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Believe it, my lord. In mine own direct knowledge, without any malice, but to speak of him as my kinsman, he’s a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality worthy of your Lordship’s entertainment. (3.6.7–12)
The First Lord Dumaine speaks these words to Bertram, trying to convince him that Parolles is in fact a liar and a coward. This conversation leads to the plot that the First Lord and his brother design to entrap Parolles. The unflattering portrait offered here is exemplary for the way it represents how most people come to view Parolles soon after meeting him. The only one who doesn’t see Parolles’s true colors is Bertram, a fact that speaks to the young count’s general lack of perceptiveness.
Within these three hours ’twill be time enough to go home. What shall I say I have done? It must be a very plausive invention that carries it. They begin to smoke me, and disgraces have of late knocked too often at my door. I find my tongue is too foolhardy, but my heart hath the fear of Mars before it, and of his creatures, not daring the reports of my tongue. (4.1.25–32)
Parolles says these words to himself as he’s off on a mission to retrieve the regiment’s lost drum. He’s overheard by an unnamed French lord and some soldiers who are lying in wait, preparing to enact a plot in which they pretend to be foreign soldiers who capture and interrogate him. To those listening, Parolles’s words are amusing for the way they blatantly incriminate him. He clearly had no intention of finding the drum, and now he’s considering what lie he’ll tell his companions. Yet however self-incriminating these words are, it’s also important to note that Parolles has enough self-awareness to admit his own cowardice and foolhardiness to himself. This is a characteristic that the play’s supposed hero, Bertram, clearly lacks.
My meaning in ’t, I protest, was very honest in the behalf of the maid, for I knew the young count to be a dangerous and lascivious boy, who is a whale to virginity and devours up all the fry it finds. (4.3.231–35)
During Parolles’s interrogation, his companions find a letter in his pocket that’s addressed to Diana. Having acted as a go-between for Bertram, Parolles took it upon himself to write to Diana secretly and warn her about Bertram’s tendency to behave badly with women. Here Parolles explains that he felt protective of Diana, and he indicates his disdain for Bertram, whom he condemns as “a dangerous and lascivious boy.” Even though this play-acted interrogation is setting Parolles up for a harsh chastising, it’s significant from the audience’s perspective that there is some degree of nobility in Parolles. Furthermore, his harsh words about Bertram echo a similar discussion that the First and Second Lord Dumaine had earlier in the scene, where they openly discuss Bertram’s failures of character.
