Please see the bottom of each scene for full explanatory notes and study questions.
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When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a
man's good wit seconded with the forward child
Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a
great reckoning in a little room. As You Like It (3.3), Touchstone
On the surface Touchstone is saying that not to have one's wit understood by others is worse than a big bill (reckoning) in a small tavern. But, more significantly, this line is very likely an allusion to the murder of English dramatist Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's friend and only literary peer. He speaks of him again later in this act: "Dead Shepherd now I find thy saw of might" (3.5). Read on...
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All the World's a Stage
Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. As You Like It (2.7), Jaques
The melancholy Jaques! We all know him. He is wholly unique and individual. A song carries him out of
his senses; the fool convulses him; he has neither hatred nor love, all things suggest melancholy to him; he loves himself too well to hate anybody, among the cheerful
cheerless only he. Happy faces but whet his philosophic meditation; he mistakes his own self-love for compassion, and his pity does not include its object. The
sufferings of others but open the fountains of his easy tears, he would inflict pain to weep over it, he has been a libertine and now pensively stands aloof from the
world; he is the sauce of the entire pudding. His irony is tempered with good-nature and he is a pure sentimentalist. [F. Hyatt Smith, Shakespeare Studies]