Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare/Armado o' the One Side
ARMADO O' THE ONE SIDE
Armado o' the one side,—O a most dainty man!
To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan!
To see him kiss his hand! and how most sweetly a' will swear!
And his page o' t' other side, that handful of wit!
Ah, heavens, it is a most pathetical nit!
Sola, sola!
This passage, in its entirety, has been very embarrassing to editors because it seems to have no connection with the scene in which it stands and of which it forms the conclusion. As it appears to be so irrelevant and foreign to the context, some editors, as Staunton, Halliwell and Rolfe, lift it from its present position and find a place for it in the preceding scene at line 136. But others, not finding that it fits here with any convincing aptness, prefer to let it remain where it is according to the original sources of the play. Armado and the Page, whom the clown seems to be characterizing, do not appear in the scene at all; hence there has been difficulty in determining upon what grounds the mind should take such a sudden jump.
The trouble lies in the interpretation—not merely of words and phrases but of the working of the clown's mind. Costard is not talking about Armado and the Page primarily; he is soliloquizing about the nobleman Boyet who has just left. In order to appreciate Shakespeare's work in this place, it is necessary for us to call to mind the leading traits of certain characters in the play.
The page, Moth, stands for quick-wittedness. He is a cogging and bantering juvenile who is always catching somebody in a verbal trap. To the simple-minded Costard he is the nonpareil of wits because he always succeeds in "putting down" others. In that respect he is Costard's delight: "An' I had but one penny in the world thou should'st have it to buy gingerbread." Costard wishes the boy were his "bastard" so that he might be blessed with so bright a son (v, 1, 79).
Armado, on the other hand, was a dandy pure and simple. He is all courtliness and clothes. But as to intellect, his mind is a mere collection of bizarre phrases and knightly notions by which he affects the much-travelled courtier and man of wars. To Costard he would naturally seem the very paragon of ladies' men.
Now what sort of man is Boyet? He is the French nobleman who accompanied the Princess and her ladies to England. The conductor of such a party is, of course, your complete ladies' man; and as we see in this scene particularly, he has a nimble wit in their playful encounters with him.
It is into one of these wit encounters that the simple-minded swain, Costard, finds himself projected. It is a hunting scene consisting of the Princess and the ladies of her train. Excepting the huntsman who acts as their guide, the only representative of the stronger sex is Boyet. But presently, in the midst of the play of wit, another son of man appears in the person of Costard who has been sent to deliver a letter, and it is not long until this interested spectator is putting in an occasional word of his own. And when Boyet gracefully withdraws from Maria's parting shot and Costard is left standing alone, he is mightily puffed up with the idea that he and the ladies have vanquished such a personage as Boyet. It is right in this connection that the stubborn passage comes.
What Costard now does is very natural. Like all of us he wishes to set full value upon the qualities of the enemy, for thus we magnify our own prowess in the encounter. He therefore sets about characterizing Boyet, who, as we have seen, is both a fine courtier and a wit; and it immediately appears to Costard that in putting down such a man he has outdone an Armado and a Moth together, all in one person. As his rustic mind has little facility in abstract characterization, he goes about it somewhat after the fashion of those who describe a neighbor as being a Jones o' one side of the family and a Smith o' t'other. Boyet is "Armado o' th' one side" and "his page o' t'other side." Such is the man he has worsted, a gentleman and a scholar; and it is none the less humorous that he considers the specious Armado and the precocious Moth as the beaux ideals of the two qualifications, separately considered.
Finally, having taken full account of the enemy and set him at a high value, he proceeds to look down upon him from his own point of view—the true formula for setting off our own superiority. Boyet may be all this, but as compared with Costard he is nothing—"Ah, heavens, it is a most pathetical nit! Sola, sola."
A humble clodhopper like Costard naturally takes pride in being a connoisseur of that which he has not—bearing and brains, aristocracy and wit. The incident itself is funny in the connection in which it occurs, not to speak of the way it is worded. I think that future editors should be careful to let the passage remain where it is in the Folio. The last lines of a scene are an important position with Shakespeare.