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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 (break their oath). 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.

Title page of the first quarto (1598)

Though first published in quarto in 1598, the play's title page suggests a revision of an earlier version of the play. There are no obvious sources for the play's plot. 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 causes 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, writes a letter 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.

 
Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV, Scene 3, by Thomas Stothard (c. 1800)

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 his 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. 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

 
The first page of the play in the First Folio (1623)

Love's Labour's Lost may be found to have a number of sources for various aspects, but a primary source for the story is not extant. It has this in common with two other plays — A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest.[1] 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).[2] 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."[3]

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.[4] 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.[3] 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."[5]

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.[5]

Date and text

 
Title page of the second quarto (1631)

Most scholars believe the play was written 1594―1595, but not later than 1598.[6] 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.[7] 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.[8][9]

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[10] to just over 1000 lines.[11] 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.[12] Specifically, lines 291–313 are "repeated in substance"[12] further in the speech and are sometimes omitted by editors.[13] 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 loſt. In the 1623 First Folio it is Loues Labour's Lost and in the 1631 quarto 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.[14] Critic John Hale notes 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.[15] 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",[16] 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").[17]

Reputation

Love's Labour's Lost abounds in sophisticated wordplay, puns, and literary allusions and is filled with clever pastiches of contemporary poetic forms.[18] 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."[19] In The Western Canon (1994), Harold Bloom lauds the work as "astonishing" and refers to it as Shakespeare's "first absolute achievement".[20] 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.[18][19] 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."[21]

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.[22]

Critic Mark Breitenberg commented that the use of idealistic poetry, popularized by Petrarch, effectively becomes the textualized form of the male gaze.[22] 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 consequent threat of cuckoldry. Politics of love, marriage, and power are equally forceful in shaping the thread of masculine desire that drives the plot.[22]

Reckoning and rationalization

The term 'reckoning' is used in its multiple meanings throughout the Shakespeare canon.[23] 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.[23] 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.[23]

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."[23]

Reality versus fantasy

 
Princess of France (from an 1850 edition)

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."[24] 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.[24]

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.[24] 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.[24]

Music

Unlike many of Shakespeare’s plays, music plays a role only in the final scene of Love's Labour's Lost. The songs of spring and winter, titled "Ver and Hiems" and "The Cuckoo and the Owl", respectively, occur near the end of the play. Given the critical controversy regarding the exact dating of Love's Labour's Lost, there is some indication that "the songs belong to the 1597 additions."[25]

Different interpretations of the meaning of these songs include: optimistic commentary for the future, bleak commentary regarding the recent announcement of death, or an ironic device by which to direct the King and his Lords towards a new outlook on love and life.[26] In keeping with the theme of time as it relates to reality and fantasy, these are seasonal songs that restore the sense of time to the play. Due to the opposing nature of the two songs, they can be viewed as a debate on the opposing attitudes on love found throughout the play.[24] Catherine McLay comments that the songs are functional in their interpretation of the central themes in Love's Labour's Lost.[25] McLay also suggests that the songs negate what many consider to be a "heretical" ending for a comedy. The songs, a product of traditional comedic structure, are a method by which the play can be "[brought] within the periphery of the usual comic definition."[25]

Critic Thomas Berger states that, regardless of the meaning of these final songs, they are important in their contrast with the lack of song throughout the rest of the play.[26] In cutting themselves off from women and the possibility of love, the King and his Lords have effectively cut themselves off from song. Song is allowed into the world of the play at the beginning of Act III, after the Princess and her ladies have been introduced and the men begin to fall in love. Moth’s song "Concolinel" indicates that the vows will be broken.[26] In Act I, Scene II, Moth recites a poem but fails to sing it. Don Armado insists that Moth sing it twice, but he does not. Berger infers that a song was intended to be inserted at this point, but was never written. Had a song been inserted at this point of the play, it would have followed dramatic convention of the time, which often called for music between scenes.[26]

Performance history

 
A photograph of John Drew as the King of Navarre in Augustin Daly's production.

The earliest recorded performance of the play occurred at Christmas in 1597 at the Court before Queen Elizabeth. A second performance is recorded to have occurred in 1605, either at the house of the Earl of Southampton or at that of Robert Cecil, Lord Cranborne. The first known production after Shakespeare's era was not until 1839, at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, with Madame Vestris as Rosaline.[27] The Times was unimpressed, stating: "The play moved very heavily. The whole dialogue is but a string of brilliant conceits, which, if not delivered well, are tedious and unintelligible. The manner in which it was played last night destroyed the brilliancy completely, and left a residuum of insipidity which was encumbered rather than relieved by the scenery and decorations."[28] The only other performances of the play recorded in England in the 19th century were at Sadler's Wells in 1857 and the St. James's Theatre in 1886.[29]

Notable 20th-century British productions included a 1936 staging at the Old Vic featuring Michael Redgrave as Ferdinand and Alec Clunes as Berowne. In 1949, the play was given at the New Theatre with Redgrave in the role of Berowne.[30] The cast of a 1965 Royal Shakespeare Company production included Glenda Jackson, Janet Suzman and Timothy West.[31] In 1968, the play was staged by Laurence Olivier for the National Theatre, with Derek Jacobi as the Duke and Jeremy Brett as Berowne.[32] The Royal Shakespeare Company produced the play again in 1994. The critic Michael Billington wrote in his review of the production: "The more I see Love's Labour's Lost, the more I think it Shakespeare's most beguiling comedy. It both celebrates and satisfies linguistic exuberance, explores the often painful transition from youth to maturity, and reminds us of our common mortality."[33]

In late summer 2005, an adaptation of the play was staged in the Dari language in Kabul, Afghanistan by a group of Afghan actors, and was reportedly very well received.[34]

A 2009 staging by Shakespeare's Globe theatre, with artistic direction by Dominic Dromgoole, toured internationally. Ben Brantley, in The New York Times, called the production, seen at Pace University, "sophomoric". He postulated that the play itself "may well be the first and best example of a genre that would flourish in less sophisticated forms five centuries later: the college comedy."[35]

In 2014, the Royal Shakespeare Company completed a double-feature in which Love's Labour's Lost, set on the eve of the First World War, is followed by Much Ado About Nothing (re-titled Love's Labour's Won). Dominic Cavendish of the Telegraph called it "the most blissfully entertaining and emotionally involving RSC offering I’ve seen in ages" and remarked that "Parallels between the two works – the sparring wit, the sex-war skirmishes, the shift from showy linguistic evasion to heart-felt earnestness – become persuasively apparent."[36]

Adaptations

Literature

 
The start of a performance of Love's Labour's Lost at Shakespeare's Globe in Southwark, south London

Alfred Tennyson's poem The Princess (and, by extension, Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Princess Ida) is speculated by Gerhard Joseph to have been inspired by Love's Labour's Lost.[37]

Thomas Mann in his novel Doctor Faustus (1943) has the fictional German composer Adrian Leverkühn attempt to write an opera on the story of the play.[38]

Musical theatre, opera, and plays

An opera of the same title as the play was composed by Nicolas Nabokov, with a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, and first performed in 1973.

In the summer of 2013, The Public Theater in New York City presented a musical adaptation of the play as part of their Shakespeare in the Park programming. This production marked the first new Shakespeare-based musical to be produced at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park since the 1971 mounting of The Two Gentlemen of Verona with music by Galt MacDermot. The adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost featured a score by Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson collaborators Michael Friedman and Alex Timbers. Timbers also directed the production, which starred Daniel Breaker, Colin Donnell, Rachel Dratch, and Patti Murin, among others.[39]

Marc Palmieri's 2015 play The Groundling,[40] a farce the NY Times referred to as "half comedy and half tragedy", was billed as a "meditation on the meaning of the final moments of Love's Labour's Lost".[41]

Film, television and radio

Kenneth Branagh's 2000 film adaptation relocated the setting to the 1930s and attempted to make the play more accessible by turning it into a musical. The film was a box office disappointment.[42]

The play was one of the last works to be recorded for the BBC Television Shakespeare project, broadcast in 1985. The production set events in the eighteenth century, the costumes and sets being modeled on the paintings of Jean-Antoine Watteau. This was the only instance in the project of a work set in a period after Shakespeare's death.[43] The play is featured in an episode of the British TV show, Doctor Who. The episode, entitled The Shakespeare Code, focuses on Shakespeare himself and a hypothetical follow-up play, Love's Labour's Won, whose final scene is used as a portal for alien witches to invade Earth. All copies of this play disappear along with the witches.[44]

BBC Radio 3 aired a radio adaptation on 16 December 1946, directed by Noel Illif, with music by Gerald Finzi scored for a small chamber orchestra. The cast included Paul Scofield. The music was subsequently converted into an orchestral suite.[45] BBC Radio 3 aired another radio adaptation on 22 February 1979, directed by David Spenser, with music by Derek Oldfield. The cast included Michael Kitchen as Ferdinand; John McEnery as Berowne; Anna Massey as the Princess of France; Eileen Atkins as Rosaline; and Paul Scofield as Don Adriano.[46]

A modern-language adaptation of the play, titled Groups of Ten or More People, was released online by Chicago-based company Littlebrain Theatre in July 2020.[47][48] This adaptation, set during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, was filmed entirely over the digital conferencing program Zoom.[49]

Notes

  1. ^ Woudhuysen, H. R., ed. Love's Labours Lost (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1998): 61-73.
  2. ^ Kerrigan, J. ed. "Love's Labours Lost", New Penguin Shakespeare, Harmondsworth 1982, ISBN 0-14-070738-7
  3. ^ a b Dobson, M. and Wells, S. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 264
  4. ^ G.R. Hibbard (ed), Love's Labour's Lost (Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 49
  5. ^ a b Tricomi, Albert (1979). "The Witty Idealization of the French Court in Love's Labor's Lost". Shakespeare Studies. 12: 25–33.
  6. ^ Woudhuysen, H. R., ed. Love's Labour's Lost (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1998): 59.
  7. ^ "William". from the original on 3 April 2016. Retrieved 15 July 2016. See title page of facsimile of the original 1st edition (1598)
  8. ^ Woudhuysen, H. R. (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (London: Arden, 1998), pp. 80–81
  9. ^ Carroll, William C. (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 39–40
  10. ^ Mabillard, Amanda. "Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost 5.2 – The Owl and the Cuckoo. Tu-whit to-who". www.shakespeare-online.com. from the original on 29 December 2017.
  11. ^ Poston, Rebecca Niles, Michael. "Folger Digital Texts". www.folgerdigitaltexts.org. from the original on 24 September 2015.
  12. ^ a b Furness, Horace Howard. (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1904), pp. 192–194
  13. ^ Poston, Rebecca Niles, Michael. "Folger Digital Texts". www.folgerdigitaltexts.org. from the original on 24 September 2015.
  14. ^ J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, Memoranda on Love's Labour's Lost, King John, Othello, and on Romeo and Juliet, Read Books, 2008 (reprint), p.11.
  15. ^ Hale, John (1997). "Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost". Explicator. 56 (1): 9. doi:10.1080/00144949709595237.
  16. ^ Yates, Frances A. A Study of Love's Labour's Lost, Pennsylvania: Folcroft Press (1936), p. 35
  17. ^ Elam, Keir. "'At the cubiculo': Shakespeare’s Problems with Italian Language and Culture" in Italian culture in the drama of Shakespeare & his contemporaries: Rewriting, Remaking, Refashioning, Michele Marrapodi, ed. Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies Series. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 99–110 [100]. ISBN 978-0-7546-5504-6.
  18. ^ a b Woudhuysen, H.R. (2001). "Love's Labour's Lost". In Proudfoot, Richard; et al. (eds.). The Arden Shakespeare complete works (2 ed.). London: Thomson. p. 743. ISBN 978-1-903436-61-5.
  19. ^ a b Pendergast, John (2002). Love's Labour's Lost: A Guide to the Play. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313313158.
  20. ^ Bloom, Harold (2014). The Western Canon. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 46. ISBN 978-0547546483.
  21. ^ Halliwell-Phillipps, J.O. (1879). "Memoranda on Love's Labour's Lost". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  22. ^ a b c Breitenberg, Mark (1992). "The Anatomy of Masculine Desire in Love's Labor's Lost". Shakespeare Quarterly. 43 (4): 430–449. doi:10.2307/2870863. JSTOR 2870863.
  23. ^ a b c d Lewis, Cynthia (2008). "'We Know What We Know': Reckoning in Love's Labor's Lost". Studies in Philology. 105 (2): 245–264. doi:10.1353/sip.2008.0008. S2CID 159766371.
  24. ^ a b c d e Westlund, Joseph (1967). "Fancy and Achievement in Love's Labor's Lost". Shakespeare Quarterly. 18 (1): 37–46. doi:10.2307/2868061. JSTOR 2868061.
  25. ^ a b c McLay, Catherine (1967). "The Dialogues of Spring and Winter: A Key to the Unity of Love's Labour's Lost". Shakespeare Quarterly. 18 (2): 119–127. doi:10.2307/2867698. JSTOR 2867698.
  26. ^ a b c d Berger, Thomas (1975). "The Lack of Song in Love's Labor's Lost". Shakespeare Quarterly. 26 (1): 53–55. doi:10.2307/2869270. JSTOR 2869270.
  27. ^ F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964, pp. 288–89.
  28. ^ "Covent-Garden Theatre". The Times. 1 October 1839. p. 5.
  29. ^ John Parker, "Who's Who in the Theatre (fifth edition)," London, 1925: pp. 1126.
  30. ^ Gave, Freda. "Who's Who in the Theatre (fourteenth edition), Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, London, 1967
  31. ^ "More Intelligent than Theatrical". The Times. 8 April 1965. p. 6.
  32. ^ "Gentle Enchantment of Olivier Production". The Times. 20 December 1968. p. 12.
  33. ^ Billington, Michael (4 May 1994). "Love's Labour's Lost, Barbican, London". The Guardian. p. A5.
  34. ^ Qais Akbar Omar and Stephen Landrigan, "Shakespeare in Kabul", in East-West Diwan: in Memory of Mark Linz, Gingko Library 2014 pp. 67–75
  35. ^ Brantley, Ben (11 December 2009). "Pledge Week at That Elizabethan Animal House". The New York Times. from the original on 1 July 2017.
  36. ^ Cavendish, Dominic (16 October 2014). "Love's Labour's Lost/Love's Labour's Won, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, review: 'blissfully entertaining'". The Telegraph. from the original on 20 June 2017.
  37. ^ Joseph, Gerhard (1969). Tennysonian Love: The Strange Diagonal. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-8166-5800-8.
  38. ^ Blackmur, R.P. (1950). "Parody and Critique: Notes on Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus". The Kenyon Review. 12 (1): 20.
  39. ^ Hetrick, Adam (23 July 2013). "Shakespeare in the Park Musical Adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost Premieres July 23". Playbill. Retrieved 5 January 2022.
  40. ^ Palmieri, Marc (2015). The Groundling. New York: Dramatists Play Service. ISBN 978-0-8222-3347-3.
  41. ^ Soloski, Alexis (20 February 2015). "Review: 'The Groundling,' a Backstage Farce With Heartbreak". The New York Times. from the original on 22 July 2017.
  42. ^ "Love's Labour's Lost" 3 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Box Office Mojo, accessed 7 December 2013
  43. ^ Martin Wiggins, The (BBC DVD) Shakespeare Collection: Viewing Notes (booklet included with the DVD box-set)
  44. ^ "Episode 302, The Shakespeare Code". Dr. Who TV. 22 September 2009. from the original on 23 October 2013.
  45. ^ A written transcript of the production is held at the Birmingham Central Library as part of their Shakespeare Collection. Sanders, Julie. Shakespeare and Music: Afterlives and Borrowings, Cambridge, UK 2007
  46. ^ "Love's Labour's Lost". British Universities Film & Video Council. Archived from the original on 12 November 2013.
  47. ^ "Littlebrain Theatre Announces Original Filmed Play". Broadway World Chicago.
  48. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the : "Groups of Ten or More People (2020)". YouTube.
  49. ^ "Groups of Ten or More People". Total Theatre.

Editions

  • Bate, Jonathan and Rasmussen, Eric (eds.) Love's Labour's Lost (The RSC Shakespeare; London: Macmillan, 2008)
  • Arthos, John (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (Signet Classic Shakespeare; New York: Signet, 1965; revised edition, 1988; 2nd revised edition 2004)
  • Carroll, William C. (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (The New Cambridge Shakespeare; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
  • David, Richard T. (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (The Arden Shakespeare, 2nd Series; London: Arden, 1951)
  • Furness, H.H. (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (A New Variourm Edition of Shakespeare; Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1904)
  • Evans, G. Blakemore (ed.) The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974; 2nd edn., 1997)
  • Greenblatt, Stephen; Cohen, Walter; Howard, Jean E. and Maus, Katharine Eisaman (eds.) The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Shakespeare (London: Norton, 1997)
  • Harbage, Alfred (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (The Pelican Shakespeare; London: Penguin, 1963; revised edition 1973)
  • Hart, H.C. (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (The Arden Shakespeare, 1st Series; London: Arden, 1906)
  • Hibbard, G.R. (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (The Oxford Shakespeare; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)
  • Holland, Peter (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (The Pelican Shakespeare, 2nd Edition; London: Penguin, 2000)
  • Kerrigan, John (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (The New Penguin Shakespeare; London: Penguin, 1982; revised edition 1996)
  • Quiller-Couch, Arthur and Dover Wilson, John (eds.) Love's Labour' Lost (The New Shakespeare; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923; 2nd edn. edited by Dover Wilson only, 1962)
  • Walton, Nicholas (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (The New Penguin Shakespeare 2nd edition; London: Penguin, 2005)
  • Wells, Stanley; Taylor, Gary; Jowett, John and Montgomery, William (eds.) The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986; 2nd edn., 2005)
  • Werstine, Paul and Mowat, Barbara A. (eds.) Love's Labour's Lost (Folger Shakespeare Library; Washington: Simon & Schuster, 1996)
  • Woudhuysen, H.R. (ed.) Love's Labour's Lost (The Arden Shakespeare, 3rd Series; London: Arden, 1998)

External links

love, labour, lost, other, uses, disambiguation, william, shakespeare, early, comedies, believed, have, been, written, 1590s, performance, inns, court, before, queen, elizabeth, follows, king, navarre, three, companions, they, attempt, swear, company, women, t. For other uses see Love s Labour s Lost disambiguation 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 break their oath 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 Title page of the first quarto 1598 Though first published in quarto in 1598 the play s title page suggests a revision of an earlier version of the play There are no obvious sources for the play s plot 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 causes 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 Contents 1 Characters 2 Synopsis 3 Sources 4 Date and text 5 Analysis and criticism 5 1 Title 5 2 Reputation 5 3 Themes 5 3 1 Masculine desire 5 3 2 Reckoning and rationalization 5 3 3 Reality versus fantasy 5 4 Music 6 Performance history 7 Adaptations 7 1 Literature 7 2 Musical theatre opera and plays 7 3 Film television and radio 8 Notes 8 1 Editions 9 External linksCharacters EditFerdinand 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 Marcade 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 PrincessSynopsis EditFerdinand 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 writes a letter 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 Love s Labour s Lost Act IV Scene 3 by Thomas Stothard c 1800 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 his 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 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 Edit The first page of the play in the First Folio 1623 Love s Labour s Lost may be found to have a number of sources for various aspects but a primary source for the story is not extant It has this in common with two other plays A Midsummer Night s Dream and The Tempest 1 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 francaise 1577 2 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 3 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 Orleans duc de Longueville 4 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 3 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 5 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 5 Date and text Edit Title page of the second quarto 1631 Most scholars believe the play was written 1594 1595 but not later than 1598 6 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 7 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 8 9 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 10 to just over 1000 lines 11 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 12 Specifically lines 291 313 are repeated in substance 12 further in the speech and are sometimes omitted by editors 13 With no omissions the speech is 77 lines and 588 words Analysis and criticism EditTitle Edit 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 loſt In the 1623 First Folio it is Loues Labour s Lost and in the 1631 quarto 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 14 Critic John Hale notes 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 15 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 16 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 17 Reputation Edit Love s Labour s Lost abounds in sophisticated wordplay puns and literary allusions and is filled with clever pastiches of contemporary poetic forms 18 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 19 In The Western Canon 1994 Harold Bloom lauds the work as astonishing and refers to it as Shakespeare s first absolute achievement 20 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 18 19 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 21 Themes Edit Masculine desire Edit 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 22 Critic Mark Breitenberg commented that the use of idealistic poetry popularized by Petrarch effectively becomes the textualized form of the male gaze 22 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 consequent threat of cuckoldry Politics of love marriage and power are equally forceful in shaping the thread of masculine desire that drives the plot 22 Reckoning and rationalization Edit The term reckoning is used in its multiple meanings throughout the Shakespeare canon 23 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 23 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 23 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 23 Reality versus fantasy Edit Princess of France from an 1850 edition 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 24 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 24 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 24 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 24 Music Edit Unlike many of Shakespeare s plays music plays a role only in the final scene of Love s Labour s Lost The songs of spring and winter titled Ver and Hiems and The Cuckoo and the Owl respectively occur near the end of the play Given the critical controversy regarding the exact dating of Love s Labour s Lost there is some indication that the songs belong to the 1597 additions 25 Different interpretations of the meaning of these songs include optimistic commentary for the future bleak commentary regarding the recent announcement of death or an ironic device by which to direct the King and his Lords towards a new outlook on love and life 26 In keeping with the theme of time as it relates to reality and fantasy these are seasonal songs that restore the sense of time to the play Due to the opposing nature of the two songs they can be viewed as a debate on the opposing attitudes on love found throughout the play 24 Catherine McLay comments that the songs are functional in their interpretation of the central themes in Love s Labour s Lost 25 McLay also suggests that the songs negate what many consider to be a heretical ending for a comedy The songs a product of traditional comedic structure are a method by which the play can be brought within the periphery of the usual comic definition 25 Critic Thomas Berger states that regardless of the meaning of these final songs they are important in their contrast with the lack of song throughout the rest of the play 26 In cutting themselves off from women and the possibility of love the King and his Lords have effectively cut themselves off from song Song is allowed into the world of the play at the beginning of Act III after the Princess and her ladies have been introduced and the men begin to fall in love Moth s song Concolinel indicates that the vows will be broken 26 In Act I Scene II Moth recites a poem but fails to sing it Don Armado insists that Moth sing it twice but he does not Berger infers that a song was intended to be inserted at this point but was never written Had a song been inserted at this point of the play it would have followed dramatic convention of the time which often called for music between scenes 26 Performance history Edit A photograph of John Drew as the King of Navarre in Augustin Daly s production The earliest recorded performance of the play occurred at Christmas in 1597 at the Court before Queen Elizabeth A second performance is recorded to have occurred in 1605 either at the house of the Earl of Southampton or at that of Robert Cecil Lord Cranborne The first known production after Shakespeare s era was not until 1839 at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden with Madame Vestris as Rosaline 27 The Times was unimpressed stating The play moved very heavily The whole dialogue is but a string of brilliant conceits which if not delivered well are tedious and unintelligible The manner in which it was played last night destroyed the brilliancy completely and left a residuum of insipidity which was encumbered rather than relieved by the scenery and decorations 28 The only other performances of the play recorded in England in the 19th century were at Sadler s Wells in 1857 and the St James s Theatre in 1886 29 Notable 20th century British productions included a 1936 staging at the Old Vic featuring Michael Redgrave as Ferdinand and Alec Clunes as Berowne In 1949 the play was given at the New Theatre with Redgrave in the role of Berowne 30 The cast of a 1965 Royal Shakespeare Company production included Glenda Jackson Janet Suzman and Timothy West 31 In 1968 the play was staged by Laurence Olivier for the National Theatre with Derek Jacobi as the Duke and Jeremy Brett as Berowne 32 The Royal Shakespeare Company produced the play again in 1994 The critic Michael Billington wrote in his review of the production The more I see Love s Labour s Lost the more I think it Shakespeare s most beguiling comedy It both celebrates and satisfies linguistic exuberance explores the often painful transition from youth to maturity and reminds us of our common mortality 33 In late summer 2005 an adaptation of the play was staged in the Dari language in Kabul Afghanistan by a group of Afghan actors and was reportedly very well received 34 A 2009 staging by Shakespeare s Globe theatre with artistic direction by Dominic Dromgoole toured internationally Ben Brantley in The New York Times called the production seen at Pace University sophomoric He postulated that the play itself may well be the first and best example of a genre that would flourish in less sophisticated forms five centuries later the college comedy 35 In 2014 the Royal Shakespeare Company completed a double feature in which Love s Labour s Lost set on the eve of the First World War is followed by Much Ado About Nothing re titled Love s Labour s Won Dominic Cavendish of the Telegraph called it the most blissfully entertaining and emotionally involving RSC offering I ve seen in ages and remarked that Parallels between the two works the sparring wit the sex war skirmishes the shift from showy linguistic evasion to heart felt earnestness become persuasively apparent 36 Adaptations EditLiterature Edit The start of a performance of Love s Labour s Lost at Shakespeare s Globe in Southwark south London Alfred Tennyson s poem The Princess and by extension Gilbert and Sullivan s comic opera Princess Ida is speculated by Gerhard Joseph to have been inspired by Love s Labour s Lost 37 Thomas Mann in his novel Doctor Faustus 1943 has the fictional German composer Adrian Leverkuhn attempt to write an opera on the story of the play 38 Musical theatre opera and plays Edit An opera of the same title as the play was composed by Nicolas Nabokov with a libretto by W H Auden and Chester Kallman and first performed in 1973 In the summer of 2013 The Public Theater in New York City presented a musical adaptation of the play as part of their Shakespeare in the Park programming This production marked the first new Shakespeare based musical to be produced at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park since the 1971 mounting of The Two Gentlemen of Verona with music by Galt MacDermot The adaptation of Love s Labour s Lost featured a score by Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson collaborators Michael Friedman and Alex Timbers Timbers also directed the production which starred Daniel Breaker Colin Donnell Rachel Dratch and Patti Murin among others 39 Marc Palmieri s 2015 play The Groundling 40 a farce the NY Times referred to as half comedy and half tragedy was billed as a meditation on the meaning of the final moments of Love s Labour s Lost 41 Film television and radio Edit Main article Love s Labour s Lost film Kenneth Branagh s 2000 film adaptation relocated the setting to the 1930s and attempted to make the play more accessible by turning it into a musical The film was a box office disappointment 42 The play was one of the last works to be recorded for the BBC Television Shakespeare project broadcast in 1985 The production set events in the eighteenth century the costumes and sets being modeled on the paintings of Jean Antoine Watteau This was the only instance in the project of a work set in a period after Shakespeare s death 43 The play is featured in an episode of the British TV show Doctor Who The episode entitled The Shakespeare Code focuses on Shakespeare himself and a hypothetical follow up play Love s Labour s Won whose final scene is used as a portal for alien witches to invade Earth All copies of this play disappear along with the witches 44 BBC Radio 3 aired a radio adaptation on 16 December 1946 directed by Noel Illif with music by Gerald Finzi scored for a small chamber orchestra The cast included Paul Scofield The music was subsequently converted into an orchestral suite 45 BBC Radio 3 aired another radio adaptation on 22 February 1979 directed by David Spenser with music by Derek Oldfield The cast included Michael Kitchen as Ferdinand John McEnery as Berowne Anna Massey as the Princess of France Eileen Atkins as Rosaline and Paul Scofield as Don Adriano 46 A modern language adaptation of the play titled Groups of Ten or More People was released online by Chicago based company Littlebrain Theatre in July 2020 47 48 This adaptation set during the early days of the COVID 19 pandemic was filmed entirely over the digital conferencing program Zoom 49 Notes Edit Woudhuysen H R ed Love s Labours Lost London Arden Shakespeare 1998 61 73 Kerrigan J ed Love s Labours Lost New Penguin Shakespeare Harmondsworth 1982 ISBN 0 14 070738 7 a b Dobson M and Wells S The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare Oxford University Press 2001 p 264 G R Hibbard ed Love s Labour s Lost Oxford University Press 1990 p 49 a b Tricomi Albert 1979 The Witty Idealization of the French Court in Love s Labor s Lost Shakespeare Studies 12 25 33 Woudhuysen H R ed Love s Labour s Lost London Arden Shakespeare 1998 59 William Archived from the original on 3 April 2016 Retrieved 15 July 2016 See title page of facsimile of the original 1st edition 1598 Woudhuysen H R ed Love s Labour s Lost London Arden 1998 pp 80 81 Carroll William C ed Love s Labour s Lost Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2009 pp 39 40 Mabillard Amanda Shakespeare s Love s Labour s Lost 5 2 The Owl and the Cuckoo Tu whit to who www shakespeare online com Archived from the original on 29 December 2017 Poston Rebecca Niles Michael Folger Digital Texts www folgerdigitaltexts org Archived from the original on 24 September 2015 a b Furness Horace Howard ed Love s Labour s Lost A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare Philadelphia J B Lippincott Company 1904 pp 192 194 Poston Rebecca Niles Michael Folger Digital Texts www folgerdigitaltexts org Archived from the original on 24 September 2015 J O Halliwell Phillips Memoranda on Love s Labour s Lost King John Othello and on Romeo and Juliet Read Books 2008 reprint p 11 Hale John 1997 Shakespeare s Love s Labour s Lost Explicator 56 1 9 doi 10 1080 00144949709595237 Yates Frances A A Study of Love s Labour s Lost Pennsylvania Folcroft Press 1936 p 35 Elam Keir At the cubiculo Shakespeare s Problems with Italian Language and Culture in Italian culture in the drama of Shakespeare amp his contemporaries Rewriting Remaking Refashioning Michele Marrapodi ed Anglo Italian Renaissance Studies Series Aldershot Ashgate pp 99 110 100 ISBN 978 0 7546 5504 6 a b Woudhuysen H R 2001 Love s Labour s Lost In Proudfoot Richard et al eds The Arden Shakespeare complete works 2 ed London Thomson p 743 ISBN 978 1 903436 61 5 a b Pendergast John 2002 Love s Labour s Lost A Guide to the Play Greenwood Press ISBN 9780313313158 Bloom Harold 2014 The Western Canon Houghton Mifflin Harcourt p 46 ISBN 978 0547546483 Halliwell Phillipps J O 1879 Memoranda on Love s Labour s Lost a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help a b c Breitenberg Mark 1992 The Anatomy of Masculine Desire in Love s Labor s Lost Shakespeare Quarterly 43 4 430 449 doi 10 2307 2870863 JSTOR 2870863 a b c d Lewis Cynthia 2008 We Know What We Know Reckoning in Love s Labor s Lost Studies in Philology 105 2 245 264 doi 10 1353 sip 2008 0008 S2CID 159766371 a b c d e Westlund Joseph 1967 Fancy and Achievement in Love s Labor s Lost Shakespeare Quarterly 18 1 37 46 doi 10 2307 2868061 JSTOR 2868061 a b c McLay Catherine 1967 The Dialogues of Spring and Winter A Key to the Unity of Love s Labour s Lost Shakespeare Quarterly 18 2 119 127 doi 10 2307 2867698 JSTOR 2867698 a b c d Berger Thomas 1975 The Lack of Song in Love s Labor s Lost Shakespeare Quarterly 26 1 53 55 doi 10 2307 2869270 JSTOR 2869270 F E Halliday A Shakespeare Companion 1564 1964 Baltimore Penguin 1964 pp 288 89 Covent Garden Theatre The Times 1 October 1839 p 5 John Parker Who s Who in the Theatre fifth edition London 1925 pp 1126 Gave Freda Who s Who in the Theatre fourteenth edition Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons London 1967 More Intelligent than Theatrical The Times 8 April 1965 p 6 Gentle Enchantment of Olivier Production The Times 20 December 1968 p 12 Billington Michael 4 May 1994 Love s Labour s Lost Barbican London The Guardian p A5 Qais Akbar Omar and Stephen Landrigan Shakespeare in Kabul in East West Diwan in Memory of Mark Linz Gingko Library 2014 pp 67 75 Brantley Ben 11 December 2009 Pledge Week at That Elizabethan Animal House The New York Times Archived from the original on 1 July 2017 Cavendish Dominic 16 October 2014 Love s Labour s Lost Love s Labour s Won Royal Shakespeare Theatre review blissfully entertaining The Telegraph Archived from the original on 20 June 2017 Joseph Gerhard 1969 Tennysonian Love The Strange Diagonal Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press p 79 ISBN 978 0 8166 5800 8 Blackmur R P 1950 Parody and Critique Notes on Thomas Mann s Doctor Faustus The Kenyon Review 12 1 20 Hetrick Adam 23 July 2013 Shakespeare in the Park Musical Adaptation of Love s Labour s Lost Premieres July 23 Playbill Retrieved 5 January 2022 Palmieri Marc 2015 The Groundling New York Dramatists Play Service ISBN 978 0 8222 3347 3 Soloski Alexis 20 February 2015 Review The Groundling a Backstage Farce With Heartbreak The New York Times Archived from the original on 22 July 2017 Love s Labour s Lost Archived 3 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine Box Office Mojo accessed 7 December 2013 Martin Wiggins The BBC DVD Shakespeare Collection Viewing Notes booklet included with the DVD box set Episode 302 The Shakespeare Code Dr Who TV 22 September 2009 Archived from the original on 23 October 2013 A written transcript of the production is held at the Birmingham Central Library as part of their Shakespeare Collection Sanders Julie Shakespeare and Music Afterlives and Borrowings Cambridge UK 2007 Love s Labour s Lost British Universities Film amp Video Council Archived from the original on 12 November 2013 Littlebrain Theatre Announces Original Filmed Play Broadway World Chicago Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine Groups of Ten or More People 2020 YouTube Groups of Ten or More People Total Theatre Editions Edit Bate Jonathan and Rasmussen Eric eds Love s Labour s Lost The RSC Shakespeare London Macmillan 2008 Arthos John ed Love s Labour s Lost Signet Classic Shakespeare New York Signet 1965 revised edition 1988 2nd revised edition 2004 Carroll William C ed Love s Labour s Lost The New Cambridge Shakespeare Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2009 David Richard T ed Love s Labour s Lost The Arden Shakespeare 2nd Series London Arden 1951 Furness H H ed Love s Labour s Lost A New Variourm Edition of Shakespeare Philadelphia J B Lippincott Company 1904 Evans G Blakemore ed The Riverside Shakespeare Boston Houghton Mifflin 1974 2nd edn 1997 Greenblatt Stephen Cohen Walter Howard Jean E and Maus Katharine Eisaman eds The Norton Shakespeare Based on the Oxford Shakespeare London Norton 1997 Harbage Alfred ed Love s Labour s Lost The Pelican Shakespeare London Penguin 1963 revised edition 1973 Hart H C ed Love s Labour s Lost The Arden Shakespeare 1st Series London Arden 1906 Hibbard G R ed Love s Labour s Lost The Oxford Shakespeare Oxford Oxford University Press 1990 Holland Peter ed Love s Labour s Lost The Pelican Shakespeare 2nd Edition London Penguin 2000 Kerrigan John ed Love s Labour s Lost The New Penguin Shakespeare London Penguin 1982 revised edition 1996 Quiller Couch Arthur and Dover Wilson John eds Love s Labour Lost The New Shakespeare Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1923 2nd edn edited by Dover Wilson only 1962 Walton Nicholas ed Love s Labour s Lost The New Penguin Shakespeare 2nd edition London Penguin 2005 Wells Stanley Taylor Gary Jowett John and Montgomery William eds The Oxford Shakespeare The Complete Works Oxford Oxford University Press 1986 2nd edn 2005 Werstine Paul and Mowat Barbara A eds Love s Labour s Lost Folger Shakespeare Library Washington Simon amp Schuster 1996 Woudhuysen H R ed Love s Labour s Lost The Arden Shakespeare 3rd Series London Arden 1998 External links Edit Wikiquote has quotations related to Love s Labour s Lost Wikisource has original text related to this article Love s Labour s Lost Shakespeare Wikimedia Commons has media related to Love s Labour s Lost Love s Labour s Lost at Standard Ebooks Love s Labour s Lost at Project Gutenberg Love s Labour s Lost at British Library Love s Labour s Lost at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Love s Labour s Lost public domain audiobook at LibriVox Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Love 27s Labour 27s Lost amp oldid 1128962545, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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