Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Allusion #6 - Noah's Ark


As You Like It Act 5 Scene 4
JAQUES  There is sure another flood toward, and these couples are coming to the ark. Here comes a              pair of very strange beasts, which in all tongues are called fools.

In this remark Jaques is alluding to the Biblical story of Noah's Ark as he watches Touchstone and Audrey approach together.
Many years after the creation of mankind, people lost faith in God. They prayed and worshiped their own made-up idols, which made God very angry. There was, however, a man called Noah who was still faithful. God instructed him to build an ark and put two of every kind of animal into it, because he was going to flood the Earth and kill every living being on it except for those in the ark. 
This seems completely irrelevant to Shakespeare, but some things are related.
When God had Noah put two of every animal into the ark, one was male and the other female. Presumably, this was so that after the flood ended, the animals could breed and produce more of their kind. Touchstone and Audrey, the couple coming toward Jaques, relate to this description. They are together because Touchstone wants Audrey for physical purposes, just as there are 2 of each animal, one of each gender so that they can reproduce.
Also, pairs of each animal were needed. This is a lot like the four different relationships in As You Like It. Each type of love represented by a couple is like a pair of animals. There is the physical love of Touchstone and Audrey. True love is portrayed by Orlando and Rosalind. Oliver, and Celia show love at first sight, and Silvius and Phoebe illustrated melodramatic love. 
At a glance, it seems Jaques is just being moody and melancholy again, but the reference to Noah's Ark really does have some surprising meaning behind it.

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