Nine
characters are added outright--Dennis, Le Beau, Amiens, the First
Lord, Sir Oliver Martext, William, Audrey, Touchstone, and Jaques. The
latter is most noteworthy. Hazlitt calls him the only purely
contemplative character Shakespeare ever drew. From the beginning to
the end of the play he does absolutely nothing except to think and
moralize. Another critic has said, "Shakespeare designed Jaques to be
a maker of fine sentiments, a dresser forth in sweet language of the
ordinary commonplaces...." It has been suggested,[1] not without some
show of reason, that Shakespeare in adapting Lodge's romance for the
stage purposely included in the list of _dramatis personae_ a
character bearing a strong resemblance to Euphues, the pretended
author of the romance. "Like Euphues, Jaques has made false steps in
youth, which have somewhat darkened his views of life; like Euphues,
he conceals under a veil of sententious satire a real goodness of
heart, shown in his action toward Audrey and Touchstone. A traveler,
like Euphues, he has a melancholy of his own, compounded of many
simples, extracted from many objects, and is prepared, like his
prototype, to lecture his contemporaries on every theme.
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