Word: armado
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...reasonably be expected to show familiarity with the stock characters of the old Italian commedia dell'arte, from which Shakespeare took the five low-comedy figures that Berowne ticks off as "The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool, and the boy." Respectively, Holofernes corresponds to the dottore, Armado to the capitano, Nathaniel to the pantalone and parasite, Moth (a wit) and Costard (a dimwit) to the comic servants (zanni). But it seems that Shakespeare also had in mind here poking fun at such now-forgotten men as Thomas Nashe, Gabriel Hervey, and John Florio...
...Armado (Josef Sommer), the handsome and bombastic Spaniard, is funny when he swings his sword about with disregard for anything in its way, and just as funny when--saying, "Rust, rapier"--he kisses and resheathes it. Costard (William Hickey), his rival for the affections of Jaquenetta, wears red sneakers, striped pants, and an orange jacket with slogan buttons on the front and "Make Love Not War" embroidered on the back. When Dull drags him off, he yells, "Police brutality!"; and, soon after, he calls Armado a "Fascist Hindu!" Jaquenetta herself (Zoe Kamitses) turns out to be a yellow-stockinged blonde...
Moth (Bryan Young), Armado's "pretty knavish page," is dressed in white with turquoise beads and sash. At the point where Shakespeare merely indicates the title of an unidentified song, Moth grabs a hand-microphone, and the amplification system fills the theatre with an entire jivy song about love. The harmony is purely triadic, but the chords progress in fresh unpredictable directions that out-Beatle the Beatles. This blaring number lends sacrastic humor to Armado's verdict, "Sweet...
...Sometimes an actor can get a laugh by answering wittily and quickly, when the audience expects him to be mute. Much of Moth's humor in Love's Labor's Lost, for example, stems from the fact that he is not at all cowed by his impressive master, Armado. Another actor can get his laugh by taking longer than the audience to figure out a situation. The Clown's humor in The Winter's Tale works on this principle...
...Louis Lopez-Cepero as Don Armado, the fantastical and grossly grandiloquent Spaniard, and and Bruce Kornbluth as Moth, his diminutive page deliver some of the play's funniest lines with well timed over and understatements...