mournful disappointment. Cynicism then implies skepticism and distrust of other people. He views societal norms as performative, meaningless, and insincere and makes it most clear that he wants to be left alone: “I thank you for your company, but, good faith, I had as lief have been myself alone.” That is also why Jaques rejects love, deeming it the “worst fault” a man could have. But to say that his behavior could serve nothing else besides being annoying would be an exaggeration. Indeed, he is judgmental up to an extreme; however, because of such an extreme point of view, we can observe the oversimplified, over-sentimental, and all-consuming side of love, which, for example, Orlando demonstrates. Jaques distances himself from all such feelings because that will allow him to be an observer and not a participant. The melancholic wants to philosophize about what he witnesses, to “moralize this spectacle,” yet he would not lift a finger to move the plot forward.

 Perhaps that is why Jaques's most famous monologue on the seven stages of man, though undoubtedly poetic, philosophical, and sophisticated, offers only one bleak and pessimistic perspective on reality, without suggesting anything beyond. According to him, man is but a puppet, a “player” on the worldly stage. When he hears his cue before the first scene, he comes out as an infant, “mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms,” then he is a “whining schoolboy,” then a lover, a soldier, a judge - all consumed by idealism, vanity, and recklessness. The last two scenes emphasize Jaques’s pitiless view on the inevitability of physical and mental deterioration and, of course, death:

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts 

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide 

For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, 

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

 And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, 

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

The effect of this profound pessimism is lost, because the moment the speech ends, Adam, the elderly servant of Orlando, arrives to undermine all the lofty proclamations made before. Indeed, Adam reflects the somber reality of getting old - without Orlando’s intervention, he would have probably died. But through his loyalty and self-sacrificial devotion to his master, he reinvents the image of the frail and helpless old age and brings hope even at the edge of “mere oblivion.” Jaques focuses on all that is “sans,” all that is missing, but Adam shows how strong human relationships can be, how long one’s faithfulness can last, and how beautiful and meaningful one’s honest devotion can be.

Jaques is an exceptional character precisely because his motivations are entirely self-driven. His melancholy does not stem from external circumstances but is a product of his own "sundry contemplation." Jaques regards his melancholy almost as a form of exaltation, and he claims it as his own. He is the master of his sadness, not the other way around:

But it is a melancholy

of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted

from many objects, and indeed the sundry

contemplation of my travels, in which my often

rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

It is a strange room of one’s own. A mind-forged manacle filled with everything most people are eager to avoid. Still, it is his and he is free to do with it as he likes. It seems impossible to even consider what would have happened if Jaques chose to leave the forest, because then that would be a completely different character. There is beauty in his independence, but it is also heartbreaking to see the melancholic perceive the poison as his medicine. Paradoxically, the forest of Arden cannot give him what it gave to the others. Its brooks, flowers, and chirping birds are insufficient to deliver him from his gloom. Thus, while the other characters choose to be hopeful and move on to celebrate love, harmony, and renewal, Jaques looks again towards the wounded deer and thinks I would prefer not to.