How Shakespeare Encoded History, French Diplomacy and the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre into Love’s Labour’s Lost
- Dorothea Dickerman
- Sep 23
- 6 min read
ARMADO: Comfort me, boy, what great men have been in love? MOTH: Hercules, master. ARMADO: Most sweet Hercules!
— Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act I, Scene 2
Here’s a sly Elizabethan historical secret that explains a perplexing Shakespearean play. The secret is that the play’s based on historical events and real individuals. To understand the play, you need to know that years after the bloody St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in France, Queen Elizabeth I’s court chuckled at the expense of those involved in its coverup because Shakespeare had cast them in the comic brilliance of Love’s Labour’s Lost.
Read on and collect clues to solve an even more perplexing literary puzzle along the way!
🦋 The Real (de la) Moth(e)’s Role During the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
In late August 1572, after the royal wedding of Marguerite de Valois and Henri de Navarre, blood literally flowed down the streets of Paris and into the Seine. 👉 See: The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: How an Intercepted Letter Exposed the Slaughter of 10,000 Huguenots and Reshaped Elizabeth I’s England. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre shocked Europe — 10,000 Protestants murdered in Paris alone. By sheer chance, a secret letter was intercepted in England. In it, Queen Elizabeth I and her court learned that the French crown had scripted the carnage and then tried to cover it up.
Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon—let’s call him simply “de la Mothe”—was France’s ambassador to England during the massacre. In August 1572, as knives sprayed France in Huguenot blood, he was with Elizabeth on her royal summer progress, trying to smooth over the fact that French Protestants were being gutted on pikes to a stony-faced Protestant monarch dressed in black who knew he was lying.
A secret letter from King Charles IX had instructed de la Mothe to spin the massacre as a foiled conspiracy and to keep alive at all costs marriage negotiations between Queen Elizabeth and Charles’ youngest brother, Hercule Francois, Duke of Alençon. De la Mothe had to invent whatever flattering and creative explanations he could on the spot.
Fortunately, de la Mothe was intelligent, nimble, and unfailingly poised. Imagine him, ever politique, fluttering over the facts and dressing up short, pockmarked and mocked Hercule François as heroic suitor. Most of Elizabeth’s court had already concluded that Hercule was an ass.
🏹 The (Not) Spanish Don Adriano de Armado — Alencon in Caricature in Love’s Labour’s Lost
Some years later, Don Adriano de Armado, an overly-dramatic “Spanish” buffoon bumbles on to the stage to entertain Elizabeth’s court in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. Love-smitten and melancholy over the country maiden Jaquenetta, Armado laments:
“Cupid’s butt-shaft is too hard for Hercules’ club and therefore too much odds for a Spaniard’s rapier. . . Adieu, valor, rust , rapier, be still drum, for your manager is in love.”
— Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act I, Scene i
Verbose and vainglorious, Armado is pure braggart. His declarations of love are gibberish and hilarious.
But look closer.
His “Herculean” pretensions (not to mention TEN references in the play to “Hercules” – which is Alencon’s first name, “Hercule”, in English) all look suspiciously like Elizabeth’s rejected suitor had comically reappeared barely clothed in a Spanish name. Only now he’s besotted, not with a queen, but with a very rustic commoner.
And who accompanies, even “represents” this “Hercules”, including in the farcical pageant within the play, The Nine Worthies?
He’s slight in stature, but grand in intellect: Armado’s page, Moth . . . as in de la Mothe . . . as in Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon – the very French ambassador who “represented” Alencon to Elizabeth as a potential husband during the summer of 1572 when the English court was hunting at Woodstock and the secret letter meant for de la Mothe was intercepted.
Shakespeare could not resist punning on the ambassador’s name. Smooth-talking, mischievous and irreverent, Armado’s page Moth pricks his master’s inflated speeches with wit while still doing his bidding. The real de la Mothe did the same, supplying fantastical explanations to polish Alençon’s image and keep the marriage farce alive, all the while making Alencon look increasingly foolish — as if that were possible – without Alencon realizing it.
The playwright gives his characters’ identities away time and time again:
🏋🏻♂️ Armado cries, “Comfort me, boy, what great men have been in love?” Moth answers instantly, “Hercules, master.”
🏋🏻♂️ When slender Moth is to play muscular Hercules in the Worthies, the jest is “he shall present Hercules in minority”.
🏋🏻♂️ Yet again, “Great Hercules is presented by this imp” — exactly de la Mothe’s role: to present Alencon’s romantic overtures to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth’s courtiers could not have missed the playwright’s allusions if they had tried. They made Love’s Labour’s Lost even more uproariously funny than we find it today.
⚜️A Satire of French and English Politics on the English Stage
Love’s Labour’s Lost is set in France, but not only with Alencon and de la Mothe. Its dramatis personae include other historical figures involved in the St. Bartholomew Day’s Massacre. Here are two you won’t miss:
🤴🏻 “The King of Navarre” is named after Henri de Navarre, the very groom at that ill-fated royal wedding that lit the fuse on the massacre.
👸 “The Princess of France” is a perfect description of Marguerite de Valois, Navarre’s bride, also sister to the French king Charles whose letter to de la Mothe was intercepted by the English.
Their marriage was meant to resolve the French Wars of Religion. Instead, it sparked catastrophe and fanned the flames. No wonder the play’s titled Love’s Labour’s Lost. A lot more than love was lost in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
🎭 Why Did Shakespeare Make Comedy from Historical Catastrophe?
“Armado: Fetch hither the swain, he must carry me a letter.
Moth: A message well sympathiz’d – a horse to be embassador for an ass.”
— Act III, Scene I
To Elizabeth’s court, still haunted by the 1572 Massacre’s horrors, this comedy wasn’t frivolous—it was catharsis. The playwright had plenty of material to turn Alençon into an ass and his flattering ambassador into his nimble foil, carrying love letters and dressing up disaster and a lackluster suitor as a farce with diplomatic flourish and comic timing.
🤨 That Odd Little Elizabethan Puzzle
Boyet: This letter is mistook: it importeth none here . . .
Princess: We will read it, I swear. Break the neck of the wax, and every one give ear.”
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV, Scene i
In 1572, when de la Mole was trying (sort of) to keep Alencon from embarrassing himself further and the French king’s secret letter was intercepted and read by Queen Elizabeth, William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon was 8 years old. Yet, Love’s Labour’s Lost accurately captured the opening of the secret letter at Woodstock, individual personalities in the French court and the relationship between Alencon and de la Mothe exactly as Elizabeth’s courtiers had witnessed them that very summer.
It seems that Shakespeare knew a surprising number of hidden Elizabethan court secrets — without reading this blog!
📜 If you’d like to discover more, break the wax, crack the cipher and read on by subscribing here.
🏋🏻♂️ if you’d enjoy even more fun at Alencon’s expense, check out these earlier posts:
If you liked this post, use the buttons below to share!
