ABSTRACT
Shakespeare makes fun not only of artifices of speaking, of Armado’s chivalry and his fantastic speech, but also of the pedantry of Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel. When similarities between Shakespeare’s sonnets and those of other sonneteers appear to come from the same French models, the inference should be that they borrowed from French models, and Shakespeare from them. Shakespeare stresses the double treason in Proteus; his love for Valentine is as baseless as that for Julia. In As you like it Shakespeare laughs at sonnet love as it appears in the pastoral convention. Shakespeare stresses the artificiality of Thomas Lodge’s pastoral scenes by playing them in a more natural mode. Shakespeare turns the balancing scale to the absurd by making the expression as naive and abject as the attitude. Shakespeare’s purpose in stressing Romeo’s faithfulness to his ideal is so that he may have a clear conscience when the greater love puts out the lesser on the best chivalric model.
