As You Like It · Chapter
Scene I explained
Touchstone and Audrey discuss the priest Sir Oliver Martext.
What happens
Touchstone and Audrey discuss the priest Sir Oliver Martext. Touchstone confronts William, a young man who claims Audrey, and threatens him into leaving. Corin then arrives to summon them away.
Themes in this chapter
Disguise and Deception
Touchstone uses rhetorical tricks and verbal disguise to assert dominance over William, masking threats in clever wordplay.
Love and Marriage
The rivalry between Touchstone and William over Audrey highlights the comedic pursuit of marriage in the forest.
Characters to notice
- Touchstone
Touchstone asserts his claim to Audrey and intimidates William with witty threats.
- Audrey
Audrey is patient with Touchstone and dismisses William's interest in her.
- William
William, a young forest dweller, claims Audrey but is frightened off by Touchstone.
- Corin
Corin enters to summon Touchstone and Audrey to their master and mistress.
Key passages
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
A fool believes he is wise, but a truly wise person recognizes his own foolishness.
Touchstone uses this proverb to undermine William's self-assessment of having 'a pretty wit.'
“to have, is to have; for it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being poured out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one doth empty the other; for all your writers do consent that ipse is he: now, you are not ipse, for I am he.”
Having something means possessing it; just as pouring drink from a cup into a glass empties one and fills the other, so 'ipse' means 'he himself'—and you are not that 'he,' I am.
Touchstone uses convoluted logic and rhetoric to claim that he, not William, is the rightful 'he' who will marry Audrey.