• 1 ^{See Matthew McLean, The Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster: Describing the World in the Reformation,} (...)
• 2 Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia. A briefe collection and compendious extract of the strau[n]ge and (...)
• 3 Even though it is claimed by Costard, the master of Dogberryisms in the play, Armado’s racial ident (...)
• 4 ^{See Barbara Fuchs, “The Spanish Race” in Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo and Maureen Quilligan} (...)
• 5 Edward Daunce, A briefe discourse of the Spanish state vvith a dialogue annexed intituled Philobasi (...)

1In Sebastian Münster’s Cosmography (1572), there is a chapter dealing with the “diverse vices and deformities” attributed to the different nations, thus revealing the existence of national negative stereotypes stigmatising each country according to a series of specific flaws.1 The “drunkenness and violencie of the Spaniardes” is denounced as well as their “subtle sophistry”2. These oversimplifications became racist as soon as they emerged as a systematic way to depict Spanish people and were compounded by the English interest in the transatlantic slave trade, adding an element of anti-Blackness.3 The racialisation of Spaniards started to gain momentum with the political tensions growing between England and Spain. The failed invasion of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was the beginning of an upsurge of patriotism and racist portrayal of Spanish people in political pamphlets as well as on the early modern English stage.4 The 1590s was a decade during which xenophobia increased, riots against the presence of strangers as well as an interest in defining the national English identity mainly in opposition to the Catholic, Spanish enemy. Edward Daunce’s A Briefe Discourse of the Spanish State5 (1590) was dedicated to Elizabeth and symptomatic of the general atmosphere of anti-Spanish feeling developing in England in the decade.

• 6 Francis Beaumont, The Spanish Curate, in Comedies and tragedies written by Francis Beaumont and Ioh (...)
• 7 Thomas Middleton, The Spanish gipsie, London, Richard Marriot, 1653.

2After the death of Phillip II of Spain in 1598 and Elizabeth i in 1603, the relations between the two countries changed radically with the signing of a peace treaty in 1604 during the first year of James’s reign. This political relief had a significant influence on the representation of Spanish characters on the English stage. Indeed, late Jacobean comedies like The Spanish Curate6 (1622) by John Fletcher or The Spanish Gipsy7 (1623) by Thomas Middleton are set in Cordoba and Madrid. Interestingly, the characterisation of Spanish characters is utterly deprived of irony or negative stereotyping – the Spanish braggart is no more.

• 8 See H. Samy Alim, John R. Rickford, and Arnetha F. Ball (eds), Raciolinguistics: How Language Shape (...)
• 9 This play is not set in England but in Navarre, a kingdom associated in England at the time with a (...)

3The aim of this paper is to focus on the decade during which the theatrical type of the Spanish braggart was all the rage. I intend to explore the raciolinguistics of the Spanish dramatic type of the 1590s through the character of Armado in Shakespeare’s comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost. Raciolinguistics is a branch of sociolinguistics interested in the role of language in shaping ethnoracial identity and in the construction of race as a discursive practice. It consists in viewing race through the lens of language, i.e. through linguistic production and metalinguistic comments used to negotiate otherness and navigate between discriminatory discourses of race.8 In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Armado is racialised as the Other speaking the Native’s language9. How does the play construct Armado’s non-native English, and to what extent can we speak of a racialisation of his identity through language regarded as a marker of difference? I will analyse how the native speakers of the play respond to this racialised kind of linguistic alterity, and examine the connection between language and the construction of the English national identity through the character of Armado.

• 10 Puttenham examines the issue of “Barbarismus, or Foreign Language”: “The foulest vice in language i (...)
• 11 See Ian Smith, Race and Rhetoric in the Renaissance: Barbarian Errors, New-York, Palgrave Macmillan (...)

4According to the classical racial type of the Barbarian developed in ancient Greece, the Barbarian cannot speak properly because he cannot think properly, so he cannot behave properly. Early modern English grammarians adopted the classical conception of language defined by the axiological binarism of eloquence and barbarism.10 They associated themselves with the eloquent Greeks as the Romans did before them to gain intellectual superiority over outsiders, and in so doing racialised them as inferior barbarians.11

• 12 H. R. Woudhuysen, “Introduction”, in William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. H.R. Woudhuysen (...)

5In the expository scene, the King’s description of Armado relies on the paradox of being both within and without, as the King puts it: “Our court […] is haunted / With a refined traveller of Spain” (i.i.161). In the sixteenth century, the verb “haunt” referred to the “[…] act or practice of frequenting or habitually resorting to a place” (OED, 2.a); Armado may be a stranger coming from another country, he is living permanently at court with the natives. Because he comes from abroad, English is Armado’s second language and from his point of view, he speaks the Other’s language. His otherness is mainly conveyed through his language, as H. R. Woudhuysen argues: “Armado’s eccentric English and his being a traveller are combined in the play”.12 Interestingly, the King introduces Armado through his own strange language, resorting, for instance, to metaphors, “a mint of phrases in his brain” (i.i.163); to “the music of his own vain tongue” (i.i.164); and to personifications such as “high-born words” (i.i.170) to point out the strangeness of Armado’s language. Far from being plain, Armado’s tongue is overpolished and overflowing with “fire-new words” (i.i.176). After such a promising introduction, Berowne and the others are full of expectations, as Berowne admits himself before the King starts reading Armado’s letter, “[…] I hope in God for high words” (i.i.188) which is echoed by Longaville’s wit, “A high hope for a low heaven” (i.i.189). The King will come to the same conclusion after the reading of the letter, arguing that Armado’s style is “the best for the worst” (i.i.259). Armado’s strange language is racialised insofar as it reflects the stereotypical vices of Spanish people that were recurrently dramatised onstage at the time. The Spaniard talks a lot but does not do much – his discourse is without substance. His speech is vain, arrogant, and verbose. He is a stranger, so he does not use English as a native speaker would. Armado’s language is marked by in-betweenness – he speaks English, though not idiomatically, even if his English is superior to Costard’s for instance.

• 13 Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy, p. 209.
• 14 Ian Smith, “Barbarian Errors: Performing Race in Early Modern England”, Shakespeare Quarterly, 49:2 (...)
• 15 Quintilian, “Chapter 5. Section 5”, Institutio Oratoria, Book I, ed. Harold Edgeworth Butler, Cambr (...)
• 16 Quintilian, “Chapter 5. Section 5”, Institutio Oratoria.
• 17 The word “mustachio” was used in other texts at the time such as Midas by John Lyly, a play which h (...)

6Armado’s language does stand out – his discourse is characterised by what early modern rhetoricians and grammarians such as George Puttenham called “viciosities of language”.13 He would like to be eloquent, as he tells Holofernes, asking him to “preambulate” to be “singuled from the barbarous” (v.i.65–66). However, he makes too many “barbarian errors”,14 to use Ian Smith’s words, to be an eloquent gentleman. Armado repeatedly commits barbarisms, which Quintilian defines as “offence[s] occurring in connexion [sic] with single words”.15 Holofernes speaks of his “mustachio” when relating a memory to the King. This term used in the Folio is different from the form “mustachie” that appears in the Quarto. Both words are barbarisms because they are words Armado created from existing foreign terms by changing the letters. As Quintilian describes, a barbarism “consists of adding a letter or a syllable to any word [the speaker] pleases, or taking one away, or substituting one for another, or putting one in a place where it is not right for it to be”.16 The word “mustachio” (v.i.84) is neither Spanish (mostacho) nor Italian (mostaccio); the word seems to be a linguistic hybrid entity created by Armado who, in doing so, transgresses the rules of grammatical correctness.17 Indeed, Puttenham speaks of “soraismus or mingle-mangle”:

• 18 Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy, p. 338.

7[…] [what] the Greeks call soraismus [sic], and we may call the Mingle-Mangle, as when we make our speech or writings of sundry languages, using some Italian word, or French, or Spanish, or Dutch, or Scottish, not for the nonce or for any purpose (which were in part excusable) but ignorantly and affectedly.18

• 19 See Thomas Wilson, The arte of rhetorique for the vse of all suche as are studious of eloquence, Lo (...)

8Moreover, Armado blends classical and vernacular languages by creating other linguistic hybrids with “infamonise” (v.ii.659) based on the Latin word “fama” and the English suffix “-ise”, or “preambulate” (v.i.65) which is made up of the Latin noun “preambulum” and of the English suffix “-ate”. Such errors were regarded as disruptive and vicious by linguistic purists who strove to preserve the purity of English with the publication of grammar and rhetorical handbooks.19

• 20 John Torie, The Spanish grammer vvith certeine rules teaching both the Spanish and French tongues. (...)

9Throughout the play, Armado stumbles only on a single word, mispronouncing “Sirrah” as “Chirrah!” (v.i.28). The spelling of the barbarous version of the word is significant, for it is an instance of eye dialect that is used within the text to indicate a non-standard accent. The transformation of the voiceless, alveolar fricative [s] into the voiceless, palato-alveolar sibilant [ʃ] was considered as typical of the Spanish speakers of English in early modern England. This phonetic feature was commented upon as an idiosyncratic characteristic of Spanish speakers in John Torie’s Spanish Grammar: with Certaine Rules Teaching both the Spanish and the French Tongues (1590): “[the pronunciation of [s] as [ʃ] is a] token whereby the native Spanyardes are known from the strangers that can speake the Spanish tongue […]”.20 With this instance, the Spanish accent is introduced as a cultural sign with negative connotations. It is stigmatised as an accent revealing a discrepancy between the speaker’s pretention and arrogance and the reality of the latter’s lack of legitimacy. Through Armado, the Spanish accent is introduced as too extreme, and unsophisticated, as Holofernes puts it: “[…] too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it” (v.i.11–12). This offensive perception of the Spanish accent was recurrent in the drama of the 1590s and theatre-goers would have been able to interpret the Spanish accent as a sign of deficiency and inferiority:

• 22 To find out more about accentism, see Alan Davies, An Introduction to Applied Linguistics: From Pra (...)
• 23 Paul Yachnin, Shakespeare’s World of Words, London, Bloomsbury, 2015, p. 93.

10We can argue that the Spanish tongue is the target of scapegoating in the play. This accentism22 is also part and parcel of the stage performances of the play: “Recent performers of the role of Don Armado have generally employed extravagant delivery and gesture, and often a highly exaggerated Spanish accent […]”.23 Armado seems to be essentialised through his accent to be represented as stupid, pretentious, vain, and unsophisticated.

• 24 Penny Gay, “Chapter 1. Introduction: comedy as idea and practice”, in The Cambridge Introduction to (...)
• 25 William Shakespeare, King John, in The Norton Shakespeare, Digital Edition, Stephen Greenblatt et a (...)
• 26 She is speaking to King John about the Bastard, who resembles King Richard.
• 27 Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, or The Defense of Poesy, ed. R. W. Malsen and Geoffrey Sh (...)

12Penny Gay points out the presence of “aural [sic] laughter-producing mechanisms” in Love’s Labour’s Lost – defining them as follows: “[…] when a character [is] mangling and misapplying the English language [it] tickles the collective funnybone because of his departure from the norm […]”.24 When Ferdinand and his lords laugh at Armado, they mock his inability to be as fluent as they are in English – they point out the lack of idiomaticity of Armado’s Spanish-accented English. Longaville admits, as an understatement, that Armado’s letter will undoubtedly make them “laugh moderately” (i.i.191). Armado is insulted and humiliated repeatedly throughout the play and the “accent of his tongue” (King John, i.i.86),25 to use Queen Elinor’s phrase,26 is regularly emphasised as ridiculous. In An Apology for Poetry, or The Defence of Poesy (1595), Sir Philip Sidney denounces ethnocentric laughter as sterile compared to delight because it is not didactic, and so it does not teach the spectator/reader any ethical lesson: “For what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar or a beggarly clown; or against law of hospitality, to jest at strangers, because they speak not English so well as we do? What do we learn?”27 (emphasis mine). Sidney is addressing here the difficulty of knowing the limit between appropriate, decent laughter and its opposite. Authors of jestbooks kept on arguing about the tipping point between harmless mirth and cruel mockery; for instance, Giovanni Della Casa wrote in The Refin’d Courtier, or a Correction of Several Indecencies Crept into Civil Conversation (1663):

• 29 See Eric Nicholson, “Chapter 6: Et in Arcadia the Dirty Brides”, in Robert Henke and Eric Nicholson (...)

14From the point of view of the native speakers of the play, there is no harm in laughing at Armado’s Spanish-accented language. However, from Armado’s point of view, it is harmful and cruel. As he is attacked while performing in the Pageant of the Nine Worthies, Armado’s acting is interrupted by insults after demanding the lords to keep silent with the monosyllabic, “Peace!”; then, he warns Longaville to stop abusing him, “[…] rein thy tongue” (v.ii.653). Contrary to the lords whose laughter is humiliating, the Princess shows her support to Armado with a few kind words, “Speak, brave Hector; we are much delighted.” (v.ii.662). The discrepancy between the lords’ harmful laughter and the ladies’ pleasant delight is significant. Laughter is far from being harmless in Love’s Labour’s Lost, for characters are being “outfaced” (v.ii.608), “infamonise[d]” (v.ii.659), while others are “[…] not generous, not gentle, not humble” (v.ii.623). Armado, however, seems to be singled out compared to the other characters who are mocked throughout the play. He is shaped by the traditional stock figures of the Italian Capitano from commedia dell’arte and the Roman Miles Gloriosus from classical comedy.29

• 31 Spanish troops sacked Rome in 1527, so the fear of Spanish armed men was even more present than wit (...)
• 32 Alessandro Piccolomini, La Commedia degli Ingannati, Venice, Melchiorre Sessa, 1537.
• 33 Mace Perlman, “Chapter 8: Reading and Interpreting The Capitano’s Multiple Mask-Shapes”, in Judith (...)
• 34 See Michael Phillips, “Racist Acts and Racist Humor”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 14.1, 1984, p (...)
• 35 Raúl Pérez, “Racism without Hatred? Racist Humor and the Myth of ‘Colorblindness’”, in Sociological (...)
• 36 Paul McDonald, The Philosophy of Humour, Penrith CA, Humanities-Ebooks, LLP, 2012, p. 82; see also (...)
• 37 See Robert Henke (ed.), A Cultural History of Theatre in the Early Modern Age, vol. 3, London, Bloo (...)

16Italian playwrights adapted the traditions of Roman comedy to their contemporary issues and used comic stage performances as a site of empowerment for Italians who were given the opportunity to laugh at the powerful Spanish enemy31, and in doing so to exorcise their fears as in La Commedia degli Ingannati (1531) by the Italian playwright Alessandro Piccolomini.32 Gradually, the Spanish braggart became one of the most popular stock characters of the commedia dell’ arte, regarded as: “the fifth wheel, the odd man out, […] he is always an outsider […] his speech is that of the forestiere, or foreigner, an intrusive and mysterious presence, ‘not from around these parts’”.33 This stock character is meant to express the superiority of the Italians over the Spanish through a negative egregious laughter.34 As an explicit heir to the Captain tradition, Armado’s character is mocked for being Spanish. This shows the extent to which drama, and more precisely concerning Armado, comedy is “a serious site”35 for the production and dissemination of racism as well as the deflection of fears. Racist humour is effective in making people bond over the rejection of the same type; the experience of laughing together at the same thing creates a sense of community that often undermines the divisive nature of racist humour. Paul McDonald points out that the most common form of racist humour is “the stupid-ethnic jokes [,] where a member of the community is cast in the role of an idiot”.36 In what could be regarded as a metatheatrical prologue to the Pageant of the Nine Worthies, Berowne and the King introduce the Worthies by stating their names, the characters they will play on stage as well as their dramatic functions within Love’s Labour’s Lost, “The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool and the boy.” (v.ii.534–535). These theatrical roles were very well-known to the English theatre-goers and so would have been understood as explicit references to the Italian tradition of commedia dell’arte.37 It seems that Shakespeare intended to connect very explicitly Armado with the Captain type of the commedia dell’arte, in which it was created as a scapegoat figure meant to be mocked and humiliated because of the manners associated with him – as a cathartic response to a collective fear.

• 38 See René Girard, Le Bouc émissaire, Paris, Grasset, 1982; René Girard, De la violence à la divinité(...)
• 39 Roger Scruton, “Laughter” in John Morreal (ed.), The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, New York: St (...)

17Throughout the play, Armado is the target of abusive, and offensive remarks that provide Ferdinand and his lords with amusement, as Longaville explains in the expository scene: “Costard the swain and he [Armado] shall be our sport, / And so to study three years is but short” (i.i.177–178). The use of the term “sport” is significant insofar as it is ambivalent, meaning “Success, pleasure, or recreation derived from or afforded by an activity, originally and esp. hunting, shooting, or fishing […]” (OED, 1.b). Consequently, Armado is sacrificed to provide a pleasant merriment for the King and his lords – he is harmed by racist humour. Pleasure, comfort, and laughter are experienced by Ferdinand and his lords who make the most of Armado’s vulnerability. Love’s Labour’s Lost may be categorised as a comedy, “the cloud of sorrow” (v.ii.722) is almost constantly hanging over Armado – characters laugh but the jest is “bitter” (iv.iii.166) or “dry” (v.ii.373). When Rosaline describes the King as being “weeping-ripe” in the last scene of the play, we could imagine that she is speaking of Armado as he confesses, “The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt. I go woolward for penance.” (v.ii.686-687). Armado is virtually at his wit’s end when he utters these words – he has been laughed at by the native speakers who built a sense of community at Armado’s expense. To use René Girard’s theory,38 Armado is the scapegoat whose sacrifice has a social function by working as a regulatory tool. The scapegoat exacerbates the violence of the group and preserves civil order by preventing the people of the group from fighting one another – instead they all direct their violence against the scapegoat. The lords lose the battle of wits against the ladies and we may infer that their violence and frustration is then targeted at Armado who is made to be an antagonist, losing the dramatic agôn. Thanks to Armado, the lords can express all their anxiety and anger for failing to be successful suitors. Berowne does not miss any opportunity to use the other as scapegoat when commenting on the Pageant of the Nine Worthies, announcing “We are shame-proof my lord; and ’tis some policy / To have one show worse than the King’s and his company” (v.ii.507-508), or praising mockery, “Well said, old mocker.” (v.ii.540). Berowne’s solution seems to be denying fame to others so as to forget his own shame, thus reassuring himself by mocking others. Precisely these others are targeted because they have something in common with Berowne and his friends – they both hope for fame only to find shame. As Roger Scruton argues, “laughter devalues its object in the subject’s eyes” for it has “a quality of malice”.39 The function of humour is here to sublimate one’s own shame into the mockery of the other to experience a sort of catharsis through laughter.

• 40 It might also be understood as another stereotypical attack on the foreigner impregnating “native” (...)

18Moreover, throughout the play, Armado and Costard compete for the favours of Jacquenetta. This rivalry between a foreign character and a native character is reminiscent of the Prince of Aragon who is one of the many suitors taking the casket test to win Portia’s hand in The Merchant of Venice. The latter and the other foreign suitors fail the test by picking the wrong casket except Bassanio, the only native suitor of Portia in the play. Contrary to the Prince of Aragon who is unsuccessful with Portia, Armado manages to seduce Jacquenetta and even to impregnate her, as Costard thinks40 when he tells him, “[…] the poor wench is cast away: she’s quick, the child brags in her belly already. ’Tis yours.” (v.ii.656-658). “Jack hath not Jill” (v.ii.8843) in the play – except Armado. So, why is he both the target of racist humour, and the only one whose suit seems successful at the end of the play?

• 41 What is charming about this is that they are supposed to be French, teaching the Navarrans how to s (...)

20In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Armado is not the only scapegoat – he may be the only one being racialised for his language use, but there are other kinds of scapegoating in the play that nuance Armado’s marginalisation. There are intersections between race and class in the play. Holofernes and Nathaniel have an explicit contempt for commoners whose English is different from theirs. They reproach Armado for being excessive in his language use, using the adverb “too” repeatedly, and they accuse Dull of being deficient, resorting to the prefix “un-” repeatedly as well. To put it differently, Dull may be a native speaker but his English is inferior, according to Holofernes, because his social status did not give him the opportunity to learn how to be as eloquent as Holofernes. Dialects of commoners are mocked and stigmatised as speakers of a poor English that can be paralleled with Armado’s broken English. Moreover, there are also intersections between race and gender: the ladies often play the role of the lords’ English teachers, correcting their language repeatedly throughout the play41. Again, we can see intersections between race and gender in the way the language of the lords is stigmatised as hypocritical and deceitful by the ladies. With this intersectional context in mind, the racial stigmatisation of Armado’s language should not be understood as being the only one targeted for being Other.

• 44 Richard Verstegan, A restitution of decayed intelligence: in antiquities Concerning the most noble (...)
• 45 Alexander Leggatt, “Chapter 4. Love’s Labour’s Lost”, in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Love, London, Rout (...)
• 46 William Shakespeare, The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, ed. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and (...)

24The anxiety caused by the cultural bankruptcy to which Cheke alludes was palpable at the time, as along with an obsession with losing the specificity of English national identity with the influx of new words: “[…] there was a serious danger of loss in excessive borrowings”.44 Indeed, Alexander Leggatt points out that “[t]he play’s ultimate effect is to provide an image of insecurity”.45 During this linguistic debate, words became increasingly metaphorical to refer to English national identity; the English language was starting to become culturally meaningful to define an emerging Englishness. Thomas Wilson highlights the fear of cultural alienation and linguistic invasion, following Polonius’ words to Laertes, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be […]” (Ham. i.iii.75). 46Wilson exacerbates the early modern English obsession with purity and uniformity – whether religious, political, or linguistic:

• 49 Ian Smith, “Barbarian Errors…”, p. 168.

28The characterisation and dramatic function of Armado in Love’s Labour’s Lost is complex and ambivalent. Even before he enters the stage, he is abused and stigmatised by his flawed language, full of “barbarian errors”,49 on which the native speakers comment. Armado is turned into a racial laughing-stock whose dramatic function reduces him to comic relief providing merriment to the King and his lords. The unethical laughter produced by the mockery of Armado, however, leads us to think about the tipping point between harmless pleasant comedy and harmful, racist humour. If Armado is the target of the lords’ racist mockery, Armado’s abusers are the target of Shakespeare’s satire. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shakespeare achieves a destructive construction through his use of racist humour. Armado is stigmatised for speaking a non-native English; he is the target of racist humour turning him into a racialised laughing-stock. Shakespeare questions the legitimacy of this racist humour, however, by reminding his audience that there is no such thing as a true, natural English but many variations depending on race, class, and gender. Love’s Labour’s Lost is a play in which Shakespeare writes back at linguistic nationalists rejecting any kind of verbal immigration. As it happens repeatedly in the play, the trickster is tricked at some point. On the one hand, Armado is mocked by native speakers who make fun of his non-native English; on the other, native speakers believing in the fantasy of a unique, static English language are mocked by Shakespeare who satirises such linguistic nationalism by writing a comedy at their expense. We may infer that “mock for mock” (v.ii.140) is Shakespeare’s intent in Love’s Labour’s Lost, for “There’s no such sport as sport by sport o’erthrown […]” (v.ii.153).