Love's Labour's Lost

Last week we went to see William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost performed by Montana Shakespeare in the Parks. This has to be one of my all time favorites. Not only is it fast-paced and witty, but it defies the conventional definitions of both comedy and tragedy, falling someplace between the two. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the play is the comic relief that Holofernes presents through his musings on language. He is presented as a Latin scholar, but reveals himself as a linguistical bumbling idiot - it's funny stuff. Act V scene I might just be my favorite scene in the play:

Act 5, Scene 1

SCENE I. The same.

Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL

HOLOFERNES

Satis quod sufficit.

SIR NATHANIEL

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 with-
out heresy. I did converse this quondam day with
a companion of the king's, who is intituled, nomi-
nated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

HOLOFERNES

Novi hominem tanquam te: his humour 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

A most singular and choice epithet.

Draws out his table-book

HOLOFERNES

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; neighbour vocatur nebor; neigh
abbreviated ne. This is abhominable,--which he
would call abbominable: it insinuateth me of
insanie: anne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.

SIR NATHANIEL

Laus Deo, bene intelligo.

HOLOFERNES

Bon, bon, fort bon, Priscian! a little scratch'd,
'twill serve.

SIR NATHANIEL

Videsne quis venit?

HOLOFERNES

Video, et gaudeo.

Enter DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD
DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Chirrah!

To MOTH

HOLOFERNES

Quare chirrah, not sirrah?
DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Men of peace, well encountered.

HOLOFERNES

Most military sir, salutation.

MOTH

[Aside to COSTARD] They have been at a great feast
of languages, and stolen the scraps.

COSTARD

O, they have lived 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
swallowed than a flap-dragon.

MOTH

Peace! the peal begins.
DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

[To HOLOFERNES] Monsieur, are you not lettered?

MOTH

Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a,
b, spelt backward, with the horn on his head?

HOLOFERNES

Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

MOTH

Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.

HOLOFERNES

Quis, quis, thou consonant?

MOTH

The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or
the fifth, if I.

HOLOFERNES

I will repeat them,--a, e, i,--

MOTH

The sheep: the other two concludes it,--o, u.
DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

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

Offered by a child to an old man; which is wit-old.

HOLOFERNES

What is the figure? what is the figure?

MOTH

Horns.

HOLOFERNES

Thou disputest like an infant: go, whip thy gig.

MOTH

Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about
your infamy circum circa,--a gig of a cuckold's horn.

COSTARD

An 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, an
the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but my
bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me!
Go to; thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers'
ends, as they say.

HOLOFERNES

O, I smell false Latin; dunghill for unguem.
DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

Arts-man, preambulate, we will be singled from the
barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the
charge-house on the top of the mountain?

HOLOFERNES

Or mons, the hill.
DON

ADRIANO DE ARMADO

At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.

If you are ever presented the opportunity to see this play performed, I recommend it. It is well worth it.