DUKE SENIOR

Now, my companions and brothers in exile, hasn't our long experience shown this simple life to be sweeter than one of superficial luxury? Aren't these woods less dangerous than the jealousies and treachery of the court? Out here we don't feel the penalty resulting from Adam's sin—the changing seasons. When the icy fangs of the scolding winter wind bite and blow upon my body—even though I shiver with cold—I smile and say to myself: "The wind isn't flattering me. It is like a counselor who makes me feel what I truly am." Adversity has sweet benefits, just like the ugly, venomous toad who wears a precious jewel in his forehead. And in this new life, far away from society, we can hear the voices of the trees, read books in the running brooks, hear sermons in the stones, and find the good in everything.

AMIENS

I wouldn't exchange it for anything. Your Grace, you are lucky to be able to translate your misfortune into such a quiet, happy lifestyle.

DUKE SENIOR

Come, should we go and kill some deer for dinner? Although it bothers me that these poor spotted innocents—who are the native inhabitants of this uninhabited city—should be gored with arrowheads in their own home.

FIRST LORD

Indeed, my lord, the melancholy Jaques grieves at the same thing, and he swears that when you hunt deer you are in fact a worse usurper than your brother who banished you. Today my Lord of Amiens and I snuck up behind Jaques as he lay under an oak tree, whose ancient roots peek out from the earth near the brook that babbles through this forest. A poor, lonely stag—who had been separated from his herd and hurt by a hunter's arrow—came to rest in that same place. And indeed, my lord, the wretched animal groaned so heavily that he seemed to stretch his leather hide almost to bursting, and big, round tears ran pitifully down his innocent nose. And so the hairy, pitiful creature—watched carefully by the melancholy Jaques—stood on the very edge of the swift brook and added his tears to its flow.

DUKE SENIOR

But what did Jaques say? Didn't he find some moral in this scene?

FIRST LORD

Oh yes, he translated it into a thousand similes. First he spoke about the deer weeping needlessly into the stream's water. "Poor deer," he said, "you make your will and testament just like humans do, and leave what you have to something that already has too much." Then, about the deer being alone, abandoned by his velvety friends, he said: "It is right that misery should separate itself from company." Soon after a carefree herd of deer—their stomachs full of pasture grass—jumped past without stopping to greet the wounded stag. "Yes," said Jaques, "hurry on, you fat and citizens, ready to be hunted. This is just the way life is. Why should you stop and look at that poor, broken, bankrupt creature there?" In this way, with bitter criticism, he pierced the heart of the country, the city, the court, and even our lives here in the woods—swearing that we are only usurpers and tyrants, frightening and killing the animals in their own rightful dwelling places.

DUKE SENIOR

And did you leave him in this state of contemplation?

SECOND LORD

We did, my lord, as he wept and commented on the sobbing deer.

DUKE SENIOR

Show me the place where this happened. I love to talk with him when he's in these melancholy moods, for then he's full of things to say.

FIRST LORD

I'll bring you to him right away.