Act 3, Scene 6

Camp before Florence.

[Enter BERTRAM, and the two French Lords.]
First Lord (Dumaine)
1565 Nay, good my lord, put him to't; let him have his way.
Second Lord (Dumaine)
1566 If your lordship find him not a hilding, hold me no more in your
1567 respect.
First Lord (Dumaine)
1568 On my life, my lord, a bubble.
Bertram
1569 Do you think I am so far deceived in him?
First Lord (Dumaine)
1570 Believe it, my lord, in mine own direct knowledge, without any
1571 malice, but to speak of him as my kinsman, he's a most notable
1572 coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker,
1573 the owner of no one good quality worthy your lordship's
1574 entertainment.
Second Lord (Dumaine)
1575 It were fit you knew him; lest, reposing too far in his virtue,
1576 which he hath not, he might at some great and trusty business, in
1577 a main danger fail you.
Bertram
1578 I would I knew in what particular action to try him.
Second Lord (Dumaine)
1579 None better than to let him fetch off his drum, which you hear
1580 him so confidently undertake to do.
First Lord (Dumaine)
1581 I with a troop of Florentines will suddenly surprise him; such I
1582 will have whom I am sure he knows not from the enemy; we will
1583 bind and hoodwink him so that he shall suppose no other but that
1584 he is carried into the leaguer of the adversaries when we bring
1585 him to our own tents. Be but your lordship present at his
1586 examination; if he do not, for the promise of his life, and in
1587 the highest compulsion of base fear, offer to betray you, and
1588 deliver all the intelligence in his power against you, and that
1589 with the divine forfeit of his soul upon oath, never trust my
1590 judgment in anything.
Second Lord (Dumaine)
1591 O, for the love of laughter, let him fetch his drum; he says he
1592 has a stratagem for't: when your lordship sees the bottom of his
1593 success in't, and to what metal this counterfeit lump of ore will
1594 be melted, if you give him not John Drum's entertainment, your
1595 inclining cannot be removed. Here he comes.
First Lord (Dumaine)
1596 O, for the love of laughter, hinder not the honour of his design:
1597 let him fetch off his drum in any hand.
[Enter PAROLLES.]
Bertram
1598 How now, monsieur! this drum sticks sorely in your disposition.
Second Lord (Dumaine)
1599 A pox on 't; let it go; 'tis but a drum.
Parolles
1600 But a drum! Is't but a drum? A drum so lost!—There was excellent
1601 command! to charge in with our horse upon our own wings, and to
1602 rend our own soldiers.
Second Lord (Dumaine)
1603 That was not to be blamed in the command of the service; it was a
1604 disaster of war that Caesar himself could not have prevented, if
1605 he had been there to command.
Bertram
1606 Well, we cannot greatly condemn our success: some dishonour we
1607 had in the loss of that drum; but it is not to be recovered.
Parolles
1608 It might have been recovered.
Bertram
1609 It might, but it is not now.
Parolles
1610 It is to be recovered: but that the merit of service is seldom
1611 attributed to the true and exact performer, I would have that
1612 drum or another, or hic jacet.
Bertram
1613 Why, if you have a stomach, to't, monsieur, if you think your
1614 mystery in stratagem can bring this instrument of honour again
1615 into his native quarter, be magnanimous in the enterprise, and go
1616 on; I will grace the attempt for a worthy exploit; if you speed
1617 well in it, the duke shall both speak of it and extend to you
1618 what further becomes his greatness, even to the utmost syllable
1619 of your worthiness.
Parolles
1620 By the hand of a soldier, I will undertake it.
Bertram
1621 But you must not now slumber in it.
Parolles
1622 I'll about it this evening: and I will presently pen down my
1623 dilemmas, encourage myself in my certainty, put myself into my
1624 mortal preparation; and, by midnight, look to hear further from
1625 me.
Bertram
1626 May I be bold to acquaint his grace you are gone about it?
Parolles
1627 I know not what the success will be, my lord, but the attempt I
1628 vow.
Bertram
1629 I know thou art valiant; and, to the possibility of thy
1630 soldiership, will subscribe for thee. Farewell.
Parolles
1631 I love not many words.
[Exit.]
First Lord (Dumaine)
1632 No more than a fish loves water.—Is not this a strange fellow,
1633 my lord? that so confidently seems to undertake this business,
1634 which he knows is not to be done; damns himself to do, and dares
1635 better be damned than to do't.
Second Lord (Dumaine)
1636 You do not know him, my lord, as we do: certain it is that he
1637 will steal himself into a man's favour, and for a week escape a
1638 great deal of discoveries; but when you find him out, you have
1639 him ever after.
Bertram
1640 Why, do you think he will make no deed at all of this, that so
1641 seriously he does address himself unto?
First Lord (Dumaine)
1642 None in the world: but return with an invention, and clap upon
1643 you two or three probable lies: but we have almost embossed him,
1644 —you shall see his fall to-night: for indeed he is not for your
1645 lordship's respect.
Second Lord (Dumaine)
1646 We'll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him. He was
1647 first smok'd by the old Lord Lafeu: when his disguise and he is
1648 parted, tell me what a sprat you shall find him; which you shall
1649 see this very night.
First Lord (Dumaine)
1650 I must go look my twigs; he shall be caught.
Bertram
1651 Your brother, he shall go along with me.
First Lord (Dumaine)
1652 As't please your lordship: I'll leave you.
[Exit.]
Bertram
1653 Now will I lead you to the house, and show you
1654 The lass I spoke of.
Second Lord (Dumaine)
1655 But you say she's honest.
Bertram
1656 That's all the fault: I spoke with her but once,
1657 And found her wondrous cold; but I sent to her,
1658 By this same coxcomb that we have i' the wind,
1659 Tokens and letters which she did re-send;
1660 And this is all I have done. She's a fair creature;
1661 Will you go see her?
Second Lord (Dumaine)
1662 With all my heart, my lord.
[Exeunt.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1566archaic vocab
“find him not a hilding”
A 'hilding' is a base, worthless coward — a contemptible wretch good for nothing. Second Lord Dumaine is telling Bertram that if Parolles is not exposed as exactly this, Bertram may stop trusting their judgment entirely.
TLN 1568archaic vocab
“my lord, a bubble”
A 'bubble' here means a hollow fraud — something that looks substantial but is nothing inside. First Lord Dumaine reduces Parolles to the simplest possible image: all surface, no content. The word was already a common Elizabethan term for a cheat or a person of empty show.
TLN 1594archaic vocab
“give him not John Drum's entertainment”
'John Drum's entertainment' was a proverbial phrase for an ungracious, humiliating dismissal — the equivalent of being thrown out on your ear. Second Lord Dumaine is saying: once you see how pathetically Parolles performs this mission, you will have no excuse left not to give him the rough send-off he deserves.
TLN 1604historical topical
“Caesar himself could not have prevented”
Second Lord Dumaine invokes Julius Caesar as the supreme standard of military genius to excuse the drum's loss: even the greatest general who ever lived could not have prevented such a disaster. For Elizabethan audiences, Caesar was the shorthand name for matchless tactical command, familiar from Plutarch and from the stage.
TLN 1612archaic vocab
“drum or another, or hic jacet”
'Hic jacet' is Latin for 'here lies' — the standard first words of a tomb inscription. Parolles is promising to come back with the drum, or with another drum, or dead. He is swearing on his life, but his grandiose choice of a gravestone phrase already tips the scene toward comedy, since the audience knows from First Lord's aside that he has no intention of actually trying.
classical The miles gloriosus (the braggart soldier)
TLN 1622rhetorical device
“pen down my dilemmas, encourage myself in my certainty, put myself into my mortal preparation”
Parolles produces a pompous cascade of military-sounding phrases: he will write down his 'dilemmas' (the tactical difficulties he faces), steel his resolve, and make himself 'ready for death' (mortal preparation). Each phrase inflates itself beyond the occasion. The comedy is that writing down a list of your own difficulties and talking yourself into confidence are precisely what a real soldier would not need to do — it is all theatrical performance.
classical The miles gloriosus (the braggart soldier)
TLN 1643archaic vocab
“we have almost embossed him”
To 'emboss' a hunted animal was to drive it until it was foaming at the mouth and exhausted — cornered and spent. First Lord Dumaine is using hunting language: Parolles is the quarry, and the lords have almost run him to ground. The metaphor sets up the fox-hunting imagery that follows in the next line ('the fox').
TLN 1646archaic vocab
“make you some sport with the fox ere we case him”
To 'case' a fox is to skin it — to strip off its hide. Second Lord Dumaine is promising Bertram some sport at Parolles's expense before they finally expose and strip away his disguise. The fox was proverbially cunning; calling Parolles a fox frames the whole drum-plot as a hunt for a clever, skulking animal. The word 'smok'd' in the next line (to 'smoke out' a fox from its hole) continues the same hunting metaphor.
classical The miles gloriosus (the braggart soldier)
TLN 1655cultural context
“you say she's honest”
'Honest' in Elizabethan English applied to a woman almost always meant sexually chaste — still a virgin, or faithful to her husband. When Second Lord asks 'But you say she's honest,' he is noting that the woman Bertram is pursuing is chaste. Bertram's reply, 'That's all the fault,' makes plain that he is specifically trying to overcome her chastity — he treats her virtue as an obstacle rather than a reason to stop.
historical A woman's honour: chastity and the double standardhistorical The bed-trick