ABSTRACT
At the end of the Introduction, I cited Kevin Dunn who writes that "Every preface is also an envoi." 1 I think that the statement certainly contains truth, as it implies the sense of a message and possibly messenger that the preface conveys. But I also think of that amusing exchange in Act Three of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost between Armado and Costard about l'envoi. Armado, full of his rhetorical self-importance, urges Costard: "Come thy l'envoi—begin." 2 Poor Costard of course does not know what the term means; he thinks that it might refer to a salve of some kind. But Armado correctly defines it: "it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain / Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain" (III. 1.78-79). More silliness follows in a play that enjoys itself immensely on the question of language. Writers used the l'envoi as a kind of postscript, the final words before releasing the work of art. So do I, although I hope that I'm not trying to explain some matter that has remained "obscure," as Armado suggests.
