For Wednesday: Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 2

As always, answer TWO of the following for our next class, or soon thereafter...

Q1: Unlike Act 1, Act 2 is almost entirely in verse, except for certain 'low' characters who usually speak prose: Jacques, Touchstone, etc. Why do you think this is? What makes being in the woods (away from the court/civilization) more of a setting for verse? Also, why does a character like Jacques speak prose throughout the scene and then switch into verse for his big speeches at the end of the act?

Q2: Shakespeare's fools are often characters who have the liberty to speak the truth without getting in trouble, or as Touchstone mentions in Act 1, "The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly" (23). With this in mind, what kind of fool is Jacques? What makes him 'foolish'? Is he wiser than those around him, and if so, what kind of wisdom is it? Just wit?

Q3: At the beginning of the act, Duke Senior says of the forest that "Are not these woods/More free from peril than the envious court?/Here feel we not the penalty of Adam" (49). Why does Duke Senior, and others, see the woods as a more pure, innocent environment free from the 'sin' of mankind? Does Shakespere seem to agree with this, or is this part of his comedy: that the courtly people are clearly out of their element? (many comedies even today feature people from the city trying to rough it in the country/woods). 

Q4: Consider the many allusions to the stage in Act 2, particularly Jacques' famous speech, "all the world's a stage." Why call the audience's attention to this? Wouldn't this risk breaking the spell of the theater (which is already paper thin in Shakespeare's time)?