In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Moth is Don Armado’s page. He is a quick-witted child attendant whose intelligence and verbal agility contrast sharply with Armado’s grandiose, often ridiculous style of speaking.
Moth appears in the subplot involving Don Armado, the boastful Spanish visitor who falls in love with Jaquenetta. Armado uses Moth as a messenger and confidant, and the page helps expose the comic gap between Armado’s romantic imagination and everyday reality. Moth also participates in the performance of the Nine Worthies near the end of the play.
Moth is easily confused with Costard, another comic figure in the play, but they have different roles: Costard is a rustic clown, while Moth serves Armado. The names Longaville and Dumaine belong to two of the King of Navarre’s noble companions. The play was probably written in the mid-1590s and first printed in quarto in 1598, ending unusually with postponed marriages rather than immediate weddings.