Significant references to deer come in act 2, scene 1.
Duke Senior, for example, shows his sympathy for the deer he proposes they hunt:
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools [deer],
Being native burghers [residents] of this desert city [the forest],
Should in their own confines with forkèd heads [arrows]
Have their round haunches gored.
In other words, it bothers him that they can invade the deer's natural habitat and "gore" them with arrows.
Second, the melancholy Jacques weeps big tears over a wounded deer he sees, a victim of a hunt. As the First Lord describes it, the wounded deer suffers greatly. We feel for the "wretched" deer, who "groans" in pain. The Lord describes Jacques as arriving at the
place [where] a poor sequestered stag
That from the hunter’s aim had ta'en a hurt
Did come to languish. And indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting, and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
While it is possible to try to idealize the life of exile in the forest of Arden, the deer highlights that, in the words of Jacques, "misery doth part / The flux of company." In other words, the wounded deer, like those in exile, is separate, apart from the herd. Deer hunting in this scene becomes symbolic of wider social injustice. Jacques calls the deer hunters "tyrants" and "usurpers" because they have rooted the deer out of "their assign'd and native dwelling-place" simply for the pleasure of hunting them. The forest is not only a place of pastoral pleasure, but a place fraught with dangers.
No comments:
Post a Comment