"The Time is out of joint; O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right."

The famous speech of Jaques, "All the world's a stage," might have been
said by Hamlet, indeed belongs of right to the person who gave the
exquisite counsel to the players. Jaques' confession of melancholy, too,
both in manner and matter is characteristic of Hamlet. How often
Shakespeare must have thought it over before he was able to bring the
peculiar nature of his own malady into such relief:

"I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the
musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud;
nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is
politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all
these; but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples,
extracted from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my
travels; which, by often rumination, wraps me in, a most humourous
sadness."

This "humourous sadness," the child of contemplation, was indeed
Shakespeare's most constant mood. Jaques, too, loves solitude and the
country as Hamlet loved them--and above all the last trait recorded of
Jaques, his eagerness to see the reformed Duke and learn from the
convert, is a perfect example of that intellectual curiosity which is
one of Hamlet's most attaching characteristics. Yet another trait is
attributed to Jaques, which we must on no account forget. The Duke
accuses him of lewdness though lewdness seems out of place in Jaques's
character, and is certainly not shown in the course of the action. If we
combine the characters of Romeo, the poet-lover, and Jaques, the