Within the sequestered and romantic glades of the Forest of Arden,
they find leisure to be good and wise, or to play the fool and fall
in love. Rosalind's character is made up of sportive gaiety and
natural tenderness: her tongue runs the faster to conceal the
pressure at her heart. She talks herself out of breath, only to get
deeper in love. The coquetry with which she plays with her lover in
the double character which she has to support is managed with the
nicest address. How Full of voluble, laughing grace is all her
conversation with Orlando:
--In heedless mazes running
With wanton haste and giddy cunning.
How full of real fondness and pretended cruelty is her answer to him
when he promises to love her 'For ever and a day'!
Say a day without the ever: no, no, Orlando, men are April when they
woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but
the sky changes when they are wives: I will be more jealous of thee
than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen; more clamorous than a
parrot against rain; more newfangled than an ape; more giddy in my
desires than a monkey; I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the
fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry; I
will laugh like a hyen, and that when you are inclined to sleep.
Orlando. But will my Rosalind do so?
Rosalind. By my life she will do as I do.
The silent and retired character of Celia is a necessary relief to
the provoking loquacity of Rosalind, nor can anything be better
conceived or more beautifully described than the mutual affection
between the two cousins:
--We still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together,
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.
The unrequited love of Silvius for Phebe shows the perversity of
this passion in the commonest scenes of life, and the rubs and stops
which nature throws in its way, where fortune has placed none.
Touchstone is not in love, but he will have a mistress as a subject
for the exercise of his grotesque humour, and to show his contempt
for the passion, by his indifference about the person. He is a rare
fellow. He is a mixture of the ancient cynic philosopher with the
modern buffoon, and turns folly into wit, and wit into folly, just
as the fit takes him. His courtship of Audrey not only throws a
degree of ridicule on the state of wedlock itself, but he is equally
an enemy to the prejudices of opinion in other respects. The lofty
tone of enthusiasm, which the Duke and his companions in exile
spread over the stillness and solitude of a country life, receives a
pleasant shock from Touchstone's sceptical determination of the
question.
Corin. And how like you this shepherd's life, Mr. Touchstone?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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