Look,
here’s thy love, my foot and her face see.
-Longaville
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Act IV, Scene iii,
Line 277
Well, this is a
bit of a tough line this morning, kids. But if we spend a few minutes on it,
perhaps we can get a little something out of it.
For starters, I
have to confess that I’m just not sure what Longaville is saying. I’ll give you
all some context, and then maybe we can come up with something.
The four main
guys here, the king, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, have just found out that
they are all pursuing love interests when they all had taken a vow of celibacy.
Right now they are picking on Longaville, and what’s interesting is that
Longaville’s love interest is apparently a black woman. They are picking on him
because he’s gone against his vow, but they’re also picking on the fact that
his lady is black. I had no idea this scene existed in Shakespeare, but it
does.
The other three
have been taunting Longaville’s choice of a black woman (I’ll let you read the
text yourself here) when he replies with today’s line. I guess it’s some sort of
insult of the other guys’ ladies, but what is he saying? Is it that their faces
look like his foot? That’s what it appears to be, but that’s pretty odd.
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