Word: costard
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...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...
...them. They led me to conclude that the obstacles to performance posed by this uneven hothouse script were simply insuperable. Now Michael Kahn has proven me wrong. How has he done it? First, by casting aside caution and bardolatry. He has cut the text (and I do miss Costard's use of "honorificabilitudinitatibus," a genuine medieval Latin term, employed by Dante, that for centuries was cited as the longest known word); he has substituted a few words; and he has not been above adding some lines...
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...
...However, the other, lower class "characters" are indeed of a lower class. Dull is overplayed by George Friend, as is Costard by Peter Weil whose lapses into a Southern drawl are also annoying...