A sunny glow suffuses the fragrant apple orchard this fine summer morning in Ardennes, a northeastern region of 16th-century France. The well-ordered trees laden with plump fruit are part of the sprawling country estate governed by Sir Oliver de Bois, the eldest son of the manor’s late lord. But sharp words break the tranquility: Orlando, the youngest of three sons, feels mounting resentment over long-borne wrongs; he complains to old Adam, who had been his father’s most devoted servant.
“And there begins my sadness,” says Orlando. The handsome, well built man of twenty-two paces as he talks, hands clasped behind his back. “As I remember, it was upon this fashion bequeathèd me by will: poor, but for a thousand crowns, and—as thou sayest—the charge that my brother, for his blessing, raise me well.
“My brother Jacques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit.” The middle son, a university student, resides happily in Paris.
“As for my part, he keeps me rustically at home—or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept! For call you that ‘keeping’ for a gentleman of my birth which differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better!—for, besides that they are fair with their tending, they are taught their manage, and to that end riders are dearly hired.
“But I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth—for the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I! Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the something that Nature gave me his countenance seems to take from me! He lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and—as much as in him lies—undermines my gentility by my ‘education!’”
He stops. “This it is, Adam, that grieves me.”
During the old man’s long service to Orlando’s father, he had watched all three sons grow to manhood, and he well understands what is troubling this one. He nods, patiently.
Orlando runs a hand through his thick, glossy hair. “And the spirit of my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude! I will no longer endure it, though yet I know no wise remedy how to avoid it.”
Adam glances toward the massive country house. “Yonder comes my master, your brother.”
“Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up!” The man moves behind some nearby shrubs.
Sir Oliver stalks up to confront his brother. “Now, sir, what make you here?”
“Nothing,” Orlando replies bitterly. “I am not taught to make anything!”
“What mar you then, sir?”
“Marry, sir, I am helping you to mar that which God made—a poor, unworthy brother of yours—with idleness!”
Oliver sneers. “Marry, sir, be better employed by being nought a while.”
Demands Orlando angrily, “Shall I keep your hogs and eat husks with them? What prodigal portion have I spent, that I should come to such penury?”
“Know you where you are, sir?”
“Oh, sir, very well!—here in your orchard!”
Oliver, once an indulged child, now an arrogant gentleman, is affronted. “Know you before whom, sir?”
“Aye—better than him I am before knows me! I know you are my eldest brother—and in the gentle condition of blood you should so know me! The courtesy of nations allows you are my better, in that you are the first-born; but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us!