He shows a prejudice against Boyet, the courtier in attendance on the Princess. This prejudice is expressed bitterly—
"This is the flower that smiles on every one,"
with the bitterness usual in Shakespeare when treating of the flunkey mind. The ladies of the Princess's train all talk exactly alike, with sharp feminine wit, infinitely swift in thrust. None of them has personality; but Rosaline is described for us, body and disposition. The members of the sub-plot are mental fashions well observed. Costard alone has life. Shakespeare came from the country. In the country a thinking man is reminded daily of the shrewdness of unspoiled minds. Armado, Costard's opponent, lives for us by one phrase—
"The sweet war-man is dead and rotten: sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the buried: when he breathed, he was a man."
It is interesting to see Shakespeare's mind trying for vividness. In his maturity he had supremely the power of giving life. In this early play one can see his first conscious literary efforts towards the obtaining of the power. Longaville (in Act II, sc. i) makes the scene alive by the question—
"I beseech you a word. What is she in the white?"
(Who is the woman in the white dress?) The simple but telling means of giving reality is repeated a few lines later in Biron's question—
"What's her name in the cap?"
In Act V, sc. ii, the vividness is given in a strangely pathetic passage, that haunts, after the play is laid down. Two of the ladies are talking of Cupid—
Rosaline. You'll ne'er be friends with him: he killed your sister.