Editor's Choice
What does Touchstone's line in As You Like It Act 2, Scene 4, mean: "but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly"?
Quick answer:
Touchstone's line reflects on the transient nature of love's foolishness. He suggests that just as everything in nature is mortal and will eventually perish, so too is the folly of love. This means that while people may initially act foolishly when in love, this phase is temporary and will not last long. The line highlights that the irrational behavior associated with love is fleeting, much like the mortality of all natural things.
Touchstone says this as the culmination of a fairly wise rumination on the nature of love. He describes the strange behavior he himself has exhibited when in love, and states that "true lovers run into strange capers." What he is saying in the lines you have quoted, however, is that this foolish phase of love does not continue very long.
To be mortal means, of course, that something has the potential to die or be killed. Everything in nature, then, is mortal; it can die. Touchstone then compares the folly of love to all other natural things. He is saying that, inasmuch as everything that lives in nature is mortal and will eventually succumb to death, so the foolishness of love is "mortal in folly." That is, its folly, or foolishness, is just as mortal as everything else. So, "all nature in love," or all people whose affections have turned to love, may indeed behave foolishly at first, but this folly will die in them before too long. The folly of love is only a brief phase which does not last.
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