JAQUES

a cynical and philosophical nobleman in the entourage of the banished Duke in Shakespeare's pastoral comedy As You Like It. Jaques is an outsider to the cheerful society of this play, and he has no essential role in advancing the plot of the play. He is, nevertheless, one of the more complex and vivid of the characters and provides the quintessential picture of the intellectual melancholic humour. He cynically critiques the light-headed lovemaking that pervades the forest of Arden and eloquently gives voice to the colder realities of life. Jaques makes the well-known speech about the seven ages of man: 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,/ His acts being seven ages. Yet, his melancholy is also perceived as a pose by the play's more intelligent characters, such as Rosalind and Touchstone, who both make fun of him. Jaques' decision at the end of the play to join Frederick, who has been mysteriously converted to a religious life, underscores his sad and searching nature and undermines the happy and marriage-full conventional ending of the play.