Armado or the Other speaking the Native’s Language: Racialising the Spaniard in Love’s Labour’s Lost
In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Armado is the only foreigner – a resident alien – living among the native people. From his own point of view, he speaks the Other’s language throughout the play because English is not his first language. Characters on stage laugh at his linguistic mistakes, use of archaisms,...
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| Publicat a: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/asf, |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
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Arrêt sur scène / Scene Focus
2022
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| Matèries: | |
| Accés en línia: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sumari: | In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Armado is the only foreigner – a resident alien – living among the native people. From his own point of view, he speaks the Other’s language throughout the play because English is not his first language. Characters on stage laugh at his linguistic mistakes, use of archaisms, neologisms, unintelligible prose and invite the audience to mock him as well. Armado is turned into ridicule for speaking an incongruous kind of English that bewilders and entertains the native speakers. He is racialised through his use of English marked by barbarisms. As a non-native speaker, Armado alienates the English language by marking it with his Spanishness – in his mouth, English is turned into a bombastic, fantastical, pretentious, and hermetic language. Moreover, Armado is also typecast as the braggart soldier or the Italian stock character of Il Capitano from the Commedia Dell’Arte. Shakespeare draws on the representation of the Spaniard from the Italian dramatic tradition. This paper aims at examining the extent to which we can speak of ethnic or racist humour concerning the way Armado is marginalised as the butt of the joke in the play. The issue at stake is to explore the articulation of language and national identity through the character of Armado. |
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