Punishing Perjury in Love’s Labour’s Lost

Abstract

Berowne’s wry observation on Longaville’s appearance in Act Four, scene three of Love’ s Labour’s Lost refers explicitly to the sixteenth-century penal sanction for the criminal offence of wilful perjury. As part of their punishment, convicted perjurers were set ‘on the pillory in some market-place within the shire, city or borough’, wherein the offence had been committed (An Act, 1563, section vii). Standing exposed to the public gaze, they wore a paper, fixed either to their head or their back, on which was inscribed the details of their offence, for the better enlightening of their waiting audience. Longaville’s ‘perjury’ consists in breaking his scholarly oath by falling in love with Maria, and Berowne’s depiction thus enacts public justice upon him precisely at the moment of his admission of guilt. When his co-offender, Dumaine, enters the scene a moment later, he unwittingly invokes the image once again: ‘O would the King, Berowne and Longaville / Were lovers too! Ill, to example ill / Would from my forehead wipe a perjured note’ (4.3.120–2).

LONGAVILLE: Ay me, I am forsworn!

BEROWNE: Why he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers. (4.3.44–5)¹