Holofernes: bumbling scholar or ruthless general?

I apologize for how long it took me to finally post something this week, it's been pretty busy and I just haven't seemed to have the time. Without further ado, the post that should have been on Monday!

So when I first saw the name Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost, the first image I got was the picture to the left: Judith Beheading Holofernes by Gentileschi. This play has so much girl power in it, it wouldn't be terribly surprising if Shakespeare was making an allusion to the book of Judith.

You can imagine the meeting between Judith and
Holofernes looking something like this.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Biblical Apocrypha, Holofernes, one of Nebuchadnezzar's more stupid generals, was warned not to attack the Hebrew people, but, like all archetypal idiots, he simply told the poor guy to buzz off. Holofernes laid siege to the Hebrew city and cut off the water supply, which sucked for all the dehydrated people trapped within the gates, who nearly surrendered before a bravely promiscuous woman named Judith stepped forward and volunteered her feminine assets to save the city. So when Judith and Holofernes were alone in his tent, he fell asleep, and Judith, seeing her opportunity, totally chopped his head off with his own sword! Afterwards, she stuffed his head into a sack and waltzed right out of the camp with it. In the morning, the Hebrews marched out of their city, bearing Holofernes' head like a banner, so completely demoralizing Holofernes' army that they are easily defeated.

However, this picture is much more similar to the Holofernes that Shakespeare was referencing. Many scholars believe that Shakespeare was taking Rabelais' character Holofernes, the absurd parody of medieval scholars, and how ineffective they were at teaching. Rabelais' character is a "Sophist in Latin Letters" and focuses primarily on memorization instead of analysis. Reblais illustrates just how impotent he is as a teacher to the the main character of the narrative, completely unable to teach his young pupil anything. Fairly quickly, the main character's father finds a new, much more intelligent scholar to tutor his son, simply because Holofernes has no true merit in his studies. It isn't difficult to see the connection with Shakespeare's Holofernes, the equally impotent scholar, quoting his Latin phrases. More details on Reblais' work here.



However, this doesn't mean we can't draw parallels with Judith's arch-enemy. Holofernes, with his criticisms and tiring pedantry can be seen almost attacking wit and language, imposing his harsh rules on them and scoffing at anyone who isn't so scholarly as to make you fall asleep. However, the ever clever women of the play are putting the wit back in witticisms, launching a counterattack against the pompous air the men put on. Unfortunately, there is no gory beheading at the end.

Hercules and Samson: Don Adriano de Armado as a tragic lover

Today's post is brought to you by Love's Labour's Lost and the tragic lover archetype. When we first meet our humorous Armado and Moth (no relation to the insect), we learn that Armado is in love with a woman quite below his social class and he is immediately compared to both a biblical and mythological tragic lover.

Look at the stars. The great tragic lovers of the past look down on us.  So although things might suck, stick it out, if you hang in long enough, you might get your own constellation.

This immediately sets the poor guy up to eventually be either incorporated into religion or catasterized. Or possibly both. But either way, things are probably not going to turn out well for him in a way that the audience will somehow find rather amusing.

The first character Armado is compared to is Hercules, the strong, indestructible God. Many people know the story of Hercules from the Disney version, but in the original Greek myth (much more likely to be the version Shakespeare aludes to), Hercules goes crazy and murders his wife. Twice. It isn't until he has obtained God-status through hardship and trials that he is given a goddess for his third wife, an immortal, and therefore impossible for him to kill. Unfortunately for Armado, I doubt that he's going to obtain God-status by the end of the play.

The second tragic lover Armado is compared to is Samson, blessed with infatigable strength as long as his hair remained unshorn. Unfortunately, Samson put his faith in the wrong woman who cut his hair while he was sleeping and turned him over to his enemies. He momentarily regained his strength after repenting for breaking God's commandment and marrying outside the covenant and died destroying the house of his captors.

Then we come to Armado himself. He is obviously a trained swordsman of great skill and has great strength, if not in his arm, in his blade. His mistake is falling in love with a woman during a period of time when consorting with women is forbidden. It can only be assumed that at some point his love for Jaquenetta is punished by fate, Ferdinand, or Jaquenetta herself. And, knowing Shakespeare's comedies, it'll be in some terribly amusing way that turns out to be okay in the end. But hey, if that doesn't work out, there's always the stars.