Love's Labour's Lost
Love's
Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's
early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s for a
performance at the Inns of Court
before Queen Elizabeth I.
It follows the King of Navarre
and his three companions as they attempt to swear off the company of women for
three years in order to focus on study and fasting. Their subsequent
infatuation with the Princess of France and her ladies makes them forsworn. In an untraditional
ending for a comedy, the play closes with the death of the Princess's father,
and all weddings are delayed for a year. The play draws on themes of masculine
love and desire, reckoning and rationalisation, and reality versus fantasy.
Though
first published in quarto
in 1598, the play's title page suggests a revision of an earlier version of the
play. While there are no obvious sources for the play's plot, the four main
characters are loosely based on historical figures. The use of apostrophes in
the play's title varies in early editions, though it is most commonly given as Love's
Labour's Lost.
Shakespeare's
audiences were familiar with the historical personages portrayed and the
political situation in Europe relating to the setting and action of the play.
Scholars suggest the play lost popularity as these historical and political
portrayals of Navarre's court became dated and less accessible to theatergoers
of later generations. The play's sophisticated wordplay, pedantic humour and
dated literary allusions may also be cause for its relative obscurity, as
compared with Shakespeare's more popular works. Love's Labour's Lost was
rarely staged in the 19th century, but it has been seen more often in the 20th
and 21st centuries, with productions by both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre,
among others. It has also been adapted as a musical, an opera, for radio and
television and as a musical film.
Love's
Labour's Lost features the longest scene (5.2),
the longest single word 'honorificabilitudinitatibus' (5.1.39–40),
and (depending on editorial choices) the longest speech (4.3.284–361) in all of
Shakespeare's plays (see "Date and Text" below).
Characters
- Ferdinand – King of Navarre
- Lord Berowne (or Biron), Lord Longueville (or Longaville) and Lord Dumaine – attending on the King
- Princess of France, later Queen of France
- Lady Rosaline, Lady Maria, Lady Katharine and Boyet – attending on the Princess
- Marcadé – messenger
- Don Adriano de Armado – a fantastical Spaniard
- Moth – Armado's page
- Sir Nathaniel – curate
- Holofernes – schoolmaster
- Dull – constable
- Costard – a rustic
- Jaquenetta – country wench
- Forester
- Officers and others, attendants on the King and Princess
Synopsis
Ferdinand,
King of Navarre,
and his three noble companions, the Lords Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville,
take an oath not to give in to the company of women. They devote themselves to
three years of study and fasting; Berowne agrees somewhat more hesitantly than
the others. The King declares that no woman should come within a mile of the
court. Don Adriano de Armado, a Spaniard visiting the court, comes to tell the
King of a tryst between Costard
and Jaquenetta. After the King sentences Costard, Don Armado confesses his own
love for Jaquenetta to his page, Moth. Don Armado writes Jaquenetta a letter
and asks Costard to deliver it.
The
Princess of France and her ladies arrive, wishing to speak to the King
regarding the cession of Aquitaine, but must ultimately make their camp outside the court due
to the decree. In visiting the Princess and her ladies at their camp, the King
falls in love with the Princess, as do the lords with the ladies. Berowne gives
Costard a letter to deliver to the lady Rosaline, which Costard switches with
Don Armado's letter that was meant for Jaquenetta. Jaquenetta consults two
scholars, Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel, who conclude that the letter is written
by Berowne and instruct her to tell the King.
The
King and his lords lie in hiding and watch one another as each subsequently
reveals their feelings of love. The King ultimately chastises the lords for
breaking the oath, but Berowne reveals that the King is likewise in love with
the Princess. Jaquenetta and Costard enter with Berowne's letter and accuse him
of treason. Berowne confesses to breaking the oath, explaining that the only
study worthy of mankind is that of love, and he and the other men collectively
decide to relinquish the vow. Arranging for Holofernes to entertain the ladies
later, the men then dress as Muscovites and court the ladies in disguise. The Queen's courtier
Boyet, having overheard their planning, helps the ladies trick the men by
disguising themselves as each other. When the lords return as themselves, the
ladies taunt them and expose their ruse.
Impressed
by the ladies' wit, the men apologize, and when all identities are righted,
they watch Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel, Costard, Moth and Don Armado present the Nine
Worthies. The four lords and Boyet heckle
the play, saving their sole praise for Costard, and Don Armado and Costard
almost come to blows when Costard reveals mid-pageant that Don Armado has got
Jaquenetta pregnant. Their spat is interrupted by news that the Princess's
father has died. The Princess makes plans to leave at once, and she and her
ladies, readying for mourning, declare that the men must wait a year and a day
to prove their loves lasting. Don Armado announces he will swear a similar oath
to Jaquenetta and then presents the nobles with a song.
Sources
Love's
Labour's Lost is, along with Shakespeare's The
Tempest, a play without any obvious
sources.[1][2] Some possible influences on Love's Labour's Lost can
be found in the early plays of John
Lyly, Robert Wilson's The Cobbler's Prophecy (c. 1590) and Pierre de la Primaudaye's L'Academie française (1577).[3] Michael Dobson and Stanley
Wells comment that it has often been
conjectured that the plot derives from "a now lost account of a diplomatic
visit made to Henry in 1578 by Catherine de Medici
and her daughter Marguerite de Valois, Henry's estranged wife, to discuss the future of Aquitaine,
but this is by no means certain."[4]
The
four main male characters are all loosely based on historical figures; Navarre
is based on Henry of Navarre
(who later became King Henry IV of France), Berowne on Charles de Gontaut,
duc de Biron, Dumain on Charles, duc de Mayenne and Longaville on Henri I d'Orléans,
duc de Longueville.[5] Biron in particular was well known in England because Robert Devereux, 2nd
Earl of Essex, had joined forces with Biron's
army in support of Henry in 1591.[4] Albert Tricomi states that "the play's humorous
idealization could remain durable as long as the French names of its principal
characters remained familiar to Shakespeare's audiences. This means that the
witty portrayal of Navarre's court could remain reasonably effective until the
assassination of Henry IV in 1610. ... Such considerations suggest that the
portrayals of Navarre and the civil-war generals presented Elizabethan
audiences not with a mere collection of French names in the news, but with an
added dramatic dimension which, once lost, helps to account for the eclipse Love's
Labour's Lost soon underwent."[6]
Critics
have attempted to draw connections between notable Elizabethan English persons and the characters of Don Armado, Moth, Sir
Nathaniel, and Holofernes, with little success.[6]
Date and text
Most
modern scholars believe the play was written in 1595 or 1596, making it
contemporaneous with Romeo
and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream.[7] Love's Labour's Lost was first published in quarto in 1598 by the bookseller Cuthbert
Burby. The title page states that the
play was "Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere," which has
suggested to some scholars a revision of an earlier version.[8] The play next appeared in print in the First
Folio in 1623, with a later quarto in
1631. Love's Labour's Won is considered by some to be a lost sequel.[9][10]
Love’s
Labour’s Lost features the longest scene in all
of Shakespeare’s plays (5.2), which, depending upon formatting and editorial
decisions, ranges from around 920 lines[11]
to just over 1000 lines.[12] The First Folio records the scene at 942 lines.
The
play also features the single longest word in all of Shakespeare's plays: honorificabilitudinitatibus, spoken by Costard at 5.1.30.
The
speech given by Berowne at 4.3.284–361 is potentially the longest in all of
Shakespeare's plays, depending on editorial choices. Shakespeare critic and
editor Edward Capell
has pointed out that certain passages within the speech seem to be redundant
and argues that these passages represent a first draft which was not adequately
corrected before going to print.[13] Specifically, lines 291–313 are “repeated in substance”[13]
further in the speech and are sometimes omitted by editors.[14] With no omissions, the speech is 77 lines and 588 words.
Analysis and criticism
Title
The
title is normally given as Love's Labour's Lost. The use of apostrophes
varies in early editions. In its first 1598 quarto publication it appears as Loues
labors [sic] loſt. In the
1623 First Folio
it is Loues Labour's Lost and in the 1631 edition it is Loues Labours
Lost. In the Third Folio
it appears for the first time with the modern punctuation and spelling as Love's
Labour's Lost.[15] Critic John Hale wrote that the title could be read as
"love's labour is lost" or "the lost labours of love"
depending on punctuation. Hale suggests that the witty alliteration of the
title is in keeping with the pedantic nature of the play.[16] In 1935 Frances
Yates asserted that the title derived
from a line in John Florio's
His firste Fruites (1578): "We neede not speak so much of loue, al
books are ful of lou, with so many authours, that it were labour lost to speake
of Loue",[17] a source from which Shakespeare also took the untranslated
Venetian proverb Venetia, Venetia/Chi non ti vede non ti pretia (LLL
4.2.92–93) ("Venice, Venice, Who does not see you cannot praise
you").[18]
Reputation
Love's
Labour's Lost abounds in sophisticated wordplay,
puns, and literary allusions and is filled with clever pastiches of contemporary
poetic forms.[19] Critic and historian John Pendergast states that
"perhaps more than any other Shakespearean play, it explores the power and
limitations of language, and this blatant concern for language led many early
critics to believe that it was the work of a playwright just learning his
art."[20] In The
Western Canon (1994), Harold
Bloom lauds the work as
"astonishing" and refers to it as Shakespeare's "first absolute
achievement".[21] It is often assumed that the play was written for
performance at the Inns of Court,
whose students would have been most likely to appreciate its style. It has
never been among Shakespeare's most popular plays, probably because its
pedantic humour and linguistic density are extremely demanding of contemporary
theatregoers.[19][20] The satirical allusions of Navarre's court are likewise
inaccessible, "having been principally directed to fashions of language
that have long passed away, and [are] consequently little understood, rather
than in any great deficiency of invention."[22]
Themes
Masculine desire
Masculine
desire structures the play and helps to shape its action. The men's sexual
appetite manifests in their desire for fame and honour; the notion of women as
dangerous to masculinity and intellect is established early on. The King and
his Lords' desires for their idealized women are deferred, confused, and
ridiculed throughout the play. As the play comes to a close, their desire is
deferred yet again, resulting in an increased exaltation of the women.[23]
Critic
Mark Breitenberg commented that the use of idealistic poetry, popularized by Petrarch, effectively becomes the textualized form of the male gaze.[23] In describing and idealizing the ladies, the King and his
Lords exercise a form of control over women they love. Don Armado also represents
masculine desire through his relentless pursuit of Jacquenetta. The theme of
desire is heightened by the concern of increasing female sexuality throughout
the Renaissance
period and the subsequent threat of cuckoldry. Politics of love, marriage, and power are equally forceful
in shaping the thread of masculine desire that drives the plot.[23]
Reckoning and rationalization
The
term 'reckoning' is used in its multiple meanings throughout the Shakespeare
canon.[24] In Love's Labour's Lost in particular, it is often
used to signify a moral judgement; most notably, the idea of a final reckoning
as it relates to death. Though the play entwines fantasy and reality, the
arrival of the messenger to announce the death of the Princess's father
ultimately brings this notion to a head. Scholar Cynthia Lewis suggested that
the appearance of the final reckoning is necessary in reminding the lovers of
the seriousness of marriage.[24] The need to settle the disagreement between Navarre and
France likewise suggests an instance of reckoning, though this particular
reckoning is settled offstage. This is presented in stark contrast to the final
scene, in which the act of reckoning cannot be avoided. In acknowledging the
consequences of his actions, Don Armado is the only one to deal with his
reckoning in a noble manner. The Lords and the King effectively pass judgement
on themselves, revealing their true moral character when mocking the players
during the representation of the Nine Worthies.[24]
Similar
to reckoning is the notion of rationalization, which provides the basis for the
swift change in the ladies' feelings for the men. The ladies are able to talk
themselves into falling in love with the men due to the rationalization of the
men's purported flaws. Lewis concluded that "the proclivity to rationalize
a position, a like, or a dislike, is linked in Love's Labour's Lost with
the difficulty of reckoning absolute value, whose slipperiness is indicated
throughout the play."[24]
Reality versus fantasy
Critic
Joseph Westlund wrote that Love's Labour's Lost functions as a
"prelude to the more extensive commentary on imagination in A Midsummer Night's Dream."[25] There are several plot points driven by fantasy and
imagination throughout the play. The Lords and the King's declaration of
abstinence is a fancy that falls short of achievement. This fantasy rests on
the men's idea that the resulting fame will allow them to circumvent death and
oblivion, a fantastical notion itself. Within moments of swearing their oath,
it becomes clear that their fantastical goal is unachievable given the reality
of the world, the unnatural state of abstinence itself, and the arrival of the
Princess and her ladies. This juxtaposition ultimately lends itself to the
irony and humour in the play.[25]
The
commoners represent the theme of reality and achievement versus fantasy via
their production regarding the Nine Worthies. Like the men's fantastical
pursuit of fame, the play within a play represents the commoners' concern with
fame. The relationship between the fantasy of love and the reality of
worthwhile achievement, a popular Renaissance topic, is also utilized
throughout the play. Don Armado attempts to reconcile these opposite desires
using Worthies who fell in love as model examples.[25] Time is suspended throughout the play and is of little
substance to the plot. The Princess, though originally "craving quick
dispatch," quickly falls under the spell of love and abandons her urgent
business. This suggests that the majority of the action takes place within a
fantasy world. Only with the news of the Princess's father's death are time and
reality reawakened.[25]
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