experience and reflection, which wraps him in a most humorous sadness.
Jaques, in fact, is a rake turned cynical philosopher. He regards man
and nature as only so much material for observation and for moralizing.

Such is the Jaques of 'As You Like It'--a purely original creation,
embodying a familiar type of humanity, but nevertheless not good enough
for certain of Shakespeare's successors in the dramatic art. Jaques has
more than once been revised and edited, in common with other characters
in the sylvan comedy. He did not quite satisfy the fastidious taste of
Mr. Charles Johnson, the ingenious author of 'The Country Lasses' and
other pieces, who, as was said with more point than truth, was 'famous
for writing a play every year and being at Button's coffee-house every
day.' Still less did Shakespeare's Jaques commend himself to the 'J.
C.' who was so kind as not merely to adapt 'As You Like It,' but to
elaborate and paraphrase it. Nor did the 'melancholy' one prove
acceptable even to the judgment of Georges Sand, when that intellectual
lady set to work to 'arrange' the play for the French stage.
Shakespeare, it appeared to all these writers, had perpetrated an
unaccountable mistake. He had failed to make Jaques pair off with Celia.
That charming maiden is handed over to the converted Oliver, while
Jaques goes off to study the humours of the repentant Duke. Happy
thought! Transform Jaques and Celia into a species of minor Benedick and
Beatrice, and marry them in the end!

Mr. Charles Johnson adopted this idea almost literally. His 'Love in a
Forest'--brought out at Drury Lane in 1723--is 'As You Like it' cut down
and altered, with scraps from 'Much Ado About Nothing,' 'Love's Labour's
Lost,' and other Shakespearean pieces, introduced at various points, the
whole welded together by means of wondrous emanations from the
compiler's fancy. To Jaques are assigned a number of lines spoken
elsewhere by Benedick or by Biron. We have the well-known gibing scene
between Jaques and Orlando up to a certain stage, when, commenting on
Jaques' questions about Rosalind, Orlando says: 'But why are you so
curious?--you who are an obstinate heretic in the despight of beauty and
the whole female world?' Then Jaques replies to this speech, which
belongs to Don Pedro in 'Much Ado,' in the familiar words of Benedick in
that play, asserting that he will 'live a bachelor,' and that if ever he
breaks that vow his friends may put round his nec