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Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise.
Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye,
Not uttered by base sale of chapmen’s tongues.
I am less proud to hear you tell my worth
Than you much willing to be counted wise
In spending your wit in the praise of mine. (2.1.13–19)
These are the first words the Princess speaks in the play. She addresses them to her attending lord, Boyet, who has been flattering her as they wait for the King of Navarre to greet them. The Princess dismisses his words, insisting that “the painted flourish of . . . praise” doesn’t make her any worthier than she already is. In fact, all his words do is show off his wit. Significantly, this is the same basic critique that she and her ladies will lodge against the lords later in the play, when their love sonnets prove to be little more than exercises in self-indulgence. Instead of truly capturing the women they are supposed to be about, these sonnets deal exclusively in worn-out tropes.
Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles, agree,
This civil war of wits were much better used
On Navarre and his bookmen, for here ’tis abused. (2.1.237–39)
The Princess addresses these lines to her consort after the King and his lords have departed to return to court. As Boyet and the ladies jest amongst themselves, the Princess breaks in to tell them to save their cleverness for the men of Navarre. Already at this point in the play it’s clear to the Princess that, for however long they remain, she and her ladies will be engaged in a flirtatious battle. These lines, then, foreshadow the joking and mockery that will consistently show the women to be the superior wits.
But come, the bow. Now mercy goes to kill,
And shooting well is then accounted ill.
Thus will I save my credit in the shoot:
Not wounding, pity would not let me do ’t;
If wounding, then it was to show my skill,
That more for praise than purpose meant to kill. (4.1.25–31)
The Princess says these words as she prepares to shoot a deer on a hunt in the forest. Though it pains her to harm an animal, she’s willing to shoot not just to wound but to kill—a feat that will prove her skill and earn her praise. Curiously, her claim to want praise contradicts her first speech in the play, when she tells Boyet his flattery of her does nothing but show off his own wit. However, this new claim echoes the King’s opening speech, where he announces his desire for “fame” (1.1.1). Her attitude has clearly shifted due to her flirtation with the King, whom she now wishes to impress. As a huntress, the Princess reverses the conventional gendering of the hunt, in which a male archer——the “shooter” who is also a “suitor”—pursues a female deer. She delights in this reversal several lines later, where she slyly confirms her intentions to win the King: “praise we may afford / To any lady that subdues a lord” (4.1.41–42).
