Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/64

 Jaques characterizes the use of the word "melancholy" as applied to himself, when he says: "It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness." He has also gained his experience at the expense of having tried various vices of high life, as the Duke hints: "For thou thyself hast been a libertine." So the arsenic eaters of the Styrian Alps take the natural poison in small successive doses which give them a bloated aspect of florid health, but they so affect the action of the heart that it stops quite suddenly.

The famous speech beginning with, "All the world's a stage," is purely cynical, and assumes the futility of the parts which the necessity of living compels us to play. It might be spoken by one who believes that our little life is rounded by a sleep whose pure oblivion swallows up our striving.

When Jaques calls for more singing, and is told that it will make him melancholy, he replies, "I thank it: I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs." We may infer that he sucks music with the notion of the weasel, who probably regards eggs as being laid on purpose for his sucking. There is nothing more ferrety than your cynic, to whom all objects are game for observation. When he hears that Duke Frederic, the usurper, has restored the kingdom and "put on a religious life," he goes to find him for the purpose of critical inspection; for "out of these con