In moods of humorous melancholy, it must have seemed to Shakespeare as though he himself were one of these jesters, who had the privilege of uttering truths to great people and on the stage, if only they did not blurt them out directly, but disguised them under a mask of folly. It was in a similar mood that Heinrich Heine, centuries later, addressed to the German people these words: "Ich bin dein Kunz von der Rosen, dein Narr." Therefore it is that Shakespeare makes Jaques exclaim-- "O, that I were a fool! I am ambitious for a motley coat." When the Duke answers, "Thou shalt have one," he declares that it is the one thing he wants, and that the others must "weed their judgments" of the opinion that he is wise:-- "I must have liberty Withal, as large a charter as the wind, To blow on whom I please; for so fools have: And they that are most galled with my folly, They most must laugh. . . . . . . . . Invest me in my motley: give me leave To speak my mind, and I will through and through Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, If they will patiently receive my medicine." It is Shakespeare's own mood that we hear in these words. The voice is his. The utterance is far too large for Jaques: he is only a mouthpiece for the poet. Or let us say that his figure dilates in such passages as this, and we see in him a Hamlet _avant la lettre_. When the Duke, in answer to this outburst, denies Jaques' right to chide and satirise others, since he has himself been "a libertine, As sensual as the brutish sting itself," the poet evidently defends himself in the reply which he places in the mouth of the melancholy philosopher:-- "Why, who cries out on pride, That can therein tax any private party? Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea, Till that the weary very means do ebb? What woman in the city do I name, When that I say, the city-woman bears The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders? Who can come in, and say that I mean her, When such a one as she, such is her neighbour?" This exactly anticipates Holberg's self-defence in the character of Philemon in _The Fortunate Shipwreck_. The poet is evidently rebutting a common prejudice against his art. And as he makes Jaques an advocate for the freedom which poetry must claim, so also, he employs him as a champion of the actor's misjudged calling, in placing in his mouth the magnificent speech on the Seven Ages of Man. Alluding, no doubt, to the motto of _Totus Mundus Agit Histrionem_, inscribed under the Hercules as Atlas, which was the sign of the Globe Theatre, this speech opens with the words:-- "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts."