Love’s Labour’s Lost
Act V, Scene 1
The King of Navarre’s park.
- Enter the Pedant Holofernes, the Curate Sir Nathaniel, and
- Dull.
Holofernes
1- Satis quid sufficit.
Sir Nathaniel
2 - 7- I praise God for you, sir. Your reasons at dinner have been
- sharp and sententious: pleasant without scurrility, witty
- without affection, audacious without impudency, learned
- without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse
- this quondam day with a companion of the King’s, who is
- intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.
Holofernes
8 - 12- Novi hominem tanquam te. His humor is lofty, his discourse
- peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait
- majestical, and his general behavior vain, ridiculous, and
- thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too
- odd as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.
Sir Nathaniel
13- A most singular and choice epithet.
- Draw out his table-book.
Holofernes
14 - 23- He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the
- staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes,
- such insociable and point-devise companions, such rackers of
- orthography, as to speak “dout,” fine, when he should say
- “doubt”; “det,” when he should pronounce “debt”—d, e, b, t,
- not d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, “cauf”; half, “hauf”;
- neighbor vocatur “nebor”; neigh abbreviated “ne.” This is
- abhominable—which he would call “abbominable”; it
- insinuateth me of insanie: ne intelligis, domine? To make
- frantic, lunatic.
Sir Nathaniel
24- Laus Deo, bone intelligo.
Holofernes
25 - 26- Bone? Bone for bene, Priscian a little scratch’d, ’twill
- serve.
- Enter Braggart Armado, Boy Moth, and Costard.
Sir Nathaniel
27- Videsne quis venit?
Holofernes
28- Video, et gaudeo.
Armado
29- To Moth.
- Chirrah!
Holofernes
30- Quare. Chirrah, not sirrah?
Armado
31- Men of peace, well encount’red.
Holofernes
32- Most military sir, salutation.
Moth
33 - 34- Aside to Costard
- They have been at a great feast of languages, and stol’n the
- scraps.
Costard
35 - 38- O, they have liv’d long on the alms-basket of words. I
- marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou
- art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus:
- thou art easier swallow’d than a flap-dragon.
Moth
39- Peace, the peal begins.
Armado
40- To Holofernes.
- Monsieur, are you not lett’red?
Moth
41 - 42- Yes, yes, he teaches boys the horn-book. What is a, b,
- spell’d backward, with the horn on his head?
Holofernes
43- Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.
Moth
44- Ba, most silly sheep, with a horn. You hear his learning.
Holofernes
45- Quis, quis, thou consonant?
Moth
46 - 47- The last of the five vowels, if “you” repeat them; or the
- fift, if I.
Holofernes
48- I will repeat them—a, e, I—
Moth
49- The sheep: the other two concludes it—o, U.
Armado
50 - 52- Now by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a
- quick venue of wit—snip, snap, quick and home. It rejoiceth
- my intellect. True wit!
Moth
53- Offer’d by a child to an old man: which is wit-old.
Holofernes
54- What is the figure? What is the figure?
Moth
55- Horns.
Holofernes
56- Thou disputes like an infant; go whip thy gig.
Moth
57 - 58- Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your
- infamy, manu cita—a gig of a cuckold’s horn.
Costard
59 - 65- And I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it
- to buy gingerbread. Hold, there is the very remuneration I
- had of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou
- pigeon-egg of discretion. O, and the heavens were so pleas’d
- that thou wert but my bastard, what a joyful father wouldest
- thou make me! Go to, thou hast it ad dunghill, at the
- fingers’ ends, as they say.
Holofernes
66- O, I smell false Latin, “dunghill” for unguem.
Armado
67 - 69- Arts-man, preambulate, we will be singuled from the
- barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on
- the top of the mountain?
Me, an’t shall please you: I am Anthony Dull.
Dull
Edwin Austin Abbey, circa 1891
Holofernes
70- Or mons, the hill.
Armado
71- At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.
Holofernes
72- I do, sans question.
Armado
73 - 75- Sir, it is the King’s most sweet pleasure and affection to
- congratulate the Princess at her pavilion in the posteriors
- of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.
Holofernes
76 - 79- The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable,
- congruent, and measurable for the afternoon. The word is
- well cull’d, chose, sweet, and apt, I do assure you, sir, I
- do assure.
Armado
80 - 98- Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do
- assure ye, very good friend; for what is inward between us,
- let it pass. I do beseech thee remember thy courtesy; I
- beseech thee apparel thy head; and among other importunate
- and most serious designs, and of great import indeed too—but
- let that pass; for I must tell thee it will please his Grace
- (by the world) sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder, and
- with his royal finger, thus, dally with my excrement, with
- my mustachio; but, sweet heart, let that pass. By the world,
- I recount no fable: some certain special honors it pleaseth
- his greatness to impart to Armado, a soldier, a man of
- travel, that hath seen the world; but let that pass. The
- very all of all is—but, sweet heart, I do implore
- secrety—that the King would have me present the Princess
- (sweet chuck) with some delightful ostentation, or show, or
- pageant, or antic, or firework. Now, understanding that the
- curate and your sweet self are good at such eruptions and
- sudden breaking out of mirth (as it were), I have acquainted
- you withal, to the end to crave your assistance.
Holofernes
99 - 104- Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies. Sir
- Nathaniel, as concerning some entertainment of time, some
- show in the posterior of this day, to be rend’red by our
- assistance, the King’s command, and this most gallant,
- illustrate, and learned gentleman, before the Princess, I
- say none so fit as to present the Nine Worthies.
Sir Nathaniel
105- Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?
Holofernes
106 - 108- Joshua, yourself; myself; and this gallant gentleman, Judas
- Machabeus; this swain (because of his great limb or joint)
- shall pass Pompey the Great; the page, Hercules.
Armado
109 - 110- Pardon, sir, error: he is not quantity enough for that
- Worthy’s thumb, he is not so big as the end of his club.
Holofernes
111 - 113- Shall I have audience? He shall present Hercules in
- minority; his enter and exit shall be strangling a snake;
- and I will have an apology for that purpose.
Moth
114 - 117- An excellent device! So if any of the audience hiss, you may
- cry, “Well done, Hercules, now thou crushest the snake!”
- That is the way to make an offense gracious, though few have
- the grace to do it.
Armado
118- For the rest of the Worthies?
Holofernes
119- I will play three myself.
Moth
120- Thrice-worthy gentleman!
Armado
121- Shall I tell you a thing?
Holofernes
122- We attend.
Armado
123 - 124- We will have, if this fadge not, an antic. I beseech you
- follow.
Holofernes
125- Via, goodman Dull! Thou hast spoken no word all this while.
Dull
126- Nor understood none neither, sir.
Holofernes
127- Allons! We will employ thee.
Dull
128 - 129- I’ll make one in a dance, or so; or I will play
- On the tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.
Holofernes
130- Most dull, honest Dull! To our sport; away!
- Exeunt.
Study for Armado
Edwin Austin Abbey, circa 1891