ACT IV
SCENE i
The Princess demonstrates her wit in an exchange with a forester during
their hunting. Costard brings the letter to Rosaline, but the expected
letter mix-up doesn't matter much ultimately. Boyet immediately sees that
this letter is addressed to Jaquenetta, so the mistake is immediately
noted, but the Princess wants him to read it aloud anyway. Armado is at
his idiotic, long-winded best in this prose epistle. Oxford's self-mocking
is carried out by Boyet here (IV.i.60f) and involves the words "fair" and
"true" (Ogburn and Ogburn 912).
Boyet teases Rosaline, the intended recipient, and Costard is amused by
apparently smutty dialogue between Boyet and Maria.
The reference to "A phantasime, a Monarcho" (IV.i.101) concerns "a
harmless Italian madman who was tolerated at Elizabeth's court because
he was found to be amusing" in the 1570s (Asimov 432). There may have
been a jester named after him also (Ogburn and Ogburn 196).
SCENE ii
Dull, Holofernes the pedant or schoolmaster, and Nathaniel the curate
speak at cross-purposes with their individual butcherings and
idiosyncrasies of language. Holofernes especially is a real piece of
work, sprinkling his utterances with Latin phrasings and thesaurus lists.
He's what our parents worry we'll turn out like after we've gone off to
college. Holofernes and Nathaniel "exemplify the intellectual sterility
that will result if the lords' determination is taken to excess" (Wells
59).
Holofernes is "named for Gargantua's Latin tutor in Rabelais" (Bloom 132).
"The descendants of Holofernes, endearingly absurd, were once to be found
profusely on academic faculties, and I have a certain nostalgia for them,
as they did no harm" (Bloom 132). The name appears originally in the
apocryphal Book of Judith but the point would seem to be merely its
obscurity (Asimov 433). Holofernes is "a most unbearable pedant,
whose speech consists half of Latin and who spends all his time nit-picking
the English language. He is a satire on what learning can come to if it is
carried to extremes without even a modicum of good sense to go along with
all the education" (Asimov 433). Punning on words connected to Leicester
occur here (IV.ii.57f): "pricket" and "sorel" -- since the city of
Leicester is on the river Soar (Ogburn and Ogburn 206, 613, 683).
Although the London-born Italian scholar John Florio has been suggested as
the inspiration for Holofernes (Asimov 433), it has been suggested that
Holofernes may be a lampooning of Cambridge don Gabriel Harvey, nicknamed
Hobbinol in Spenser's 1579 Shepheardes Calender, a guy who began
as respectful of Oxford but involved himself in the Leicester-Sidney
faction at court and ended up mocking Oxford as an Italianate Englishman
in 1580's Speculum Tuscanismi (Farina 52-53; cf. Miller 139, 158;
Ogburn and Ogburn 193). Harvey seems to have been somewhat deficient in a
sense of humor and was probably hurt by the portrayal (Ogburn and Ogburn
180). The prototype for Nathaniel may have be Nathaniel Woods, minister
in Norwich (Ogburn and Ogburn 180) or initially William of Orange (Clark
200ff). And in the much later revision, Holofernes may have become Chapman
(Ogburn and Ogburn 893; see II.i.13f).
Jaquenetta asks Holofernes to read a letter for her: a sonnet actually by
Berowne and intended for Rosaline. Holofernes pooh-poohs the work, has it
delivered to the King, and promises to bend Nathaniel's ear back at
dinner blabbing about the rhetorical merits and shortcomings of the
letter.
Holofernes exemplifies the sterility of extreme academic intellectuality.
An expert on linguistics and rhetoric, he cannot even communicate. He
peruses a forbidden love-letter and can see only literary style in need
of evaluation. By contrast, Dull is phlegmatic, but somewhat eloquent in
his silence.
SCENE iii
Berowne reads an agonizing letter he has written about being in love.
When the King enters, Berowne hides and hears the King reading from his
own love letter. Then the King hides when Longaville enters, and so on
with Dumaine, whose ode is "a little lacking in the ocular obsession"
(Bloom 128). There is much "noting" here obviously. One by one, all are
exposed as vow-breakers. An exchange about galloping and posting relates
to Jerome Horsey, English envoy to Russia from 1573 to 1591 (Greenhill
17).
After getting on his high horse about the
others, Berowne has the added humiliation of Costard and Jaquenetta
appearing with the misdirected letter he had written already. Berowne
takes a ribbing about the "darkness" of his love interest, Rosaline.
A reference to "dun" (IV.iii.196) -- the name of Oxford's great
grandfather -- appears with a nearby anagram for "a drama dio" (Ogburn
and Ogburn 197). The King requests that Berowne drum up some sophistry
that will let them weasel out of their vows, and he complies, reasoning
that wooing is a form of study. (Some repetition in the speech suggest
that one passage should have been cancelled as Shakespeare revised.)
"And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods / Make heaven drowsy
with the harmony" (IV.iii.341-342).
Was Berowne's tirade on education and women's eyes added later? It
contains repetitions and seems so superior to all else in play. It's
intended seriously, says Goddard, since it ties into Troilus and
Cressida and other plays. The tirade is a balanced philosophy of yin
and yang, but more so a parody of male triumphalism. And "outrageous
narcissism" is celebrated by Berowne (Bloom 129). "Berowne's passion
is individualized only by its ruefulness, which is suitable, since his
Rosaline is the thorniest of the four resistent noblewomen" (Bloom 134).
At least the heroes are not deceived by their own cleverness. Dumaine and
Longaville write fairly conventional tributes, Dumaine's "an ode a little
lacking in the ocular obsession" (Bloom 128). Navarre out-Donnes Donne
in a metaphysical conceit of a lover's tear. Multiple eavesdroppings
means the stage is used as place for hide-and-seek, not just as a
platform for witty exchanges. They are too good-humored to resent being
spied on by each other. They are summoned to the hunt of love with
Berowne's chop-logic justification of their vow-breaking -- done on
demand. "In an extraordinarily beautiful and rhetorically powerful
speech, Berowne find a way of rephrasing the vows the lovers have
taken, locating the true 'academe' inside human love and passion rather
than beyond it. Love is the best tutor, for moral as well as for aesthetic
education" (Garber 180). In one of Berowne's statements (IV.iii.335-336),
"the familiar theme of losing oneself to find oneself resonates" (Garber
181). That one passage repeats (IV.iii.315-351 = 294-314) suggests
unpolished revision (Ogburn and Ogburn 183).