Act 4, Scene 2

The same.

Sir Nathaniel
1048 Very reverent sport, truly; and done in the testimony of
1049 a good conscience.
Holofernes
1050 The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as
1051 the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo,
1052 the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on
1053 the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.
Sir Nathaniel
1054 Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly
1055 varied, like a scholar at the least: but, sir, I assure ye it was
1056 a buck of the first head.
Holofernes
1057 Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.
Anthony Dull
1058 Twas not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket.
Holofernes
1059 Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of insinuation,
1060 as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were,
1061 replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his
1062 inclination,—after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated,
1063 unpruned, untrained, or rather, unlettered, or ratherest,
1064 unconfirmed fashion,—to insert again my haud credo for a deer.
Anthony Dull
1065 I sthe deer was not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket.
Holofernes
1066 Twice sod simplicity, bis coctus!
1067 O! thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!
Sir Nathaniel
1068 Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred of a book;
1069 he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his
1070 intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible
1071 in the duller parts:
1072 And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should
1073 be,
1074 Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that do
1075 fructify in us more than he;
1076 For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool,
1077 So, were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school.
1078 But, omne bene, say I; being of an old Father's mind:
1079 Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.
Anthony Dull
1080 You two are book-men: can you tell me by your wit,
1081 What was a month old at Cain's birth, that's not five weeks old
1082 as yet?
Holofernes
1083 Dictynna, goodman Dull; Dictynna, goodman Dull.
Anthony Dull
1084 What is Dictynna?
Sir Nathaniel
1085 A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon.
Holofernes
1086 The moon was a month old when Adam was no more,
1087 And raught not to five weeks when he came to five-score.
1088 The allusion holds in the exchange.
Anthony Dull
1089 'Tis true, indeed; the collusion holds in the exchange.
Holofernes
1090 God comfort thy capacity! I say, the allusion holds in
1091 the exchange.
Anthony Dull
1092 And I say the pollusion holds in the exchange, for the moon is
1093 never but a month old; and I say beside that 'twas a pricket
1094 that the Princess killed.
Holofernes
1095 Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the death
1096 of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, I have call'd the deer
1097 the Princess killed, a pricket.
Sir Nathaniel
1098 Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge; so it shall please
1099 you to abrogate scurrility.
Holofernes
1100 I will something affect the letter; for it argues facility.
1101 The preyful Princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing
1102 pricket;
1103 Some say a sore; but not a sore till now made sore with
1104 shooting.
1105 The dogs did yell; put L to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket-
1106 Or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting.
1107 If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores one sorel!
1108 Of one sore I an hundred make, by adding but one more L.
Sir Nathaniel
1109 A rare talent!
[Aside]
Anthony Dull
1110 If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a
1111 talent.
Holofernes
1112 This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish
1113 extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects,
1114 ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in
1115 the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and
1116 delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in
1117 those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.
Sir Nathaniel
1118 Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners; for
1119 their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit
1120 very greatly under you: you are a good member of the
1121 commonwealth.
Holofernes
1122 Mehercle! if their sons be ingenious, they shall want no
1123 instruction; if their daughters be capable, I will put it to
1124 them; but, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur. A soul feminine saluteth
1125 us.
[Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD.]
Jaquenetta
1126 God give you good morrow, Master parson.
Holofernes
1127 Master parson, quasi pers-on. And if one should be
1128 pierced, which is the one?
Costard
1129 Marry, Master schoolmaster, he that is likest to a hogshead.
Holofernes
1130 Piercing a hogshead! A good lustre or conceit in a turf
1131 of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine; 'tis
1132 pretty; it is well.
Jaquenetta
1133 Good Master parson
[Giving a letter to NATHANIEL.]
Jaquenetta
1134 , be so good as
1135 read me this letter: it was given me by Costard, and sent me from
1136 Don Armado: I beseech you read it.
Holofernes
1137 'Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra Ruminat,'
1138 and so forth. Ah! good old Mantuan. I may speak of thee as
1139 the traveller doth of Venice:
1140 —Venetia, Venetia,
1141 Chi non ti vede, non ti pretia.
1142 Old Mantuan! old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not,
1143 loves thee not. Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa. Under pardon, sir, what
1144 are the contents? or rather as Horace says in his— What, my
1145 soul, verses?
Sir Nathaniel
1146 Ay, sir, and very learned.
Holofernes
1147 Let me hear a staff, a stanze, a verse; lege, domine.
Sir Nathaniel
1148 If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?
1149 Ah! never faith could hold, if not to beauty vow'd;
1150 Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll faithful prove;
1151 Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed.
1152 Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes,
1153 Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend:
1154 If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice.
1155 Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend;
1156 All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder;
1157 Which is to me some praise that I thy parts admire.
1158 Thy eye Jove's lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder,
1159 Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire.
1160 Celestial as thou art, O! pardon love this wrong,
1161 That sings heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue.
Holofernes
1162 You find not the apostrophas, and so miss the accent:
1163 let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified;
1164 but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy,
1165 caret. Ovidius Naso was the man: and why, indeed, Naso but for
1166 smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of
1167 invention? Imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the
1168 ape his keeper, the 'tired horse his rider. But, damosella
1169 virgin, was this directed to you?
Jaquenetta
1170 Ay, sir; from one Monsieur Berowne, one of the strange
1171 queen's lords.
Holofernes
1172 I will overglance the superscript: 'To the snow-white
1173 hand of the most beauteous Lady Rosaline.' I will look again on
1174 the intellect of the letter, for the nomination of the party
1175 writing to the person written unto: 'Your Ladyship's in all
1176 desired employment, Berowne.'—Sir Nathaniel, this Berowne is one
1177 of the votaries with the king; and here he hath framed a letter
1178 to a sequent of the stranger queen's, which, accidentally, or by
1179 the way of progression, hath miscarried. Trip and go, my sweet;
1180 deliver this paper into the royal hand of the king; it may
1181 concern much. Stay not thy compliment; I forgive thy duty. Adieu.
Jaquenetta
1182 Good Costard, go with me. Sir, God save your life!
Costard
1183 Have with thee, my girl.
[Exeunt COSTARD and JAQUENETTA.]
Sir Nathaniel
1184 Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously;
1185 and, as a certain Father saith—
Holofernes
1186 Sir, tell not me of the Father; I do fear colourable colours. But
1187 to return to the verses: did they please you, Sir Nathaniel?
Sir Nathaniel
1188 Marvellous well for the pen.
Holofernes
1189 I do dine to-day at the father's of a certain pupil of
1190 mine; where, if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify
1191 the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the
1192 parents of the foresaid child or pupil, undertake your ben
1193 venuto; where I will prove those verses to be very unlearned,
1194 neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech your
1195 society.
Sir Nathaniel
1196 And thank you too; for society,—saith the text,—is the
1197 happiness of life.
Holofernes
1198 And certes, the text most infallibly concludes it.
[To DULL]
Holofernes
1199 Sir, I do invite you too; you shall not say me nay:
1200 pauca verba. Away! the gentles are at their game, and we will to
1201 our recreation.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1050rhetorical device
“sanguis, in blood; ripe as the pomewater”
Holofernes piles up synonyms in English and Latin — 'sanguis' (Latin for 'blood,' meaning in prime condition for hunting), 'caelo' for sky, 'terra' for earth — then adds an English gloss to each. This accumulation of near-identical words in two languages is 'synonymia,' a figure of speech that was a standard school exercise; Shakespeare parodies it here as pompous pedantry.
TLN 1057archaic vocab
“haud credo”
'Haud credo' is Latin for 'I do not believe it' or 'I hardly think so' — a scholar's way of disagreeing. The joke is that the dim constable Dull mishears this Latin phrase as the name of an actual deer: 'Twas not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket.' A 'pricket' is a two-year-old male deer with straight spike-like horns — a real hunting term Dull would know, even if he knows no Latin at all.
TLN 1066archaic vocab
“Twice sod simplicity, bis coctus”
Holofernes calls Dull a 'twice-boiled simpleton' — he translates his own Latin insult, 'bis coctus' (literally 'twice cooked'), immediately into English. The phrase derives from the Latin proverb 'bis coctus stultus,' a twice-boiled or twice-repeated fool — someone so thick that even cooking twice over couldn't improve him. 'Sod' is an archaic past participle of 'seethe' (to boil).
TLN 1083classical allusion
“Dictynna, goodman Dull; Dictynna, goodman Dull”
Dull has asked a riddle: what was a month old at creation and is never yet five weeks old? The answer is the moon. Holofernes answers with the obscure epithet 'Dictynna' — a Cretan name for the moon goddess, related to the Greek word for 'net' and used as an alternative title for Diana/Artemis in her lunar aspect. Nathaniel helpfully adds the more familiar names: Phoebe and Luna.
classical Diana, virgin goddess of the moon
TLN 1100rhetorical device
“I will something affect the letter; for it argues facility”
Holofernes announces he will 'affect the letter' — meaning he will use alliteration. He then produces a doggerel epitaph in which nearly every stressed word starts with the same consonant: 'The preyful Princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket.' The piling up of P-words is 'paroemion' or extreme alliteration, a recognised rhetorical device that was considered crude when overdone. 'It argues facility' means it shows he can do it effortlessly.
TLN 1103wordplay
“Some say a sore; but not a sore till now made sore with shooting”
Holofernes builds a cascade of puns on deer-age terms: a 'sore' is a four-year-old male deer; made 'sore' (wounded) by the arrow it becomes punnable; adding the letter L (Roman numeral 50) to 'sore' gives 'sorel,' a three-year-old deer; adding two L's (100) makes 'fifty sores one sorel'; and so on. The poem is a display of wit that turns on both hunting vocabulary and the Roman numeral L = 50.
TLN 1115cultural context
“ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater”
Holofernes describes his poetic inspiration in the language of Renaissance brain anatomy. The 'ventricles' of the brain were three hollow chambers believed to house the mental faculties: the front ventricle (imagination), the middle (reason), and the rear (memory). The 'pia mater' is the thin, delicate membrane covering the brain — the innermost of three layers — whose name is Latin for 'tender mother.' Holofernes claims his creativity gestates there like a baby.
TLN 1122archaic vocab
“Mehercle”
'Mehercle' is a Latin oath meaning 'by Hercules!' — from 'me Hercule,' literally 'Hercules [be my witness].' It was a standard classical exclamation of surprise or emphasis, used by Plautus, Terence, and Cicero. Holofernes reaches for this Latin exclamation where a plain English speaker would simply say 'By God!' or 'Indeed!' — another marker of his relentless, impractical bookishness.
classical Hercules and his labours
TLN 1124archaic vocab
“vir sapit qui pauca loquitur”
A Latin tag meaning 'that man is wise who speaks little' — a proverbial saying that Holofernes quotes to end his conversation. The irony is crushing: he has just spent the entire scene drowning every simple point in cascades of synonyms, Latin glosses, and unsolicited demonstrations of learning, and he signs off with a maxim praising brevity.
TLN 1138historical topical
“good old Mantuan. I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice”
Holofernes quotes the opening of a famous Latin poem by 'old Mantuan' — Baptista Spagnuoli Mantuanus (1447-1516), an Italian Carmelite friar whose Latin eclogues were the standard school poetry text in Tudor England. The line 'Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra / Ruminat' opens his first eclogue: 'Faustus, I pray, when all the flock rests under the cool shade.' Holofernes then quotes an Italian proverb about Venice: 'Venetia, Venetia, chi non ti vede, non ti pretia' — 'Venice, Venice, who has not seen you, cannot value you' — applying the same logic to Mantuan.
TLN 1158classical allusion
“Thy eye Jove's lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder”
Berowne's sonnet to Rosaline compares her eyes to Jupiter's ('Jove's') lightning and her voice to his thunder. Jove (Jupiter) was the king of the Roman gods, and his traditional weapons were the thunderbolt and lightning. This is a standard Renaissance love-poetry hyperbole: to praise a woman's eyes by linking them to the most powerful force in classical heaven. The compliment carries more weight because Berowne is supposed to be sworn off women and their power.
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 1164wordplay
“golden cadence of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man: and why, indeed, Naso but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy”
Holofernes pronounces Berowne's sonnet technically competent in metre ('numbers ratified') but lacking 'golden cadence' — i.e., true poetic grace. 'Caret' is Latin for 'it is lacking.' He then declares that Ovid ('Ovidius Naso') was the true poet — and then puns on Ovid's cognomen 'Naso,' which is Latin for 'nose': Ovid had a nose for sniffing out ('smelling out') the 'odoriferous flowers of fancy.' The pun is elaborate, ridiculous, and entirely characteristic of Holofernes.