Armado: Language Gone Too Far
First appears: Act 1, Scene 2
Armado is the play's most extreme example of language-as-self-inflation. He cannot say anything in fewer than fifty words. His letters, his speeches, his declarations: all are monuments to elaborate nothing. He is also, underneath all the verbiage, genuinely in love with Jaquenetta.
Holofernes, who is also absurdly verbose, describes him magnificently: 'He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.'
His final moment (he reveals he has no shirt, because he gave his shirt to Jaquenetta) is one of the most unexpectedly touching things in a play full of deflation.
Key Scenes
Famous Quotes
“I do affect the very ground, which is base, where her shoe, which is baser, guided by her foot, which is basest, doth tread.”
Don Adriano de Armado — Act 1, Scene 2
“I will hereupon confess I am in love: and as it is base for a soldier to love, so am I in love with a base wench.”
Don Adriano de Armado — Act 1, Scene 2
Themes
Other Characters in Love's Labour's Lost
Test Your Knowledge
Think you know your Shakespeare? Put it to the test with one of our free quizzes.
See all quizzes →