70TLN 70: wear my heart upon my sleeve

OED cites this as the first occurrence of the now proverbial expression "to wear one's heart upon one's sleeve" (Heart n. 54f). Honigmann notes that servants wore badges on their sleeves identifying the households to which they were attached. Sleeves, which were often separate articles of clothing, were also traditionally presented as love tokens to knights about to engage in combat. Iago mingles these conventional associations of sleeves with loyal hearts and, in keeping with his attack on feudal hierarchy and service, turns what ought to be a symbolic expression of fealty into an assertion of autonomous agency. For more on the cultural functions of the heart in the Renaissance, see W.W.E. Slights The Heart in the Age of Shakespeare.