After King Ferdinand welcomes the Princess of France and her entourage, he informs her that she must stay in the field—she cannot enter his kingdom due to his vow. He tries to use an element of pathos in his overtures to her so that she doesn’t feel slighted by his refusal to host her:
Meantime receive such welcome at my hand
As honor (without breach of honor) may
Make tender of to thy true worthiness.
You may not come, fair princess, within my gates,
But here without you shall be so received
As you shall deem yourself lodged in my heart,
Though so denied fair harbor in my house.
Ferdinand begins with bald-faced flattery. He expresses his wish that the princess feels welcomed according to her “true worthiness,” insofar as he can welcome her within the bounds of his oath (“honor (without breach of honor)”). He uses imagery—that of a room within “his heart”—to extend the compliment even further and endear himself to the princess. Ferdinand says he hopes that though the princess and her ladies may not enter the palace, they feel as welcome as if they were “lodged in [his] heart.”
Ferdinand turns his slight into a signal of his virtue, and his distance into an image of warmth and intimacy. His injunction to “receive” his welcome seems to suggest that a woman as worthy as the princess can (and should) understand his position as a man trying to maintain his honor, which is why she shouldn't take his choice to lodge her in the field personally. He then switches gears and suggests that he hopes the warmth of their treatment makes them feel as valued and looked after as they deserve to be. In these ways, Ferdinand works upon the princess’s emotions to salvage the relationship between Navarre and France.
Ferdinand’s use of pathos reflects his self-awareness and statesmanship as he tries to balance his personal and professional obligations. They flag Ferdinand as a capable diplomat, however silly his vow to study may make him seem. They also set him up as a reasonable love interest for the composed and equally capable French princess.
Sir Nathaniel reads out Berowne’s love letter to Rosaline. The letter is rife with examples of pathos:
NATHANIEL, reads
If love make me forsworn, how will I swear to love?
Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed!
Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll faithful prove.
Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed.
Berowne begins his letter by acknowledging his failure to keep his vow to Ferdinand (to give up women for three years). He asks a logical question: how can I, Berowne, commit to love, when I have already proven myself unable to commit?
His response to this question is an appeal to Rosaline’s emotions. He argues that no one could have faith in his promise if he weren’t so attached to her beauty (“never faith could hold”). He goes on, pledging that even though he has broken his vows to himself, he will never break his promises to her. The ideas he held about the world before he met her, which seemed as strong as oak, have bowed like willows (“osiers”) under her influence.
In his attempt to win over Rosaline, Berowne appeals to her vanity. He claims the power her beauty holds over him will keep him faithful despite his past inconsistencies. But he goes a step beyond the physical, arguing that his love for her has changed his way of seeing the world. He evokes a powerful image of oak trees bending like willow branches as a way of describing how completely he has changed after meeting her.
While this love letter is clearly written with an end in mind, what Berowne says is not completely false. Both of his soliloquies reveal a man conflicted, confused, and changed by love. He shows surprise at his own sudden willingness to pursue only one woman with marriage in mind (“What? I love, I sue, I seek a wife?”). In his typical way, Berowne takes his situation and filters it through his wit and eloquence to produce something charming and amusing in the object of the poem.
This poem and the pathos within it could be seen as evidence of love’s power in the play. Love inspires Berowne and the other lords to write poetry, and the intensity of Berowne’s emotional experience is reflected in the intensity of his pleas to Rosaline.
