PECULIARITIES OF LANGUAGE

We have seen that Shakespeare chose for the setting of his play the surroundings of the prominent historical events of the time—the civil wars of Navarre with France (the Princess uses the term, II. i. 226), the interest displayed in Russian affairs, and the choice of his name Armado for the Braggart, may be regarded also as a historical allusion.

But the historical setting of the play, like its geographical position in France, is of slight importance, except to the researchful student. The mockery of affectation in language, whether written or spoken, is a real aim of the comedy. The exponent of the former satire is Armado, and of the latter Holofernes with his foil in Nathaniel. Armado is introduced by his letter to the King; Holofernes by his pedantry (IV. ii.) with Nathaniel.

Shakespeare's own account of Armado (1. i. 161-175) as a refined traveller of Spain, who is to "relate in high-born words the worth of many a knight," is not the least like the Armado we are afterwards presented with, excepting that he hath "a mint of phrases in his brain." We are to expect fabulous old and noble stories, minstrelsy, deeds of derring-do and what not, but we get nothing of the sort. Later, however, we get another description of Armado from Boyet (IV. i. 96-98), which is more in accordance with that which is presented to us. He is still a Spaniard, but in no sense to be taken seriously-merely a phantasm that makes sport. Boyet after his second letter calls him a "Monarcho," who was a real character of the time, a monomaniac who thought he was a sovereign, and was a butt of the wits in London about 1580. This is the opposite extreme of description, and our real Armado lies between the two.

Any diagnosis of Armado's characteristics, founded upon either extreme, is beset with errors. Warburton took the line of chivalry, and gave a long and absolutely incorrect and inappropriate account of the old romances as an essay upon Armado, which Tyrwhitt answered with great propriety. Both will be found in Steevens' Shakespeare, appended to the

play. It is equally out of place to identify him with Boyet's allusion as other commentators do. He is Shakespeare's own child of fancy, and his begetter seems to have altered his scheme for his career with great celerity and thoroughness. We arrive at that unhinged state of mind which, like Don Quixote's, is the outcome of an overdose of the stories of chivalry and the romances. There seems to be hardly any other connection between the germ and its development.

But perhaps the correct assumption is that at the words "Adieu, valour! rust, rapier! be still, drum! for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth" (I. ii. 171-172), the original Armado is admittedly dismissed. And his sonnet at IV. i. 86 gives us "a trick of the old rage," and shows us what we gained in the exchange.

Sir Walter Scott in his character of Sir Piercie Shafton in The Monastery (1830) was, I believe, the first to speak of the "Euphuist Don Armado," as he calls him in the Introduction to that novel. But neither Sir Piercie nor Armado talk the euphuism of its masters, Lyly, Greene and Lodge. Nevertheless, from Sir Walter's time downwards it has been impossible to consider Armado apart from euphuism. Since that peculiar affectation, so well analysed by Dr. Landmann, was at its zenith when this play was written against all affectations, the very fact that there is so little of it in Love's Labour's Lost is a strong argument against the truth of Blount's statement, made in 1632, in an address prefixed to an edition of Lyly's plays, that it was the language of the ladies of Elizabeth's court. It may have been a fad or a foible of a few in conversation, just as but a few writers of any note followed it, and even they only in a spasmodic fashion. Dr. Landmann (New Shakes. Soc. Trans. 1880-86, p. 241) gives a good description of euphuism. "I. An equal number of words in collateral or antithetical sentences, well balanced often to the number of syllables, the corresponding words being pointed out by alliteration, consonance or rhyme. 2. Unnatural Natural History,' which he learned from Pliny. 3. An oppressive load of examples taken from ancient history and mythology, as well as apophthegms from ancient writers." These are the three main

features. Dr. Landmann goes on (p. 264)-I quote from Furness' Variorum edition of the play (pp. 349-350): “In Love's Labour's Lost Shakespeare was not ridiculing euphuism proper, but four other forms of affectation in his day: I. Spanish high-flown diction, bombast, and hyperbole. 2. Italian or Petrarchian love-sonneting, word-play, and repartee. 3. Pedantic mingling of Latin and English, called by Puttenham Soraismus. 4. Excessive alliteration." No. 3 here is quite faulty, and will be referred to later.

These latter remarks are not confined to Armado's diction, and it is only he who has been seriously held to be euphuistic. In his preface Furness collects a few, a very few, passages of Armado's speeches and letters that resemble euphuism. There is scarcely a balanced sentence, and never once does Armado draw an example from realms of natural history. And there is hardly a trace of alliteration. They have no claim to be rehearsed.

An attempt has been made recently by Martin Hume (Spanish Influence on English Literature, 1905, pp. 268-274) to identify Don Adriano de Armado with "Antonio Perez, the exiled Spanish Secretary of State." "Love's Labour's Lost cannot originally have been written later than 1591, and Perez did not escape from Spain into France until November of that year; so that, if I am correct in my supposition, the points upon which I rely cannot have been introduced into the play until it was enlarged and partially rewritten for a court performance in 1597. Perez arrived in England in the autumn of 1594. · He lived on the bounty of the Earl of Essex until Henry IV. became jealous, and insisted upon his coming back to him in the summer of 1595. In France and in England, as in Spain, he betrayed and sold every one who trusted him. He had been spoilt to such an extent by Henry IV. and by his English friends that his presumption and caprice became unbearable. When he met Essex at Dover he finally disgusted and offended the earl, and thenceforward his star in England had set. . . . He finally tired out even Henry IV., who had treated him with almost royal honours. So that if we assume that the special touches of caricature that identify

Don Antonio Armado [!] with Perez were introduced into the play when it was recast for the court performance in 1597, the reason for the skit upon Essex's fallen favourite becomes at once apparent." So says Mr. Martin Hume, and there is a vraisemblance in his theory, so far as the intimacy of the affected Spaniard with the King of Navarre goes, which is no doubt seductive. But before noticing the "special touches" which the writer relies on, the recasting, the rewriting and enlarging of the play for a court performance in 1597 must be disputed, and, in my opinion, rejected altogether, especially as they practically involve the whole characterism of Armado—and are not in any case a demonstrable fact.

The special touches are: I. "Perez's many published letters and the famous Relaciones written whilst he was in England," which are said to give us numerous affected turns of speech put into the mouth of Don Adriano Armado." Since these productions of Perez were never, I believe, translated into English, this is a strong statement. I cannot see the smallest resemblance between Perez's Anglicised letters given by Martin Hume and those of Armado. In one to Lady Rich he says (translated by Hume?): "I have been so troubled . . . not to have the dog's skin gloves your ladyship desires, that . . . I have resolved to flay a piece of my own skin from the most tender part of my body. . . . But this. . . is as nothing, for even the soul will skin itself for the person it loves." And then Perez (says Hume) for two or three pages continues to ring the wearisome changes upon dogs and skins and souls, in a way that Don Adriano Armado himself could not have bettered. Let me take up the cudgels here for Armado. I love the sport [of identification] well; but I shall as soon quarrel at it as any man. Does Armado ring wearisome changes for two or three pages habitually?

2. Perez gave himself several nicknames; but he had one favourite "Peregrino," "El Peregrino," or "Rafael Peregrino." Upon this Hume writes: "Peregrinate' is, and always has been, an extremely rarely English used word, so that its introduction by Shakespeare, especially applied to Don Adriano Armado, is significant" (see v. i. 13). But Perez's word is not

"peregrinate," and "peregrine" was in common use much earlier, if any kind of argument could hang upon a Spaniard's word in his own language in such a connection. I think the theory is hardly established.

The above remarks about euphuism apply even more accurately, to Holofernes. Although he is alliterative at times,> "affecting the letter" very strongly in his epitaph on the death of the deer, he never verges upon it. Parallels and illustrations occur abundantly from Lyly, but they are from his plays (already noticed in this Introduction), not from his Euphues. His plays, though saturated with euphuism, abound also in word-quibbling and in Latin scrap-gathering. Of these affectations Love's Labour's Lost has enough and to spare, and Shakespeare saw them highly appreciated by the public in Lyly's plays. Lyly's euphuism was an integral part of the man's craft, cultivated and vehemently approved of by himself. His serious characters use it, as he himself does in his correspondence. But it is a character to be laughed at, like "Sir Tophas, the bragging soldier," in Endymion, who introduces those other affectations in mockery just as Armado does. Frequently, too, Lyly makes use of servants or pages as the mouthpieces of these efforts. And in this useful ridicule both Shakespeare and Lyly had their predecessors. It is difficult to assert positively that Endymion preceded Love's Labour's Lost-that Sir Tophas is an older conception than Armado—but it is highly probable.

Perhaps I should refer here to Fleay's interpretation of the "personal portraits" intended by the characters in Love's Labour's Lost-Lyly, Bishop Cooper, Greene, Kemp, etc., etc.; but I refer to them only to discard them as unworthy of serious consideration. They are cited by Furness (p. 7) from "Shakespeare and Puritanism" (Anglia, 1884, vii. 223).

With reference to the Latin and other foreign expressions in the play, a point dwelt upon by Gervinus as evidence of early style, detailed information will be found in my notes. This was not an uncommon trick at about the date of Love's Labour's Lost amongst the playwriters. It was introduced by them from the new Italian drama, whose play-pedant may be

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