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Summary
The Princess and her party go into the woods on a hunt. Costard finds them and gives the Princess a letter, telling her it is for Rosaline from Berowne. The letter he gives her, however, is actually for Jaquenetta. Boyet reads the letter, which is signed “Don Armado,” and the Princess tells Costard that he has delivered the letter mistakenly.
Sometime later, Holofernes, Nathaniel, and Dull discuss the hunt they have just witnessed. They argue about whether the deer the Princess has killed was a pricket (i.e., a buck in its second year), and Holofernes presents “an extemporal epitaph on the death of the deer” (4.2.59–60). Jaquenetta and Costard arrive, and Jaquenetta asks Holofernes and Nathaniel to read the letter that Costard has delivered to her, which she believes to be the letter written to her by Armado. Nathaniel reads the letter aloud. The text consists of a love sonnet, and he and Holofernes proceed to critique the poetry. Holofernes then examines the letter and informs Jaquenetta that it was addressed to Rosaline from Berowne. He instructs her to bring the letter to the King.
Analysis
As act 4 opens, it quickly becomes evident that Shakespeare’s emphasis on wordplay will continue as a strategy for building romantic tension. Much of the first scene unfolds through suggestive punning in relation to the activity at hand: hunting. Hunting has long been a rich subject for double entendre, given the charged dynamics at play as the hunter scopes out, takes aim at, and finally shoots an arrow at the vulnerable game. The scene begins with the French consort in the forest of Navarre, as the Princess takes up bow and arrow and succeeds in shooting a deer. After the interruption of Armado’s mistakenly delivered letter, the scene quickly returns to the hunt at hand as Boyet calls out, “Who is the shooter? Who is the shooter?” (4.1.123). His use of shooter puns on the word suitor, instantly associating the image of the archer with romantic aims. Continuing with the wordplay, Boyet and Rosaline engage in witty repartee in which the “horns” of a deer become the sign of a cuckolded male. They also chat suggestively about target practice, with Boyet declaring, “Let the mark have a prick in ‘t” (4.1.154).
The entendre in this scene is indeed relentless. But what’s especially interesting is the way the conventional gender roles of the hunter (male) and the hunted (female) frequently become slippery. When Boyet makes his comment about the “prick” in the “mark,” he is clearly referencing the conventional sexual relationship between a man and a woman. However, it’s noteworthy that the scene opens with the Princess herself as the archer. Like Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, she demonstrates that she isn’t just a fair shooter (i.e., a beautiful huntress); she’s also “the fairest shoot” (4.1.12; i.e., the most gifted markswoman). Also noteworthy is the Princess’s claim that she has no real desire to harm the deer she’s aiming at. But she acknowledges the unusual power dynamic at play and contrives a metaphor about female dominance. As she puts it, she’s looking “only for praise; and praise we may afford / To any lady that subdues a lord” (4.1.41–42). The sexual tension implicit here is palpable, and we may take this statement as the Princess’s sly announcement of a desire to “subdue” the King.
In the second scene of act 4, the word games continue, this time providing a farcical critique of the pedantry often involved in scholarship. The schoolteacher Holofernes and the curate Nathaniel are both ridiculous characters. They are irritating in their pretentious use of Latin, and yet also amusing for their frequent mistakes. Most modern audiences aren’t likely to notice problems with case endings, incorrect translations, and mistaken quotations from Roman poets. However, anyone in an Elizabethan audience who’d gone to grammar school is likely to have laughed uproariously at this scene. But even if we don’t get all the humor, what’s most important in this scene is the fact that it’s clearly making fun of the very pursuit the King and his lords are supposed to be pursuing. Book learning, at least the way Holofernes and Nathaniel do it, is obviously ludicrous.
The absurdity of it all reaches a climax when Jaquenetta arrives and asks these men to read her letter aloud for her. What they find is a somewhat accomplished sonnet penned by Berowne, but one in which he claims to turn away from books so he may study his new beloved. The tension between the rhetorical sophistication of the poem and the poet’s express desire to give up on study is striking. So, too, is the falling action of scene 2, where Holofernes goes on to insist that the poem is, in fact, no good. He invites Nathaniel to sup with him at a pupil’s house, where they will continue their discourse and he “will prove those verses to be very unlearned, neither savoring of poetry, wit, nor invention” (4.2.183–85). The scholar’s desire to be correct as well as superior here increasingly contrasts with the romantic’s desire to break free from the constraints of pedantry and enjoy more liberating pursuits. Here, we strongly feel the restrictive rules of the lords’ oath breaking down.
