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What is the bearing of the reference to him upon the Play? How is the joke of the rhyme in which the Boy got the better of his Master by selling him the "Goose" to be explained? It is better however, to leave them out, as they are left out in the Folio text, if it is understood that the Boy Moth, repeats ll. 91-92, after Armado has said them.
Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar? Moth. The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since: but, I think, now 'tis not to be found; or, if it were, it would neither serve for the writing, nor for the tune. Armado. I will have the subject newly writ over, that I may example my digression by some mighty precedent. Love's Labour's Lost.
Subsequent examination of the text of "Love's Labor's Lost" has enabled the critics to satisfy themselves that the part of Don Adnano de Armado, the "phantastical courtier," was devised to exhibit another phase in the character of the Resolute Italian. In Holofernes we have the pedantic tutor; in Don Adriano a lively picture of a ridiculous lover and pompous retainer of the court.
And Holofernes, the schoolmaster, who cultivates minds, and Sir Nathaniel, the curate, who cures them, and Don Armado or Don Adramadio, from the flowery heights of the new Belles Lettres, with the last refinement of Euphuism on his lips, and Antony Dull, and the country damsel and her swain, and the princess and her attendants, are all there to eke out and complete the philosophic design, to exhibit the extant learning in its airy flights and gross descents, in its ludicrous attempt to escape from those particulars or to grapple, without loss of grandeur, those particulars of which man's life consisteth.
Then Armado begins the "lenvoy" with the intention that the Boy will also repeat that and that being the end, turn the laugh on himself by calling himself the Goose. But the Boy is too clever. He says it ends where it should. Costard declares the Boy has sold him, and both laugh to the bewilderment of Armado.
"This answer," says Fulke Greville, in a style worthy of Don Adriano de Armado, "did, like a bellows, blowing up the sparks of excess already kindled, make my lord scornfully call Sir Philip by the name of puppy.
It is impossible, Baconians cry, that the rabbit-stealer, brought up among the Audreys and Jaquenettas of Warwickshire, should have created the noble and witty ladies of the Court; and known the style of his Armado; and understood how dukes and kings talk among themselves usually in blank verse, it appears.
As Shakespeare laughs broadly at it in Holofernes or Armado, so he is the analyst of its curious charm in Biron; and this analysis involves a delicate raillery by Shakespeare himself at his own chosen manner.
Armado now takes his next turn at making Costard's sentence a hollow mockery by sending him as a messenger to Jacquenetta. How is this first letter-carrying made to lead to a second, doubling the mockery and promising new confusions? Has Moth anything to do with the scheme of the Play? Who is the "Boy" of whom Berowne speaks repeatedly in his speech concluding this Act?
By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty, enfreedoming thy person: thou wert immured, captivated, bound. Costard. True, true, and now you will be my purgation, and let me loose. Armado. I give thee thy liberty, set thee free from durance; and in lieu thereof impose on thee nothing but this. By the time the court had concluded its session it was eight o'clock in the evening.
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