Love's Labour's Lost

Critical Essays

Felicia Hardison Londre

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317954262
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This anthology examines Love's Labours Lost from a variety of perspectives and through a wide range of materials. Selections discuss the play in terms of historical context, dating, and sources; character analysis; comic elements and verbal conceits; evidence of authorship; performance analysis; and feminist interpretations. Alongside theater reviews, production photographs, and critical commentary, the volume also includes essays written by practicing theater artists who have worked on the play. An index by name, literary work, and concept rounds out this valuable resource.

PART I

INTRODUCTION

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST AND THE CRITICAL LEGACY

Felicia Hardison Londré

In an essay signaling key developments in modern Shakespeare production, Roger Warren asserts that “two achievements of the twentieth-century stage stand out above all others in their contribution to the interpretation of Shakespeare.” The first is discovery of the enhanced relevance of the history plays when they are performed as a cycle, and “the other main achievement of the modern stage has been to establish Love’s Labour’s Lost as one of Shakespeare’s major plays.” Of the latter milestone, he notes further that “this has been done on stage rather than in the study” (268–70).

The essays in the present volume, representing both the stage and the study, clearly illustrate our century’s accelerating appreciation of this long-unsung masterpiece of language and style. Having chosen Love’s Labour’s Lost as my own first directorial venture into Shakespeare (1970) and having seen five utterly captivating productions of it between 1974 and 1994, I am repeatedly astonished at the derogatory remarks the play has accumulated from the pens of eminent literary critics, especially in the nineteenth century. From the pens of performance critics we have nothing at all for a couple of centuries, as the play had no recorded performance between 1604 and 1839—a 235-year hiatus! Indeed, it is Shakespeare’s only play that failed to reach the stage in the eighteenth century. To see Love’s Labour’s Lost “established” as “one of Shakespeare’s major plays” alongside Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and others of the standard repertoire is as gratifying as witnessing the triumph of any deserving underdog.

And what an underdog! Love’s Labour’s Lost gives us entrée into a Renaissance-era lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous, golden world of beautiful people—young, attractive, clever, sophisticated people—who ultimately sense that beauty really resides in the soul and must be cultivated there. Even the low-life characters of this comedy do not simply mark time (as we might accuse Elbow in Measure for Measure or the Gardeners in Richard II of doing), but instead they actively strive for grace by exercising their mental faculties, by emulating their betters (a time-honored means of self-improvement), and by drawing upon their creative resources to make a gift of entertainment for no other motive than to please and honor some foreign guests. In sum, we are looking at a world where people across the social spectrum are attempting, albeit sometimes misguidedly, to better themselves, not materially or politically, but in terms of their innate potential as human beings. It’s an idea whose time is about due to come again.

Adding to the appeal of Love’s Labour’s Lost is the fascinatingly complex Don Adriano de Armado, who belongs to the Spanish gentry but loves a country wench, who perorates as fancifully as the French lords but does it in prose, who embodies both the “man of great spirit” and the melancholic. Also among the play’s beauties (pun intended) are the Princess and her three ladies. They and Jaquenetta together endow Love’s Labour’s Lost with more female speaking roles than almost any other play of Shakespeare. Whether or not this circumstance has been a particular stimulus, the play has generated a high incidence of excellent critical studies by women, including groundbreaking book-length studies by Eva Turner Clark (1933) and Frances A. Yates (1936), as well as numerous perceptive analyses from the decades of feminist criticism.

The characters’ (and the author’s) sheer delight in bandying words is infectious. Ironically, the very whimsicality with which words are handled in this comedy indicates a genuine respect for them. In language and spirit, the modern equivalent of Love’s Labour’s Lost might be a cross between Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden (1955) and the 1994 movie Ed Wood. About the former, Noël Coward was heard to say at the opening performance: “For those who love words, darling! For those who love words.…” And the latter charmingly depicts the title character’s Holofernes-like, unbounded enthusiasm for an expressive medium that he cannot fully grasp.

In our image-oriented era, Love’s Labour’s Lost refreshingly challenges our verbal skills. The fact that the modern theatregoer will not understand every word or all the puns in this play does not exclude him or her from the fun; it merely places the theatregoer in the position of the child, and children are remarkably receptive to Shakespeare in performance. Unlike most adults, the child doesn’t erect a mental block at the sound of every unfamiliar word; the child rather intuits meaning from context without worrying about possible inexactitudes. Thus, when I directed Love’s Labour’s Lost, I attempted to tease out the child within the adult theatregoer by emphasizing the play’s playfulness. Taking my cue from the abundance of word play and word games, I sought physical reification of the language in actual play and games. My setting, on a grass-carpeted arena stage, was a little golden playground: a metallic gold merry-go-round at center, a gold jungle gym, gold-painted see-saw, and two side-by-side swings with pink roses twined about their golden ropes. For the concluding song, the Owl and the Cuckoo were pulled into the playing area in little gilded coaster wagons.

Those who prefer literal meaning to metaphor must resign themselves to the fact that there are elements of this play that will probably never be satisfactorily explained, like Moth’s “Concolinel” (presumably a lost song, but there can be no certainty of this). And there are points that may be explained in footnotes but will never be satisfactorily communicated to a modern theatre audience. For example, Costard’s line “O! marry me to one Frances—I smell some l’envoy, some goose in this” (III.1.118–119) probably refers teasingly to the coming of the French envoy Simier in 1579 to seek Queen Elizabeth’s consent to marry François, duc d’Alençon. Because such “complexities and suggestions of topicality have given carte blanche to a bizarre range of speculation,” William C. Carroll noted (bemusedly rather than superciliously, one presumes) in his 1976 book, “the play has always been the darling of the Shakespearean lunatic fringe.” (5).

THE FAQS ABOUT LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST

While it is not possible to clear every textual hurdle in the play, there are some frequently-asked questions about Love’s Labour’s Lost that can be answered briefly and perhaps with some plausibility:

Why does the play’s title have two apostrophes in most modern editions whereas both the Quarto and First Folio editions use none? The title page of the Quarto edition (1598) proclaims it “A PLEASANT Conceited Comedie CALLED Loves labors lost.” The First Folio (1623) lists it as Loves Labour lost on the table of contents page, and as Loves Labour’s lost at the top of the first page of text. The title used on this book is the one that appears on the Third Folio, the one which, as the choice of most editors, has gained familiarity. The simplest way to make sense of those apostrophes is to read the title as signifying that “love’s labour is lost.”

How should Berowne’s name be pronounced? Although the Second Folio and some early editors used the French spelling Biron (based upon Marshal Biron who served Henri IV of France), its pronunciation was undoubtedly anglicized to “beroon” with the accent on the latter syllable, as indicated by scansion of the lines in which it occurs and by its rhyming with “moon” in IV.3.228.

Why should the low-life characters be bound by vows taken by the lords? The restrictions apply “within a mile of [Navarre’s] court”; that is, inside the palace and within the walled confines of the surrounding gardens and out-buildings.

What is the nature of the business concerning Aquitaine that brings the Princess of France to the court of Navarre? Because the text offers so few references to the business aspect of the Princess’s visit, and because there is no historical basis for a transaction between France and Navarre involving Aquitaine, it is difficult to see what this is about. Kristian Smidt found it strange that “the ostensible reason for the French embassy which leads to so much conflict and complication, the redemption of the mortgage on Aquitaine, should be quickly and consistently forgotten, with only one brief reminder (IV.1.5), until the Princess at parting almost casually mentions ‘my great suit so easily obtain’d.’” That “great suit” was, according to Smidt, the undignified task of “pressing Navarre to buy Aquitaine for money which was originally loaned to the Princess’s father” (108). Smidt’s further analysis of this matter (108–110) is quite helpful. John Turner succinctly summarizes the business: “The ladies from the French court … have come to Navarre as a negotiating team to conduct a particularly delicate piece of diplomatic business—to take back again the half that has already been once repaid of a debt owed by France to Navarre and to forfeit instead the possibly overvalued territories in Aquitaine that had been laid in surety against that debt” (32).

What is this thing called Euphuism that is always mentioned in connection with Love’s Labour’s Lost? Arising from a self-consciousness about linguistics and literature that characterized Renaissance Italy, France, Spain, and England, Euphuism was an effort to explore and expand the possibilities of the English language through rhyming, antithesis, alliteration, “taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,” and lexical borrowings from classical Greek, Latin, and contemporary foreign languages. This courtly fad peaked in 1578. With its numerous examples of the movement’s characteristic verbal conceits (including the most rhymed lines in any Shakespeare play), Love’s Labour’s Lost is a textbook example of Euphuism. The other major Euphuist works were John Lyly’s Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1578) and Euphues and His England (1579) as well as Anthony Munday’s The Mirror of Mutability (1579). Both Lyly and Munday were at times employed as secretaries to the Earl of Oxford, who was the movement’s acknowledged ringleader at court.

CLUES TO THE PLAY’S AUTHORSHIP

At this point, it is necessary to touch upon the Shakespeare authorship question as it relates to this play. While many leading Shakespearean scholars still adhere to the traditional claim that the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare were written by William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon (whose principal documented activities were business dealings in malts and grains), increasing numbers of scholars are open to looking more closely at the extensive historical and textual evidence that supports Edward De Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, as the Bard behind the pseudonym William Shake-speare. The authorship question is complex and cannot be adequately presented here. Suffice it to say that responsible scholars now acknowledge at least that there are grounds for continuing investigation of the issue from both the so-called Stratfordian and Oxfordian points of view and that keeping the issue open to objective scholarly debate can illuminate many facets of the Shakespeare canon. Indeed, significant contributions to our understanding of the Elizabethan era have come out of research undertaken from both perspectives. An essay exemplifying such advancements of knowledge as a product of Oxfordian research—drawing upon hitherto neglected materials at the Huntington Library—was prepared especially for this collection, but was unfortunately withdrawn by the author at the last minute for personal reasons. However, Eva Turner Clark’s book The Satirical Comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost (1933) is unsurpassed as the seminal work on the play by an Oxfordian. Those interested in the arguments for Oxford’s authorship of the entire Shakespeare canon may consult Eva Turner Clark’s Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays (1931), as well as the cited books by Charlton Ogburn, Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn, and Richard Whalen.

Numerous in-jokes, personal references, and depictions of manners betray the virtual certainty that Love’s Labour’s Lost was written by an intimate of the court. The characters into which the author is most likely to have projected himself are the quick-witted Berowne and Don Armado (which is interesting in the light of De Vere’s having cast himself as an “allowed fool” at Elizabeth’s court). When Armado brags that the king would “with his royal finger, thus, dally with my excrement, with my mustachio” (V.1.95–96), court insiders surely recalled how Queen Elizabeth sometimes touched Oxford’s chin to tease him about the sparseness of his beard. Armado goes on to talk of staging some show or firework for the king (V.1. 102–4); Oxford had staged fireworks for the queen in Warwickshire in 1572. Oxford loved to pun upon his names, often using the word “ever” to refer to “E. Vere,” as in “verse … variation … ever … every word doth almost tell my name” (Sonnet 76). At the end, Spring—called Ver—sings of cuckoldry, which was very much on Oxford’s mind after 1576. Whether or not one accepts the Oxfordian view, some kind of courtly connection is indicated, as noted in several essays in this collection: Hazlitt, Campbell, Barber, Miller.

The affinities of Love’s Labour’s Lost with Euphuism—in addition to many of the play’s topical references—make 1578 a likely date for the first draft; and indeed, as indicated in my own study of foreign elements in Love’s Labour’s Lost (included in this collection), there was a...