These reported words of Jaques solidify his status as a steward of the natural world. Jaques takes it upon himself to represent the animals from the humans, whom he characterizes as “usurpers, tyrants.” Jaques thus serves as an archetypal Trickster—much as Touchstone does—occupying a space between the split realms of man and nature. While Jaques is himself a man, he identifies more closely with the law of the woods.

From the first appearance of Jaques, it is clear that he is different from his companions, the other men in Duke Senior’s cohort. Much of the scene is devoted to the telling of an encounter between Jaques and a dead deer. One lord teases Jaques for his grief, calling him “the hairy fool.” Jaques has a connection to the natural world that his companions cannot comprehend. It can be said that Jaques represents the mythological archetype of the Wild Man, a hairy man with a deep, intuitive connection with nature. It is this connection that accounts for the depth of his grief.

From the perspective of Amiens, Duke Senior’s speech serves as an attempt to make the best of the sorrows of his exile. Thus far in the play, it is not clear whether Duke Senior genuinely relishes his new life in the country or whether he is putting on a cheerful mask for his men in the face of his misfortunes.

Shakespeare carefully uses rhyme and alliteration to convey Duke Senior’s point about country living. The Duke identifies the natural world as a tremendous source of wisdom, drawing up fanciful images of “tongues,” “books,” and “sermons” for illustration.

This allusion to “the penalty of Adam” serves to draw a metaphor between the Forest of Arden and the Garden of Eden. Adam’s penalty was his expulsion from Eden as a result of his decision to eat the fruit of knowledge. Duke Senior thus sees his own exile as a return to Paradise from the corrupted state of the “envious court.” The metaphor relates closely to theme of country versus court living. Duke Senior tends to moralize country and court, viewing the former as good and the latter as wicked.

To “moralize a spectacle” is to make meaning out of an seemingly meaningless event. The lords mock Jacques for making meaning out of the deer’s death with “a thousand similes.” From their standpoint, the event is not a cause for grief. Though they cannot see it, the Lords are creating their own “thousand similes” to make sense of Jaques’ melancholic response. In this way, Jaques becomes a mirror that reveals the Lords’ characters and one of the main themes of the play: all men “moralize” and make meaning out of meaningless events based on their perspective–we’re all writing the world as we experience it.

Jaques uses cosmopolitan and monetary language to refer to the deer and their fallen comrade: the fleeing deer are “citizens” who follow the “fashion” to look upon the dead; the fallen deer is “bankrupt.” Notice that though this account of his language comes from the Lords, it is filtered through their perspective. This either signals that the Lords have shaped his woe into their own frame of reference, the moral landscape of the city, or that Jaques had to explain his woe using their frame of reference. Jaques’ language, imagined or real, reveals the Lords’ distance from the green world.

“Melancholy” is a term that comes from galenic medical philosophy, the dominant medical knowledge system in the medieval era. In this medical theory, one’s mood, health, and outlook on life were caused by an imbalance within the “humors,” bodily fluids black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Melancholy was thought to be caused by an abundance of “black bile” the humor that caused dark thoughts, depression, and negativity.

“Needless stream” means that the stream does not need Jaques’ tears. Using this metaphor, the First Lord mocks Jaques’ reaction to the deer’s death. However, it also demonstrates the First Lord’s serious misreading of Jaques’ melancholy. Jaques weeps for the deer because he is connected to the natural world and its beings while the Lords are disconnected from nature because they maintain an urban mindset.

The word “worldling,” a cosmopolitan or sophisticated person, furthers the Duke’s personification the deer as a member of polite society. In this way, the Duke and his Lords project the cityscape onto the green world. They read the beings and events of the green world through their social structures and moral code. This demonstrates that the Duke and his Lords are out of touch with the woods and nature. Though they live in the green world, they are not part of it.

A burgher is a citizen of a town, typically someone who is part of the aristocracy. Notice here that Duke Senior uses this classed term to apply to venison, the deer that live in the Forest of Arden. This use of the term signifies an upset in the social order within the forest.

Notice that Act II moves out of the city into the green world, the Forest of Arden. The green world is a literary trope in Shakespearean drama in which the main characters escape the city and their problems within the city to a natural setting, generally a forest or the countryside. This location is loosely structured and full of fantastic creatures. It is a place in which the characters can challenge the social order, explore their romantic relationships, and solve the main conflict that emerged in the city at the beginning of the play. The green world is therefore a place of exploration in which the rules that organize civil society are in flux.

The Duke is trying to comfort himself after being banished to the Forest of Arden by his villainous brother. Instead of dwelling on his misfortune, he considers the perks of being banished—such as being free from society, or the "public haunt."

Note the alliteration of "W" sounds mimicking the sound and biting cold of the winter's wind. 

Two meanings: 

1)  The covering of a young deer's antlers are velvet-like in texture.

2. An allusion to the expensive fabric worn by the wealthy.

"Jaques" is a stock character with which Elizabethan audiences would have   been familiar. Jaques was a solitary, melancholy man whose black thoughts were thought to be due to an abundance of black bile, an imbalance of the humours (black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm) that affected one's moods.

Innocent.  Often, animals have a dappled, or spotted coat, when they are young.

Toads were thought to be poisonous and to have in their heads a jewel, known as the "toadstone."

The "penalty of Adam" was his expulsion, with Eve, from the Garden of Eden for eating of the forbidden fruit.  A curse was also placed upon the Earth, and is often associated with the end of the temperate climate that the Garden enjoyed.