The Princess of France and her ladies in waiting, with the assistance of a gay lord named Boyet, made an incursion into the Kingdom of Navarre and break into the solitude of the students.
Nathaniel, a parson, and Holofernes, a pedant schoolmaster, are introduced into the play by William to illustrate the asinine pretensions of ministers and pedagogues, who are constantly introducing Latin or French words in their daily conversation, for the purpose of impressing common people with their great learning, when, in fact, they only show ridiculous pretense and expose themselves to the contempt of mankind.
There are very few noted philosophic sentiments in the play, and the attempt at wit, of the clown, the constable and Holofernes, the schoolmaster, fall very flat on the ear of an audience, while the rhymes put in the mouth of the various characters are unworthy of a boy fourteen years of age.
I remonstrated with William about injecting his alleged poetry into the love letters sent by the lords and ladies, but he replied that young love was such a fool that any kind of rhyme would suit passionate parties who were playing "Jacks and straws" with each other.
Ferdinand, the King, opens up the play with a grand dash of thought:
"Let fame that all hunt after in their lives,
Live registered upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death,
When, spite of cormorant devouring time,
The endeavor of this present breach may buy
That honor, which shall bait his scythe's keen edge
To make us heirs of all eternity."
Lord Biron, who imagines himself in love with the beautiful Rosaline, soliloquizes in this fashion:
"What? I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
A woman that is like a German clock,
Still a repairing; ever out of frame.
And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watched that it may still go right!
Is not Love a Hercules
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as a sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony!"
Holofernes, the Latin pedagogue, criticising Armado, exclaims:
Novi hominem tanquam te. His humor is lofty, his discourse peremptory. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.