Jaques (1 syl.), one of the lords attendant on the banished duke, in the forest of Arden. A philosophic idler, cynical, sullen, contemplative, and moralizing. He could “suck melancholy out of a song, as a weazel sucks eggs.” Jaques resents Orlando’s passion for Rosalind, and quits the duke as soon as he is restored to his dukedom.—Shakespeare, As You Like It (1598).
Shakespeare always makes two syllables of the name Jaques; Sir Walter Scott makes one syllable of it, but Charles Lamb two. For example:
Whom humorous Jaques with envy viewed (1
syl.).
Sir W. Scott.
Where Jaques fed his solitary vein (2 syl.).—C. Lamb.
The “Jaques” of [Charles M. Young, 1777-1856], is indeed most musical, most melancholy, attuned to the very wood-walks among which he muses.—New Monthly Magazine (1822).
Jaques (1 syl.), the miser in a comedy by Ben Jonson, entitled The Case is Altered (1584-1637).
Jaques (1 syl.), servant to Sulpit´ia, a bawd. (See Jacques.)—Beaumont and Fletcher, The Custom of the Country (1647).
Jarley (Mrs.), a kind-hearted woman, mistress of a travelling wax-work exhibition, containing “one hundred figures the size of life;” the “only stupendous collection of real wax-work in the world;” “the delight of the nobility and gentry, the royal family, and crowned heads of Europe.” Mrs. Jarley was kind to little Nell, and employed her as a decoy-duck to “Jarley’s unrivalled collection.”—C. Dickens, Old Curiosity Shop.