SOURCE: Skura, Meredith Anne. “Armado and Costard in The French Academy: Player as Clown.” In Love's Labour's Lost: Critical Essays, edited by Felicia Hardison Londré, pp. 313-23. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

In the following excerpt, originally published in 1993, Skura contends that Shakespeare parodied the concepts of heroic honor and fame through his characterization of the pretentious figure of Don Armado and the clown Costard.

The Taming of the Shrew, framed as theater by its Induction, is almost certainly earlier, but the pageant in Love's Labour's Lost is the first Shakespearean inner play proper. Since the players' roles call for comedians in the modern sense, their entry here marks the first confrontation in the canon between King and Clown and establishes Shakespeare's opposition between the player and the aristocratic world of heroes from whom he begs alms.¹ Ferdinand, King of Navarre, is the “great man” in Love's Labour's Lost...