in the An Homily Against Excess of Apparel. Both the Homilyand Stubbes single out the biblical

Holofernes, and Shakespeare happens tohave chosen that name for his pendant.
In the opening scene ofA Pleasant Conceited Comedy Called Love's Labor's Lost,
which, we are informed on the title-page of the quarto of 1598, William Shakespeare had newly
corrected and augmented¹⁸for a presentation "before her Highness" during the Christmas season
of 1597, Navarre grants "quick recreation" to himself and the would-be bookmen in the shape of a

"child of fancy," advertised as

a refined traveler of Spain,

A man in all the world's new fashion planted,

That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;

One who the music of his own vain tongue

Doth ravish like enchanting harmony;

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How you delight, my lords, I know not, I,

But, I protest, I love to hear him lie.¹⁹

Note, how Shakespeare immediately explicitly links affectations in language with affectation in ap-
parel. The connection between two forms of extreme unnatural behavior which Navarre and his
bookmen are aware of in a character of the sub-plot does not inoculate them from committing the
same kinds of follies themselves. Throughout the comedy the characters in the sub-plot consis-
tently functions as a burlesquing mirror to and of the main characters and their conduct, though the
boyish courtiers do not exhibit the self-awareness to realize that embarrassing parallel. They are all
guilty of the sin of considering themselves "al in all." For example, Berowne's "Light seeking light

doth light of light beguile"²⁰comes as close to lapsing into nonsense as do any of Armado's verbal
flights of fancy. However, while Berowne can and does indulge in such verbal fireworks with
grace and ease ex tempore whenever it suits his ends, his parody retails his verbal confections,
which are the result of a self-conscious effort at imitating those he should like to be mistaken for,
without regard to the occasion and matter. Unlike the witty Berowne, Armado is apt to miss the
target altogether. His constant violation of decorum go beyond the practice of doubling the recom-

mended stylistic device known as copiousness, a practice no rhetoricianwould have condoned. A
single sentence from Armado's celebrated letter to Navarre will suffice. In addition to imitating
Lylyan antitheses, Armado piles up his verbs without deriving any additional matter from his
pedantic redundancies: "Where, I mean, I did encounter that obsceneand most preposterous
event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-colored ink, which here thou viewest, be-



18_{It is possible that the play was revised for the command performance at court during the Christmas season of}
1597; I wish I knew what belongs tothe original play and what was altered or augmented.
19_{Love's Labor's Lost,I.i.162-6;173-4.}
20_LLL.I.i.77.

cpb@gac.edu: CRC 98 Paper5January, 1998