Love's Labour's Lost is
one of Shakespeare's romance
comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s, making it
contemporaneous with Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer
Night's Dream. It was first published in 1598. 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. The play next appeared in print in the First
Folio in 1623. The earliest recorded performance of the play occurred at
Christmas time in 1597 at Court before Queen Elizabeth.
Love's Labour's Lost
is one of those plays which seem difficult on the page (all dense wordplay,
leaping from one literary level to another), but work marvellously on stage. It
was one of Shakespeare's first attempts to blend romantic comedy with farce
and to import the style of each into the other. The play concerns the subject of love, includes lots of
rhetoric and witty exchanges by the characters, and has a happy ending,
although it does not end with a marriage.
The
play opens with the King of Navarre and
three noble companions, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, taking an oath to
devote themselves to three years of study, abstaining
from all distractions, particularly of the female kind, with only Armado, a Spaniard visiting the King's court, and
Costard, a fool, to
entertain them. They are confounded, on signing the vow, when Berowne remembers
that the Princess of France and her three ladies, Rosaline, Maria, and
Katharine, attended by Boyet, are on an embassy to Navarre’s court. Armado,
has decided to arrest Costard for being in the company of a woman -
the woman being Jaquenetta, a dairymaid, who
Armado himself is in love with.
The ladies arrive, and the King and his lords fall in
love with them. Armado frees Costard on condition he delivers a note to
Jaquenetta; Berowne charges Costard with a letter to Rosaline; and the two
letters get mixed up.
The four lords enter one by one and despair about
their love for their particular woman, and one by one are overheard by the
others. They decide to tear the oath up, and woo the ladies. They disguise
themselves as Russians, but Boyet tells the ladies beforehand, and the ladies
change identities with each other. The lords enter, and woo the wrong women.
They leave, and on their return are mocked by the ladies.
Armado then approaches the schoolmaster Holofernes and
curate Nathaniel to join with him, Costard, and the page, Mote, to present a pageant
called the “Nine Worthies” as
entertainment to the nobles. This provides them with many opportunities for
comment and laughter. The mood changes when the messenger Marcade from
France brings news that the Princess’s
father has died. As the ladies prepare to leave, the lords affirm that all
their expressions of love were genuine, but the Princess claims that everything
was in jest. The ladies tell the lords that, if they are serious, they must
carry out certain tasks for a year, and then return to offer marriage. The
lords agree. Armado then presents the learned men in a dialogue between the owl
and the cuckoo, representing winter and spring, by way of conclusion.
Here you can find a very interesting study guide of the play.
And now let's watch some videos of the Globe Theatre's production of Love's Labour's Lost here.
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