As You Like It. Act 2 Scene 7

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Act 2 Scene 7 – Jaques Speech lines139 Act 2 Scene 7 explores the meeting of Duke Senior and Jaques in Senior’s camp, talking about Jaques’ cynicism and his well acknowledged conversation with Touchstone. Line 139 introduces Jaques’ cynical speech exploring the main idea of a man’s life. This speech divides a man’s life into seven parts known and acknowledged very well in the Elizabethan England. This dissection of the stages in life extends from infancy to the ‘second childishness’. Through Jaques’ speech, the notion of the seven ages of man is accompanied with a comment exploring that humans progress through light seeking for fame and reputation. Jaques explores the stages of the human life through: * The infant “Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms” line143 * The schoolboy “… shining morning face, creeping like snail unwilling to school” line145. * The lover “…Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad” line 148 * The soldier “… full of strange oaths… jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel” line 151 * The justice “…fair round belly… with eyes severe… full of wise saws and modern instances” line155 * The aged “spectacles on nose and punch on side…his youthful hose well saved…and his big manly voice, turning again toward a childish treble” * The elderly “is second childishness… sans teeth, sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything” line 165 By disregarding the first three stages for now, the ‘soldier’ stage explores the adulthood of man. It is this progression through life that accentuates their need for a target in what to do in their lives, in this case Jaques states that man continuously seek the “bubble reputation” L152. Jaques metaphorically highlights this by making man into soldiers, relating the futility of war; and getting that impermanent reputation, to an individual’s ways of seeking fame and
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