In Act 3, Scene 3, Touchstone and Jaques argue about his marriage to Audrey, each using distinct imagery to state his position:
Touchstone: As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires; and as pigeons bill, so wedlock would be nibbling.
Jaques: And will you, being a man of your breeding, be married under a bush like a beggar? Get you to church, and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is. This fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot. Then one of you will prove a shrunk panel and, like green timber, warp, warp.
When asked whether he wishes to get married, Touchstone argues through a series of striking visual similes that he must. Touchstone says that just as the ox has his bow, and the horse his “curb” (bridle), and a falcon his tether (“bells”), so too do men need a curb on their instinct and desires. The fool argues that marriage keeps men in line (“wedlock would be nibbling”).
Jaques replies that he should be married in a church, with a priest who can tell him more about what marriage really means. The priest who Touchstone has called at the very last minute to marry them in Arden will join these two newlyweds like a workman “joins wainscot.” Responding with his own images, Jaques says the simple country priest will join them like an amateur workman joins two panels, leaving one of them to warp like green wood (“green timber”), and the two panels out of alignment as a result.
Touchstone suggests here that men can only master their natural urges through marriage, while Jaques counters by saying that the redirection of a natural thing (“wood”) can be fumbled through human error. Touchstone’s reckless argument suggests that any “curb” on desire is an improvement; but Jaques’s imagery shows that people who do not understand nature (that wood can warp if placed incorrectly) cannot truly succeed in bending it to their will. In a rare moment of irony, Jaques gives Touchstone a piece of sound advice in saying that Touchstone needs a greater understanding of himself, his own nature, and why it is that he wants to get married, in order to enter a successful union with Audrey.
In Act 5, Scene 3, at Touchstone’s urging, two of the pages following Duke Senior break into a country song about love, full of sonic and visual imagery:
It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey-nonny-no,
That o’er the green cornfield did pass
In springtime, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.
Sweet lovers love the spring.Between the acres of the rye,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey-nonny-no,
These pretty country folks would lie
In springtime, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding,
Sweet lovers love the spring.
The song recounts the story of two lovers who have a tryst in a wheatfield in the spring. The song touches on the themes of love and marriage. Spring is “the only pretty ring time,” i.e., the wedding season. Spring “crowns” the love between the two country folk with a wedding. The song also touches on youth’s fleeting pleasures (“Sweet lovers love the spring”). It ultimately urges the listener to “take the present time” (seize the moment) for life is “but a flower” (blooms quickly, and then fades).
In a play set largely in the countryside, there are not many images of the surrounding forest within the text. The song yields a number of them: the “green cornfield,” the “acres of rye,” the “flower” of country life. The song’s refrain imitates birdsong (“birds do sing / hey ding a ding ding”). This imagery sits well with the play’s pastoral themes and paints a clear picture of the idyllic Forest of Arden. The song is also fairly silly and sentimental, fitting the tone and purpose of the play as a parody of pastoral tropes.
What’s more, the imagery aligns love, marriage, and nature with one another. The two lovers meet in a field. Birdcall is the sign of spring, the season of marriage (which “sweet lovers love”). Love itself is compared to a “carol,” a song that the two country folk begin together, an analogy which echoes the recurring “birdcall.” These connections foreshadow and affirm the marriages at the play’s end.
