Jaques: The Man Who Prefers to Be Sad

Jaques has decided to be melancholy and is very attached to the decision. Duke Senior describes him in Act 2 Scene 1 as someone who has been weeping over a wounded deer and moralising about the injustice of hunting. When Jaques first enters in Act 2 Scene 5, he is immediately arguing that the Duke's existence in the forest is itself a form of colonialism.

His 'All the world's a stage' speech in Act 2 Scene 7 is the most famous thing he says. It runs through seven ages of human life, from infant to second childhood, and arrives at 'sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything': a vision of life as a story with a bleak ending. It is brilliant and it is also performed for an audience. Jaques knows he is being melancholy; the melancholy is part of his identity.

At the end of the play, when everyone else returns to court and pairs off, Jaques refuses to go. He stays in the forest. Rosalind, in Act 4 Scene 1, tells him that a melancholy made of travel and books is simply a mixture of different other people's waste: one of the few moments in the play where someone punctures him cleanly.