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Summary
The Princess of France arrives with her entourage of ladies, including Maria, Katherine, and Rosaline. She sends Boyet, one of her attendants, to the King to announce their arrival, since she has heard of the King’s vow that “no woman may approach his silent court” (2.1.24). With Boyet gone, she asks her attendants about the other men with whom the King shares his oath. Maria describes Longaville, Katherine mentions Dumaine, and Rosaline identifies Berowne.
Boyet returns and informs the Princess that the King intends to “lodge you in the field” (2.1.87) rather than break his oath and allow women in his house. The King enters with his lords and affirms to the Princess that he cannot welcome her into his court. She hands him a letter from her father, who has written regarding a dispute related to unpaid debts and the control of the territory called Aquitaine. After discussing the matter with the Princess, the King departs while promising to visit with the ladies again the next day. Before they leave, the lords Dumaine, Longaville, and Berowne each ask Boyet for the name of the woman they fancy.
When the King and his men have gone, Boyet tells the Princess that he believes the King is “infected” (2.1.242) with love for her.
Analysis
In the single scene that makes up act 2, the seeds of affection are sown between the recently sworn lords and the newly arrived ladies. And considering all the flirtatious banter between the sexes, it seems that the lords’ oath—so strictly upheld by the King that he denies the ladies entry—will shortly fall apart. As the heads of their respective parties, the King and the Princess get the most time to address one another in this scene, and their mock-contentious chatter is brimming with sexual tension. Although they themselves don’t seem to notice the tension, we in the audience certainly do. So does Boyet, the spirited lord who, in serving the Princess, also serves as something of catalyst of romance, egging everybody on. From the very beginning of the scene, he inhabits a playful disposition intent on making people blush. The Princess’s first lines in the play are devoted to curbing this impulse in her flattering servant: “Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean, / Needs not the painted flourish of your praise” (2.1.13–14). Of course, the flattery won’t stop; rather, it will continue throughout the scene, arousing everyone’s desire.
As the lords and ladies encounter each other for the first time, it’s clear that the women’s wits generally outpace the men’s. The Princess and her ladies all speak in a language dense with clever rhetorical flourishes. When Maria, Katherine, and Rosaline take turns describing their recollections of the King’s three lords, they each demonstrate an ability to sum up their impressions of the men with remarkable efficiency. Maria, for instance, says Longaville “is a sharp wit matched with too blunt a will” (2.1.50). For her part, Katherine comments that Dumaine “hath a wit to make an ill shape good, / And shape to win grace though he had no wit” (2.1.60–61). Note her use of the rhetorical figure known as chiasmus, or “crossing,” which appears in the pattern of wit, shape . . . shape, wit. Such tight syntactical inversions characterize much of the ladies’ speech.
Great humor ensues when the ladies display a flirtatious cheekiness that flusters the men. For instance, consider this exchange between Berowne and Rosaline (2.1.116–22):
BEROWNE Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?
ROSALINE Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?
BEROWNE I know you did.
ROSALINE How needless was it then
To ask the question.
BEROWNE You must not be so quick.
ROSALINE ‘Tis long of you that spur me with such questions.
Chastened when Rosaline points out the pointlessness of his initial question, Berowne responds that she mustn’t be so “quick”—where quick means sharp and ill-tempered. But Rosaline is actually being playful, as indicated when she responds as if his “quick” simply meant “hasty.” She essentially tells him that he was the one who urged her on, like a rider spurs his horse. Now caught up on the sexual innuendo, Berowne tells her to hold her horses: her wit “speeds too fast; ‘twill tire” (2.1.123). But Rosaline is already prepared with another zinger: “Not till it leave the rider in the mire” (2.1.124). These women all seem poised to leave the men in the dust, which adds to the sexual tension and, thus, to the audience’s amusement.
