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Why, all delights are vain, and that most vain
Which with pain purchased doth inherit pain:
As painfully to pore upon a book
To seek the light of truth, while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.
Light seeking light doth light of light beguile.
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. (1.1.74–81)
Berowne speaks these lines to his King and his fellow lords as part of his argument against their shared oath to retreat into study. At first glance, his reasoning seems to be mere sophistry—that is, unnecessarily complicated language used to put forward a dubious or outright false argument. But however convoluted it may initially seem, he does make a fair point: if the scholar aims “to seek the light of truth,” it’s possible that the truth he thinks he discovers is actually false and could “blind the eyesight of his look.” In seeking light, then, he may confound himself and end up in darkness. In this way, study may be the form of delight that is “most vain.”
This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity,
A green goose a goddess. Pure, pure idolatry.
God amend us, God amend. We are much out o’ th’ way. (4.3.74–76)
Berowne says these words as an aside after listening to Longaville read out his love sonnet for Maria. He’s essentially saying that he and the other lords are now all too far gone with their poetry. By giving free reign to “the liver vein,” which was associated with the passions, they have deified their beloveds in a way that can only be described as “pure, pure idolatry.” The truth of this observation will become even clearer later in this scene, when the lords get carried away in an argument about their own poetic conceits. Clearly, they are more invested in the conventions of poetry than in the women they are meant to be describing. By creating false images of their beloveds, the lords’ verses are indeed idolatrous.
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive.
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire.
They are the books, the arts, the academes
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.
. . .
For wisdom’s sake, a word that all men love,
Or for love’s sake, a word that loves all men,
Or for men’s sake, the authors of these women,
Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men,
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths. (4.3.344–56)
After the King and his lords all realize that they have forsworn their oath to scholarship by falling in love with women, Berowne gives this speech to help the noblemen regroup around a new vow. This speech may be read as a revision of the King’s opening speech, where he declared his intention to make his court “a little academe” (1.1.13). But whereas the King’s academe was to be centered on book learning, Berowne offers a renewed vision in which the true subject of study isn’t the liberal arts but the art of loving liberally. He declares that he’s derived this new “doctrine” from the sparkle in “women’s eyes,” which he compares to “Promethean fire,” a classic symbol of human knowledge. In order truly to pursue “wisdom,” then, the lords must abandon their previous, life-denying oath and commit to a new course of study.
