There is a valuable piece of confirmatory evidence for the early date of this play and its companion play Love's Labor Won" (whatever this may have been) in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I, sc. i, 29-33. "To be in love, what scorn is bought with groans If happy won, perhaps a hapless gain, If lost why then a grievous labor's won." GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS The metrical tests place Love's Labor's Lost first of the plays of the first (or rhyming) period; its lyrical character is perhaps its most noteworthy feature: it contains in its present state twice as many rhymed lines as blank verse, and there can be little doubt that in its original form the proportion was even greater. In addition to three Sonnets and a Song 1 there is doggerel in abundance, as well as alternate rhymes and six-line stanzas; but throughout the play the thought, quite as much as the metrical form, reminds us that Shakespeare has not yet divorced his poetical from his dramatic genius. "The opening speech of the king on the immortality of fame-on the triumph of fame over death-and the nobler parts of Biron," Mr. Pater justly observes, "have something of the monumental style of Shakespeare's Sonnets, and are not without their conceits of thought and expression." Among other marks of its early date are the following: -Its symmetrical arrangement of the characters; its introduction of the standing characters of the older plays ("the pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool and the boy"); its quibbling, repartee, and word-play; its sketchy characterization (Biron and Rosaline are rough drafts of Benedick and Beatrice; Armado and Jaquenetta anticipate Touchstone and Audrey); the obvious influence of the Courtly dramas of John Lily. Finally, no other 1 Jaggard put two of the Sonnets and the Song into The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599; the Song was also printed with Shakespeare's name attached in England's Helicon, 1600. play gives us such glimpses into Shakespeare's youth; none has such delightful reminiscences of his child-life at Stratford: in more senses than one Love's Labor's Lost is "a portrait taken of him in his boyhood!" THE PLOT Love's Labor's Lost has the slightest of all Shakespeare's plots; it may be described as a drama of dialogue and satire; intrigue plays practically no part in it. It would seem, indeed, that Shakespeare's first comedy owed its main interest to topical allusions, no doubt readily understood by his audience. This topical character of the play explains its popularity in Elizabethan days, and its neglect in modern times. Mr. S. Lee (Gentleman's Magazine, 1880) has called attention to its quasi-historical framework, and its many references to contemporary events and personages: (1) The leading element of the play refers to English volunteers, who, under Essex, had just joined Henry of Navarre in France. Note the name of the hero of the play; his associates are named after Navarre's generals; of these Biron was the best known and the most popular in England, and Shakespeare seems to have given us a life-like portraiture; (in later years Chapman made him the hero of two of his plays;) (2) the meeting of the King of Navarre and the Princess of France suggests the meeting of the King and Catherine de Medici in 1586 to settle disputes between Navarre and the reigning king, her son, "decrepit in mind and body"; (3) the references to Russian diplomacy; (4) the question of academies; 1 (5) "the ludicrous side of contemporary country life, with its inefficient constable, its pompous schoolmaster, and its ignorant curate"; (6) contemporary affectations of speech and dress. 1 It is customary to class all the extravagances of speech characteristic of the Elizabethan age as Euphuism; Shake 1 From this point of view and in other respects the play should be compared with its Victorian counterpart, Tennyson's Princess. speare, however, carefully differentiates the pedantry of the New Learning, as exemplified by Holofernes; the fantastic extravagance of the Newer Learning, as exemplified by Armado; and the refined charm, the fascination, as well as the dangers, of the poetic diction of the age, as exemplified by Biron,-Shakespeare's own mouthpiece when he forswears his "Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation, Shakespeare may well be identified with his favorite character, and Biron's plea may well be taken as the poet's own: "Yet have I a trick Of the old rage;-bear with me, I am sick; It is noteworthy that even "the fanatical phantasm" Armado was drawn from the life; he was a well-known character of the time, and Thomas Churchyard commemorated his death in a poem entitled "The Phantasticall Monarchoes Epitaph." Certain critics have discovered in Holofernes a caricature of Florio, but there is no reason for supposing that Shakespeare wished to hold up to ridicule a distinguished scholar, to whose work he was indebted. The name Holofernes was possibly derived from Rabelais; Tubal Holophernes taught Gargantua his A B C: in his general characteristics he resembles Rombus, the Schoolmaster, in Sydney's The Lady of the May. The close of the play suggests that Shakespeare had been reading Chaucer's Parlement of Foules. Perhaps even the song at the end may justly remind one of the fact that in Chaucer's poem also the birds sing their song as they disperse, though Shakespeare's song, as far as its form is concerned, is a medieval "debate." "The debate and strife between summer and winter" was imprinted by Laurence Andrews. "The pageant of the Nine Worthies" was a frequent subject of exhibition by the "base mechanicals" of country towns. "Divers play Alexander in the villages," observes Williams in his Discourse of Warre, 1590, "but few or none in the field." DURATION OF ACTION The action of the play lasts probably two days. Acts I and II cover the first day, Acts III and IV the second (cp. P. A. Daniel's "Time Analysis of Shakespeare's Plays," New Shakespeare Society, 1877-9). INTRODUCTION By HENRY NORMAN HUDSON, A.M. Love's Labor's Lost was first published in a quarto pamphlet of thirty-eight leaves in 1598, the title-page reading as follows: "A pleasant-conceited Comedy called Love's Labor's Lost: As it was presented before her Highness this last Christmas: Newly corrected and augmented: By W. Shakespeare. Imprinted at London by W. W. for Cuthbert Burby: 1598." There was no other known edition of the play till the folio of 1623, where it is the seventh in the division of Comedies. From the repetition of certain errors of the press, it is quite probable that the second copy was reprinted from the first; while, on the other hand, there are certain differences that look as if another authority had in some points been consulted: the editors of the folio probably taking the quarto as their standard, and occasionally having recourse to a play-house manuscript. In the quarto neither scenes nor acts are distinguished; in the folio only the latter; and even here, as may easily be seen, the division into acts is very unequal and inartificial: yet no modern edition has ventured upon any change in this respect. In the Accounts of the Revels at Court, under the date of January, 1605, occurs the following entry: "Between New-years Day and Twelfth Day, a play of Love's Labor's Lost." As success on the public stage was generally at that time the main reason of a play's being selected for performance at court, we may infer that this play continued popular after many better ones had been written. The play was also entered in the Stationers' Books, January 22, 1607, the right of it being passed over from Burby |