In Shaekspeare's AS You Like It the the Duke praises the very discomforts of the forest on the ground that they afford an unmediated reality.
At the same time his speech is marked by a pronounced rhetorical elegance and the imagery he uses, tongues in trees, sermons in stones, books in running brooks, seems to betray a courtier’s love of language. Even as he praises Nature for her pre-linguistic purity he assimilates her to language. When the Duke has finished, he is pleased to receive Amiens’ compliment:
We need Ovidian licentious imagination.
At the same time his speech is marked by a pronounced rhetorical elegance and the imagery he uses, tongues in trees, sermons in stones, books in running brooks, seems to betray a courtier’s love of language. Even as he praises Nature for her pre-linguistic purity he assimilates her to language. When the Duke has finished, he is pleased to receive Amiens’ compliment:
Happy is your grace.
We need Ovidian licentious imagination.
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