Note to As You Like It, 2.7.72-73: "Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea, / Till that the weary very means do ebb"
Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea, / Till that the weary very means do ebb: —The first half of this sentence starts a rhetorical question, and means something like this: "Isn't it true that pride surges along as strongly as the sea . . . . However, the second part of the sentence is just confusing. The word "ebb" seems to be meant to pick up the metaphor of "flow as hugely as the sea," but what it is that "do ebb" (and everything else) is unclear. To me it seems certain that Jaques means that pride is a very large problem. That thought is a mere commonplace, and it may be Shakespeare meant to show (again) that Jaques has only commonplace thoughts, even though he lays claim to sharp satirical insights. One more note: no editor of Shakespeare believes that Shakespeare wrote the line as it appears in the printed texts; everyone agrees that the confusion is the result of some error in printing.