Summary: Act 4: Scene 1
Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.
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Jaques approaches Rosalind, who is still in her disguise as Ganymede, wishing to become better acquainted. Rosalind criticizes Jaques for the extremity of his melancholy. When Jaques claims that “’tis good to be sad and say nothing,” Rosalind compares such activity to being “a post” (4.1.
Orlando arrives an hour late for his lesson in love. As agreed, he addresses Ganymede as if the young man were his beloved Rosalind and asks her to forgive his tardiness. Rosalind refuses, insisting that a true lover could not bear to squander “a part of the thousand part of a minute in the affairs of love” (4.1.
Rosalind then changes her mood, assuming a “more coming-on disposition” (4.1.
Read a translation of Act 4: Scene 1.
Summary: Act 4: Scene 2
Jaques and some of Duke Senior’s loyal followers kill a deer and decide to present it to the duke. They plan to set the animal’s horns upon the hunter’s head as a crown of victory. Jaques asks the men to sing a song that fits the occasion. They launch into a tune about cuckoldry, which is symbolized by a man with horns on his head. The song proclaims that cuckoldry is timeless and borne by all men, and thus it is not something of which to be ashamed.
Read a translation of Act 4: Scene 2.
Analysis: Act 4: Scenes 1 & 2
When Rosalind chastises Jaques for his oppressively melancholy ramblings, her words serve as a general criticism of the extremes to which the characters go in the play. Jaques admits that he is indeed the “melancholy fellow” of whom Rosalind has heard tell, and Rosalind upbraids him by saying, “Those that are in extremity of either [laughter or melancholy] are abominable fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than drunkards” (4.1.
It is a testament to the clarity of Rosalind’s vision that she does not spare herself or Orlando from this condemnation of extremes. When Orlando claims that he will die of love, Rosalind disproves him with one of the play’s most famous and delightful speeches. Her insistence that literature has misrepresented and unduly romanticized the world’s greatest lovers is a stringent antidote to Orlando’s mewling, and supports Touchstone’s earlier observation that “the truest poetry is the most feigning, and lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry it may be said, as lovers, they do feign” (3.3.
Read more about how Rosalind seeks to teach a version of love that can survive in the real world.
Rosalind might be construed as a spoilsport, out to ruin everyone else’s fun by exposing the crumbling foundations of their love fantasies, but there is much more to her than this simplistic interpretation. Certainly, even her closest confidante Celia misunderstands her, claiming that Rosalind, in her attempts to drain the excess of Orlando’s romanticism, has succeeded in disparaging the entire female sex. Rosalind’s goal is less to represent the female gender than to show Orlando that, just as there is no such thing as a perfect and heroic love, there is also no such thing as an ideal and ideally worthy woman. By stripping Orlando and herself of the ideals that preoccupy him, Rosalind prepares them both for love in the real world, for a love that strikes a balance between the transcendent and the familiar, and for a love that blends the loftiness of Silvius’s poetry with the baseness of Touchstone’s desires. Thus, Rosalind’s attacks on Orlando’s idea of love are not an attack on love itself. After all, Rosalind herself is clearly and deeply in love. Her attempts to furnish Orlando with a more realistic understanding of love are a means of ensuring that their relationship will thrive in a world less enchanted than Ardenne.