Costard upper-class. While mocking a pedantic schoolmaster, Costard uses the word "honorificabilitudinitatibus", the longest word by far from any of Shakespeare's works. Costard makes many clever puns, and is used as a tool by Shakespeare to explain new words such as "remuneration". He is sometimes considered one of the smartest characters in the play due to his wit and wordplay. Costard's name is an archaic term for apple, or metaphorically a man's head. Shakespeare uses the word in this sense in "Richard III". Costard Costard is a comic figure in the play "Love's Labour's Lost" by William Shakespeare. A country bumpkin,
What Is a Nation? What Is a Nation? "What is a Nation?" ("Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?") is an 1882 lecture by French historian Ernest Renan (1823–1892), known for the statements that a nation is "a daily referendum", and that nations are based as much on what the people jointly forget, as what they remember. It is frequently quoted or anthologized in works of history or political science pertaining to nationalism and national identity. Renan wrote "What is a Nation" in order to symbolize the nationalism which was born in France as a result of the French Revolution of 1789. Renan begins his essay by noting