Holofernes

Play

Love's Labour's Lost

Summary

Holofernes is the pedantic schoolmaster of the play, whose speech is stuffed with Latin tags, redundant synonyms, and laborious displays of learning. He represents the danger of education severed from feeling or common sense — a satirical target of the same verbal inflation that afflicts the lords and Armado, though without their charm. He plays Judas Maccabaeus in the disastrous Pageant of the Nine Worthies, where the lords' mockery prompts his one moment of dignified rebuke.

Notable Quotations

"This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions." *(4.2)*

"This is not generous, not gentle, not humble." *(5.2)*

Cross-references

• Love's Labour's Lost — the play
• Comedies
• character_armado — fellow figure of linguistic excess
• character_berowne — who mocks his affectation
• character_costard — who appears with him in the pageant