Summary
Holofernes and Nathanial mock Don Armado for his inferior intellect and poor pronunciation.
Armado arrives with Costard and Mote and tells Holofernes and Nathanial that he has been tasked by the King with putting on a performance for the French women. Holofernes suggests that they perform the show of the Nine Worthies. He also notes that he will play three of the nine roles himself.
Meanwhile, the French women discuss love and share that they have each received a love letter from the King and his lords. Boyet warns the women that the men are coming to visit them, dressed in disguise. The women decide to deceive the men by switching their identities and confusing the King and his lords.
The women's plan works, as the men confess their love for who they perceive as their respective love interests. The King and the lords return later, this time out of disguise, and the Princess informs them that their Russian costumes did not fool the women. The King is embarrassed, and soon understands the trick the women played on him and his lords.
The play of the Nine Worthies begins and continues with a great deal of mockery from the audience.
Suddenly, a messenger named Mercade enters and informs everyone that the King of France – the Princess's father – has died. The Princess tells the King that she will return to France that evening, though the King begs her to stay. The Princess and her ladies announce that they will return in a year, at which point the men can propose marriage.
The play concludes with Don Armado and the rest of the players in the show of the Nine Worthies performing a final song about winter and spring.
Analysis
Act Five of the play relies on another comic trope from the early modern era – disguise and deception. The King and his men decide to dress up as Russians in order to woo the women without appearing to break their oath.
Usually, in early modern comedies, disguises are successful and other characters are easily convinced of them. In this case, however, the men's attempts at disguise are thwarted by the women, who know ahead of time that the "Russians" coming to visit are the very men who have sworn off women altogether. As such, the women are able to outsmart the men by switching their own identities and achieving successful disguises that confuse the lords and the King when they return.
Thus, not only does disguise help complicate the plot, but the use of disguise also introduces an unexpected twist to the play, in which the women – who until this point have been largely at the mercy of the whims of the King and his men – gain some kind of control in the love narrative that has been developing over the course of the play. Ultimately, the truth is revealed and the couples appear ready to pair off for what will certainly be four happy marriages.
However, a final twist occurs in the last scene of the play: a messenger arrives to announce the death of the Princess's father, the King of France. This news interrupts the comic register of the play in two major ways: first, it introduces a death, something that is common in early modern tragedies but almost entirely absent from early modern comedies. Second, the news of the King of France's passing also appears to interrupt the presumed marriages between the lords and the ladies. The Princess declares that she and her ladies will return to Navarre one year hence, and if the men are still able to express sincere love, they will marry.
Critics have long puzzled over this ending to the play, with many seeing it as a narrative failure that departs from the tradition of early modern comedy. However, historical context is useful here, as the play was originally written for Queen Elizabeth and her court. Elizabeth, known as the "Virgin Queen," never married, and she prided herself on her status as a single woman ruling the country (arguing often that she was married to England). As such, Shakespeare presents a similar noble figure through the Princess of France, who chooses her duty to her country over the prospect of marriage. In this way, the play both celebrates the indulgence of natural human impulses and praises such strong figures who can put those impulses aside for the good of the commonwealth.
