Amiens 1

Question 0

Come, shall we go and kill us venison? And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools, being native burghers of this desert city, should in their own confines with forked heads have their round haunches gored.

Answer 0

Indeed, my lord, the melancholy Jaques grieves at that and, in that kind, swears you do more usurp than doth your brother that hath banished you. Today I stole behind him as he lay along under an oak whose antics root peeps out upon the brook that brawls along this wood, to the which place a poor sequestered stag that from the hunter’s aim hath ta’en a hurt did come to languish; and the big round tears coursed one another down his innocent nose on piteous chase.

Question 1

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Answer 1

Happy is your grace that can translate the stubbornness of fortune into so quiet and so sweet a style.

Question 2

But what said Jaques? Did he not moralise this spectacle?

Answer 2

O, yes, into a thousand similes. ‘Poor deer’, quoth he, ‘thus misery doth part the flux of company.’ Anon a careless herd, full of the pasture, jumps along by him and never stays to greet him. ‘Ay’ quoth Jaques, ‘Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens, ‘tis just the fashion! Wherefore do you look upon the poor and broken bankrupt there?’ Thus most inventively he pierceth through the body of the country, city, court, yea, and of this our life, swearing that we are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what’s worse to fright the animals and kill them up in their assign’d and native dwelling place.

Question 3

And did you leave him in this contemplation?

Answer 3

I did, my lord, weeping and commenting upon the sobbing deer.

Question 4

Show me the place; I love to cope him in these sullen fits, for then he’s full of matter.

Answer 4

I’ll bring you to him straight.