to Henry. She had been only six years old when her father died. However, the French royal family, at the time the play was written, seemed indeed decrepit, sick, and bed-rid. In 1588 Henry III of France had reigned fourteen years and though only thirty-seven was prematurely aged, and exhausted by the crises of the time and his personal excesses. Two older brothers had reigned briefly and died, one at sixteen and one at twenty-four. A younger brother was already dead at thirty, and none of the brothers left descendants.
... Armado hight
It seems that the Princess must be greeted and entertained despite all ascetic arrangements. The cynical Berowne, delighted, inquires if there is any other and more reliable entertainment allowed the scholars than the occasional visit of a princess.
The King informs him that there is an eccentric and euphuistic Spaniard at the court who can be very entertaining, albeit unconsciously so. He refers to him as:
This child of fancy, that Armado hight [is named],
- Act I, scene i, line 169
If the play were written in the aftermath of the great defeat of the Spanish fleet in 1588, a Spaniard would be a natural butt for the play, and his name, Armado (Don Adriano de Armado in full, according to the cast of characters), is a none too subtle recall of the defeated Armada.
There has been a tendency for some people to find satirical representations in all the characters of this play. If it were written for a small "in group" rather than for the general public, it might well contain "in jokes" against the personal enemies of the group in the audience.
Thus, the Earl of Essex had become Queen Elizabeth's favorite in the very years of the Armada (and this play) after her previous favorite, the Earl of Leicester, died. Essex's great rival was Sir Walter Raleigh, who had been Leicester's protege and whose nose had been put out of joint by the handsome Essex's greater success with the Queen. Some people therefore think that Armado was intended as a satire on Raleigh for the amusement of the Essex coterie. However, there seems little one can point to in what Armado says or does that has "Raleigh" written on it. (There are other candidates for the role of real-life Armado too, but none are really convincing.)
Boy, what sign...
Armado at once enters the plot, indirectly, to lend humor to it. He has spied a country bumpkin, Costard, making love to a young country girl, Jaquenetta, in defiance of the published edict against association with womankind, and has reported the matter to the authorities. Costard is arrested by Constable Dull and is turned over to the custody of Armado.
It turns out, of course, that Armado is himself in love with Jaquenetta, and he displays this in the approved manner of the puling stage lover. He uses his page as a sounding board for his melancholy and says:
Boy, what sign is it when a man
of great spirit grows melan choly?
- Act I, scene ii, lines 1-2
The page is of the smallest possible size and is named Moth (pronounced "mote" in Shakespeare's day with the obvious pun). It is his function to be witty in Shakespearean fashion, so he answers:
A great sign, sir, that he will look sad.
- Act I, scene ii, line 3
Some people have attempted to equate Moth with Thomas Nashe, a pamphleteer who was contemporary with Shakespeare and who engaged in battles of wits in polemical style with other controversialists. He was coarse, pretentious, and arrogant.
By those who think this, Armado is equated with Gabriel Harvey, another controversialist of the time who was an opponent of Nashe's. The Armado-Moth quibbling might therefore be taken to represent, with satiric inadequacy, the Homeric polemics of Harvey and Nashe.
Samson, master ...
Armado pictures himself as a warlike hero unmanned for love and demands of Moth that he give him examples of great men in love:
... and, sweet my child, let them be
men of good repute and carriage [bearing].
- Act I, scene ii, lines 68-69
Moth had already named Hercules as an example, and rightly, for he was described in the numerous myths that clustered about his name to have lain with innumerable women. Once, according to legend, he lay with fifty women in one night, impregnated them all, and ended by having fifty sons-a feat far greater, really, than all his twelve usual labors put together.
At the mention of "good repute and carriage," Moth adds, however: