As You Like It Act 3, Scene 3

 

As You Like It Act 3, Scene 3

Summary

Act 3, Scene 3 presents the low-comedy subplot of Touchstone and Audrey, a naive and simple goatherd. Touchstone, desiring Audrey, has arranged a makeshift wedding in the forest with the unqualified vicar, Sir Oliver Martext. Their dialogue highlights their mismatch: Touchstone speaks in witty, often lewd puns and classical allusions, while Audrey understands only literal honesty.

Touchstone jokes about cuckoldry ("horns") and the informality of the wedding. As Martext is about to perform the ceremony, Jaques emerges from hiding. He interrupts, persuading Touchstone that a wedding under a tree by an incompetent priest is fit only for beggars and will lead to a flawed marriage. He advises them to find a proper church and priest. Touchstone agrees, seeing Jaques' logic and perhaps also seeing the advantage of a shaky marriage he can later abandon. They all leave, and the deflated Martextexits alone.

Analysis

1.     Parody of Romantic Conventions:

o   This scene is a comic foil and parody of the play's central romantic plots. While Orlando writes Petrarchan sonnets on trees for Rosalind, Touchstone pursues a physical, unsentimental union with Audrey. His "courtship" is based on desire and convenience, not idealized love.

o   The planned forest wedding parodies both the pastoral romance and the secret marriages common in comedy. It is exposed as legally and socially dubious, contrasting with the authentic (though disguised) emotional connections forming elsewhere.

2.     Characterization Through Language:

o   Touchstone: His speech is a barrage of puns, malapropisms ("capricious" for Ovid among the "Goths"), and cynical wisdom ("the truest poetry is the most feigning"). He is the court wit slumming in the country, unable to turn off his verbal artifice even when talking to someone who can't comprehend it.

o   Audrey: She embodies literal-minded simplicity. Her concern is whether things are "honest in deed and word." Her lack of understanding creates the scene's humor and highlights the absurdity of Touchstone's sophisticated foolery in the rustic setting.

o   Jaques as Unexpected Moralist: In a twist, the cynical Jaques becomes the voice of social convention and propriety. He argues for the sanctity of marriage as an institution, insisting on a proper church and priest. This doesn't indicate newfound belief in love, but rather a belief in order over chaotic, low-born arrangements.

3.     Themes: Nature vs. Nurture (and "Nurture"):

o   The scene explores different kinds of "natural" desire. Audrey's simplicity is natural, Touchstone's lust is natural, but Jaques argues that such instincts require the civilizing structure of society and religion ("Get you to church") to be valid. The forest, a place of natural freedom, is deemed inappropriate for forging this social contract.

o   It questions what makes a marriage "true." Is it the formal ceremony, or the intent? Touchstone's intent is comically flawed, and the ceremony is illegitimate, making their union a mockery of the institution.

4.     Social Satire:

o   The scene satirizes hasty and ill-considered marriages, as well as incompetent clergy. Sir Oliver Martext is a figure of ridicule, ready to perform an unlawful ceremony.

o   Touchstone's musings on cuckoldry humorously reflect anxieties about marriage and fidelity, a common theme in Elizabethan comedy, here treated with bawdy irreverence.

5.     Plot Function and Contrast:

o   Comic Relief: Provides low comedy amidst the more refined romantic wordplay of the main plot.

o   Thematic Counterpoint: Contrasts sharply with the Orlando/Rosalind plot. Touchstone seeks to avoid the depth of feeling that Orlando celebrates. His relationship is based on physical appetite and social mobility (he is a courtier slumming it), not romantic idealization.

o   Driving Jaques' Role: Jaques' intervention gives him an active, if cynical, role in the plot and reinforces his character as an observer who comments on and occasionally steers the folly of others.

In essence, Act 3, Scene 3 is a bawdy, satirical interlude that uses the collision between court wit and country simplicity to examine the institutions of love and marriage from the bottom up. It suggests that for all its artifice, the social order (represented by the church) is necessary to contain and validate human appetites. Touchstone's flawed pursuit of Audrey serves as a earthy, cynical mirror to the more idealized loves flourishing elsewhere in Arden, reminding the audience that love encompasses both the sublime and the ridiculous.

 

Location: United States

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