“like coats in heraldry”
Cultural Context
Act 3,
Scene 2
Lines 195-216
Helena
This a reference to heraldry, the system of formal titles and symbols associated with the hierarchical class structure of Shakespeare's England. A "coat" (coat of arms) was an emblem "due but to one," used by a single noble family. Its description was officially recorded using precise technical language. On the coat of arms that Helena is describing are images of the two of them "of the first" (in the primary color of the design), and an image of one "crest" (the figure at the top of the coat of arms), in this case one hart (“one heart"), a male deer.