Touchstone: The Fool Who Knows Everything Is Relative
First appears: Act 1, Scene 2
Touchstone is a professional fool. In Shakespeare's time that meant someone paid to be funny, to point out absurdity, and to say true things in the guise of nonsense. He goes with Celia and Rosalind into exile not from loyalty but, as Jaques suspects, because he has nowhere better to be.
His courtship of Audrey, a goatherd, is a small masterpiece of bad faith. He wants a wife who will not know if he is being unfaithful. Audrey is honest and unpolished; Touchstone prefers her precisely because she cannot evaluate him. He admits this in Act 3 Scene 3, apparently as a compliment.
His act of bravado in Act 5 Scene 4 (explaining the seven degrees of a lie to an audience of bewildered courtiers) is Touchstone at his sharpest. The 'degrees' are: the Retort Courteous, the Quip Modest, the Reply Churlish, the Reproof Valiant, the Countercheck Quarrelsome, the Lie with Circumstance, and the Lie Direct. He can name all of them. He has almost certainly used all of them.
Key Scenes
Famous Quotes
“The truest poetry is the most feigning, and lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign.”
Touchstone — Act 3, Scene 3
“When I was at home, I was in a better place: but travellers must be content.”
Touchstone — Act 2, Scene 4
Themes
Other Characters in As You Like It
Test Your Knowledge
Think you know your Shakespeare? Put it to the test with one of our free quizzes.
See all quizzes →