INTRODUCTION• 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.

• It follows the King of Navarre and his three companions as they attempt to foreswear the company of women for three years of study and fasting, and their subsequent infatuation with the Princess of Aquitaine and her ladies.

• 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 rationalization, and reality versus fantasy.

HISTORY & SOURCES• Though first published in quarto in 1598, the

play's title page suggests a revision of an earlier version of the play.

• Love's Labour's Lost is, along with Shakespeare's The Tempest, a play without any obvious sources. Some possible influences on it can be found in the early plays of John Lyly, Robert Wilson's The Cobbler's Prophecy (c.1590) and Pierre de la Primaudaye'sL'Academie française (1577).

• 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, ducde Mayenne and Longaville on Henri I d'Orléans, duc de Longueville.

CHARACTERS• Ferdinand – King of Navarre

• Lord Berowne (or Biron), Lord Longueville(or Longaville) and Lord Dumaine –attending on the King

• Princess of France

• Lady Rosaline, Lady Maria, Lady Katharineand 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

THE STORY• The story is a classic Shakespearean battle

of the wits between men and women.

• Ferdinand, the King of Navarre has entered into a vow with his attending lords Longaville, Dumaine, and Berowne to abstain from rich foods, adequate amounts of sleep, and the company of women for 3 years.

• No sooner do they sign the paper than the Princess of France and her attending ladies Maria, Katherine and Rosaline arrive.

• Immediate attraction leads to big problems as the gentleman try to figure out how to woo these feisty ladies without breaking their vows—or, at least, without letting the other gentleman know.

THE STORY... CONTINUED• 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. Berownedeclares that the only study worthy of mankind is that of the opposite sex, and he and the other men collectively decide to pursue their loves.

• The men arrive at the Princess's camp disguised as Muscovites. The ladies decide to trick the men, dressing as one another. When all identities are righted, they watch a play. The four lords – as well as the ladies' courtier Boyet – mock the play, and Don Armado and Costard almost come to blows.

• Finally, news arrives that the Princess's father has died, and she must leave to take the throne. The king and his nobles swear to remain faithful to their ladies, but the ladies, unconvinced that their love is strong, declare that the men must wait a year and a day to prove what they say is true. The Princess and her ladies depart from the King's court.

QUOTES• Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,

Live register'd upon our brazen tombs And then grace us in the disgrace of death; When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,The endeavour of this present breath may buyThat honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge,And make us heirs of all eternity. (1.1.1)

• These are barren tasks, too hard to keep,Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep! (1.1.48)

• Painfully to pore upon a book To seek the light of truth; while truth the while Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look. (1.1.73)

• Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks;Small have continual plodders ever won,Save base authority from others' books.These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lightsThat give a name to every fixed star,Have no more profit of their shining nightsThan those that walk and wot not what they are. (1.1.84)

• How well he's read, to reason against reading! (1.1.94)

• At Christmas I no more desire a roseThan wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;But like of each thing that in season grows. (1.1.105)

• A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,That hath a mint of phrases in his brain. (1.1.164)

• Your wit's too hot, it speeds too fast, 'twill tire. (2.1.119)

• By my penny of observation. (3.1.25)

• A wightly wanton with a velvet brow,With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes;Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deedThough Argus were her eunuch and her guard:And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!To pray for her! (3.1.206)

• He hath not fed of the dainties that are bred in a book;he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink. (4.2.25)

• Many can brook the weather that love not the wind. (4.2.37)

MORE QUOTES• From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:

They are the ground, the books, the academes,From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire. (4.3.302)

• But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,Lives not alone immured in the brain,But, with the motion of all elements,Courses as swift as thought in every power,And gives to every power a double power,Above their functions and their offices. (4.3.327)

• From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;They are the books, the arts, the academes,That show, contain, and nourish all the world. (4.3.350)

• He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. (5.1.18)

• They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps. (5.1.39)

• They have measured many a mileTo tread a measure with you on this grass. (5.2.88)

• A jest's prosperity lies in the earOf him that hears it, never in the tongueOf him that makes it. (5.2.869)

• When daisies pied and violets blue,And lady-smocks all silver-white,And cuckoo-buds of yellow hueDo paint the meadows with delight,The cuckoo then, on every tree,Mocks married men. (5.2.902)

ANALYSIS• Love's Labour's Lost abounds in sophisticated

wordplay, puns, and literary allusions and is filled with clever pastiches of contemporary poetic forms.

• 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."

• It has never been among Shakespeare's most popular plays, likely because its pedantic humor and linguistic density are extremely demanding of contemporary theatregoers.

• 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."

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST SEQUEL?• In 1598, Francis Meres recorded a list of a dozen of

Shakespeare plays. His list of Shakespearean comedies reads:

"for Comedy, witness his Ge[n]tleme[n] of Verona, his [Comedy of] Errors, his Love's labors lost, his Love's labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, & his Merchant of Venice".

• Love's Labour's Won is the name of a play written by William Shakespeare before 1598. The play appears to have been published by 1603, but no copies are known to have survived.

• One theory holds that it is a lost work, possibly a sequel to Love's Labour's Lost.

• Another theory is that the title is an alternative name for a known Shakespeare play, possibly Much Ado About Nothing.

L.L.L. IN THE MODERN DAY• Despite the play being one of

Shakespeare’s most difficult and demanding plays, several adaptions have been made for film, television, and theater.

• Five movies have been made, the first in 1904, a television movie in 1965, a BBC production in 1985, and a feature film in 2000.

• The Globe Theatre released a filmed production on DVD in 2010.

• In 2013, the Public Theater of New York City turned Love’s Labour’s Lost into a broadway-style musical extravaganza.

A NUTSY THE SQUIRREL PRODUCTION

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