Act 5, Scene 1

The King of Navarre's park.

[Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL.]
Holofernes
1595 Satis quod sufficit.
Sir Nathaniel
1596 I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have
1597 been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty
1598 without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without
1599 opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam
1600 day with a companion of the king's who is intituled, nominated,
1601 or called, Don Adriano de Armado.
Holofernes
1602 Novi hominem tanquam te: his humour is lofty, his
1603 discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his
1604 gait majestical and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and
1605 thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd,
1606 as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.
Sir Nathaniel
1607 A most singular and choice epithet.
[Draws out his table-book.]
Holofernes
1608 He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than
1609 the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes,
1610 such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of
1611 orthography, as to speak dout, fine, when he should say doubt;
1612 det when he should pronounce debt,—d, e, b, t, not d, e, t: he
1613 clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour vocatur nebour, neigh
1614 abbreviated ne. This is abhominable, which he
1615 would call abominable,—it insinuateth me of insanie: anne
1616 intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.
Sir Nathaniel
1617 Laus Deo, bone intelligo.
Holofernes
1618 Bone? bone for bene: Priscian a little scratch'd; 'twill serve.
[Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD.]
Sir Nathaniel
1619 Videsne quis venit?
Holofernes
1620 Video, et gaudeo.
[To MOTH]
Don Adriano de Armado
1621 Chirrah!
Holofernes
1622 Quare chirrah, not sirrah?
Don Adriano de Armado
1623 Men of peace, well encountered.
Holofernes
1624 Most military sir, salutation.
[Aside to COSTARD.]
Moth
1625 They have been at a great feast of
1626 languages and stolen the scraps.
Costard
1627 O! they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I
1628 marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou are
1629 not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus; thou art
1630 easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.
Moth
1631 Peace! the peal begins.
[To HOLOFERNES.]
Don Adriano de Armado
1632 Monsieur, are you not lettered?
Moth
1633 Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt
1634 backward with the horn on his head?
Holofernes
1635 Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.
Moth
1636 Ba! most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.
Holofernes
1637 Quis, quis, thou consonant?
Moth
1638 The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the
1639 fifth, if I.
Holofernes
1640 I will repeat them,—a, e, i,—
Moth
1641 The sheep; the other two concludes it,—o, u.
Don Adriano de Armado
1642 Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch,
1643 a quick venue of wit! snip, snap, quick and home! It rejoiceth my
1644 intellect: true wit!
Moth
1645 Offered by a child to an old man; which is wit-old.
Holofernes
1646 What is the figure? What is the figure?
Moth
1647 Horns.
Holofernes
1648 Thou disputes like an infant; go, whip thy gig.
Moth
1649 Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your
1650 infamy circum circa. A gig of a cuckold's horn.
Costard
1651 An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it
1652 to buy gingerbread. Hold, there is the very remuneration I had
1653 of thy master, thou half-penny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of
1654 discretion. O! an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but
1655 my bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me. Go to;
1656 thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers' ends, as they say.
Holofernes
1657 O, I smell false Latin! 'dunghill' for unguem.
Don Adriano de Armado
1658 Arts-man, praeambula; we will be singled from the barbarous. Do
1659 you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the
1660 mountain?
Holofernes
1661 Or mons, the hill.
Don Adriano de Armado
1662 At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.
Holofernes
1663 I do, sans question.
Don Adriano de Armado
1664 Sir, it is the King's most sweet pleasure and affection to
1665 congratulate the princess at her pavilion, in the posteriors of
1666 this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.
Holofernes
1667 The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable,
1668 congruent, and measurable, for the afternoon. The word is well
1669 culled, chose, sweet, and apt, I do assure you, sir; I do assure.
Don Adriano de Armado
1670 Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do
1671 assure ye, very good friend. For what is inward between us, let
1672 it pass: I do beseech thee, remember thy courtsy; I beseech
1673 thee, apparel thy head: and among other importunate and most
1674 serious designs, and of great import indeed, too, but let that
1675 pass: for I must tell thee it will please his Grace, by the
1676 world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder, and with his royal
1677 finger thus dally with my excrement, with my mustachio: but,
1678 sweet heart, let that pass. By the world, I recount no fable:
1679 some certain special honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart
1680 to Armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world:
1681 but let that pass. The very all of all is, but, sweet heart, I do
1682 implore secrecy, that the King would have me present the
1683 princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show,
1684 or pageant, or antic, or firework. Now, understanding that the
1685 curate and your sweet self are good at such eruptions and sudden
1686 breaking-out of mirth, as it were, I have acquainted you withal,
1687 to the end to crave your assistance.
Holofernes
1688 Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies. Sir
1689 Nathaniel, as concerning some entertainment of time, some
1690 show in the posterior of this day, to be rendered by our
1691 assistance, the King's command, and this most gallant,
1692 illustrate, and learned gentleman, before the princess, I say
1693 none so fit as to present the Nine Worthies.
Sir Nathaniel
1694 Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?
Holofernes
1695 Joshua, yourself; myself, Alexander; this gallant
1696 gentleman, Judas Maccabaeus; this swain, because of his great
1697 limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great; the page, Hercules,—
Don Adriano de Armado
1698 Pardon, sir; error: he is not quantity enough for that
1699 Worthy's thumb; he is not so big as the end of his club.
Holofernes
1700 Shall I have audience? He shall present Hercules in minority: his
1701 enter and exit shall be strangling a snake; and I will have an
1702 apology for that purpose.
Moth
1703 An excellent device! So, if any of the audience hiss, you may
1704 cry 'Well done, Hercules; now thou crushest the snake!' That is
1705 the way to make an offence gracious, though few have the grace to
1706 do it.
Don Adriano de Armado
1707 For the rest of the Worthies?—
Holofernes
1708 I will play three myself.
Moth
1709 Thrice-worthy gentleman!
Don Adriano de Armado
1710 Shall I tell you a thing?
Holofernes
1711 We attend.
Don Adriano de Armado
1712 We will have, if this fadge not, an antic. I beseech you,
1713 follow.
Holofernes
1714 Via, goodman Dull! Thou has spoken no word all this while.
Anthony Dull
1715 Nor understood none neither, sir.
Holofernes
1716 Allons! we will employ thee.
Anthony Dull
1717 I'll make one in a dance, or so, or I will play on the tabor to
1718 the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.
Holofernes
1719 Most dull, honest Dull! To our sport, away.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1595archaic vocab
“Satis quod sufficit”
'Enough is as good as a feast' — the Latin tag means 'that which suffices is enough.' Holofernes opens with it to signal that his dinner-table reasoning requires no further praise. The phrase was a standard schoolroom maxim, used here to perform the pedant's casual mastery of Latin.
TLN 1597rhetorical device
“sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection”
Nathaniel's praise strings together balanced pairs — 'sharp and sententious,' 'pleasant without scurrility,' 'witty without affection' — in a figure called antitheton (assertion followed by its negative counterpart). This is the rhetorical grammar of Elizabethan compliment, and the speech illustrates exactly the studied, word-weary style the scene is about to satirize.
TLN 1602archaic vocab
“Novi hominem tanquam te”
The Latin phrase means 'I know the man as well as I know you.' Holofernes uses it to assert confident insider knowledge of Armado before proceeding to demolish him. The humour is that the two pedants communicate in Latin to exclude Dull — who stands there understanding nothing — while themselves being objects of ridicule for the audience.
TLN 1608rhetorical device
“draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument”
Holofernes accuses Armado of spinning his words finer than his ideas can support: 'staple' is the raw fibre of wool before it is spun — so the metaphor is of a thread drawn out so thin that the underlying wool (the argument) cannot hold it. It is a precise image for empty verbal inflation over thin content, and it describes Holofernes himself just as well as it does Armado.
TLN 1610historical topical
“rackers of orthography, as to speak dout, fine, when he should say doubt”
Holofernes complains that Armado (and other fashionable speakers) drop the 'b' from 'doubt' and 'd' from 'debt' to produce the unwritten forms 'dout' and 'det.' These were real 1590s pronunciation fashions that some educated speakers adopted by following Italian or French norms. 'Racker' comes from the torture-rack — he treats this as linguistic torture.
TLN 1618historical topical
“Bone? bone for bene: Priscian a little scratch'd”
Nathaniel says 'bone intelligo' ('I understand well/good') using 'bone' (French-influenced or simply wrong) instead of the correct Latin 'bene.' Holofernes corrects him: 'Priscian a little scratch'd.' Priscian was the great grammarian of late antiquity whose Institutiones Grammaticae was the standard Latin grammar text in medieval and Renaissance schools; to 'break' or 'scratch' Priscian's head was a proverbial expression for making a grammatical error.
TLN 1625rhetorical device
“great feast of languages and stolen the scraps”
Moth and Costard mock the pedants from the side: they have feasted on language but only stolen the scraps — leftover Latin tags and borrowed phrases rather than genuine learning. It is a sharp image for the gap between the schoolroom's show of learning and real understanding, and the two servants voice what the audience is thinking.
TLN 1629archaic vocab
“honorificabilitudinitatibus”
This 27-letter Latin word (meaning 'the state of being able to be honoured') was a famous example of an absurdly long word, cited in medieval grammar exercises as the longest word in the Latin language. Costard uses it as a comic unit of measurement: the page Moth is shorter in height than this word is in letters. The joke is that Holofernes and Nathaniel have been talking about words so long that a word becomes a ruler.
TLN 1630archaic vocab
“easier swallowed than a flap-dragon”
A 'flapdraon' (or snapdragon) was a party game in which raisins or small objects were floated in burning brandy; the player had to snatch one from the flame and swallow it quickly. It was a test of quickness and nerve. Costard says the tiny page Moth would be easier to swallow whole than one of these flaming morsels — a vivid insult to Moth's small size.
TLN 1657archaic vocab
“I smell false Latin! 'dunghill' for unguem”
Costard mangles a common Latin phrase: 'ad unguem' ('to the fingernail,' meaning perfectly or precisely — the craftsman's test of a smooth surface by running a fingernail across it) was a Horatian tag for 'to a nicety.' Costard replaces 'unguem' with 'dunghill,' producing 'ad dunghill' — a perfect comic deformation of learning. Holofernes is horrified to hear his Latin idiom turned to muck.
TLN 1688historical topical
“you shall present before her the Nine Worthies”
The Nine Worthies were a standard medieval and Tudor set of nine model heroes of chivalry — three pagan (Hector, Alexander, Caesar), three biblical (Joshua, David, Judas Maccabaeus), and three Christian (Arthur, Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bouillon). Staged in pageants and civic shows across Europe, they embodied the ideals of military honour. Holofernes's casting — Nathaniel as Alexander, himself as 'Alexander,' this swain as Pompey, Moth as the infant Hercules — mangles the canonical list even before the pageant begins.
historical The Nine Worthies
TLN 1700classical allusion
“He shall present Hercules in minority: his enter and exit shall be strangling a snake”
Holofernes proposes a solution to the casting problem: the boy page Moth is too small to play the adult Hercules, but he can play the infant Hercules, whose famous first feat was strangling two serpents sent by the jealous goddess Juno to kill him in his crib. The entry and exit business (the strangling) become the entire 'performance.' Moth's sardonic reply — that if the audience hiss, you can tell them the hissing is the snake — is a joke about theatrical failure.
classical Hercules and his labours
TLN 1712archaic vocab
“if this fadge not, an antic”
'Fadge' means to fit, suit, or succeed; 'if this fadge not' means 'if this does not work out.' Armado is offering a fallback plan: if the Nine Worthies pageant fails, they will do an 'antic' instead — a grotesque comic performance or masque involving fantastic disguises and broad physical comedy.
TLN 1717archaic vocab
“play on the tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay”
A 'tabor' is a small drum, often played one-handed alongside a three-holed pipe by the same musician — the standard instrument for country dancing and rustic festivity. The 'hay' (also 'hey') was a lively winding country dance, resembling a reel. Dull, having understood nothing all scene, offers to contribute what he actually can do: keep a beat and call a dance. The joke is that his one competence is precisely the opposite of what the pedants have been doing — honest physical performance instead of verbal display.