6:38 Love's Labor's Lost

Day 6 of 38:38
Love's Labor's Lost

I find Love's Labor's Lost a fascinating look into the development of Shakespeare as a dramatist. There are several things that he tries out with this play that he returns to later.

Verbal wit.

The bickering lovers. Becomes Much Ado About Nothing

Women teaching men about love. (Also shows up a little in Two Gents). Becomes As You Like It.

And most especially, his playing with conventional genre expectations. Everyone should get married at the end of the play, and Shakespeare rather pointedly doesn't do this. He continues to bend the rules of genre throughout his career, particularly with The Winter's Tale and Cymbeline.


One of the positive aspects I am getting from this reading project is learning that I have misremembered things about certain plays. This happened to me with both Titus Andronicus and Love's Labor's Lost. With Titus, I was super pumped to read it. "I love this play," I thought. And while it's true that I am a great fan of the revenge tragedy and that there are some really great moments in Titus, if I am being honest, there are also a lot of weakness in that text. So the play itself isn't as great as I remembered it being.

Love's Labor's Lost I have a great fondness for, as the first production I did when I moved to DC was this play. Many of the cast members were smart asses, so we had a good time working together, and we fit the characters well. Love's Labor's Lost isn't one of the major plays. "Oh yeah," I thought, "it's because that subplot is impossible - all the jokes rely on knowledge of Latin, and we just don't get that anymore." Well, re-reading the play I discovered that I was wrong. The jokes aren't really about the Latin words at all. The jokes are about the characters, Nathaniel and Holofernes, and how they make a concerted effort to sound smarter than everyone else by peppering their speech with Latin and by using several words when one will do. That was still funny. I actually had to check the notes more often on the scenes with the royal couples, despite the fact that I'd done the play before. There are several witty jokes that just don't make sense anymore. But the subplot. The subplot totally still works.

Other things I like about this play:

1. The contract between the opening speech and what the play is really about. The King of Navarre gives this rousing speech to his men that makes it sound like this is a history play and they are about to go into battle. "Therefore brave conquerors -- for so you are, That war against your own affections And the huge army of the world's desires." Only about 35 lines in do we finally discover the silliness to which the King is rousing his men.

2. The scene when the men discover that they are all in love -- is this anything but delightful?

3. The wiseness of the women contrasted with the silliness of the men. I absolutely love the Princess's response to the King's courtliness.
King Fair Princess, welcome to the court of Navarre.
Princess Fair I give you back again, and welcome I have not yet. The roof of this court is too high to be yours, and welcome to the wide fields too base to be mine.

4. The banter.
Rosaline This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye--
Berowne (finishing her joke) I am a fool, and full of poverty.

5. The ending. It's not what we were expecting, but damn, all those final speeches are really quite, quite beautiful.

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Favorite Female Character:
Rosaline
Favorite Male Character:
Berowne

Obviously, since these two are Shakespeare's prototype for Beatrice and Benedick. But Beatrice and Benedick are a little more evenly matched. I love how, in Love's Labor's Lost, Rosalind always manages to leave Berowne completely flustered.

Laugh out loud:
Holofernes Via, goodman Dull! thou hast not spoken no word all this while.
Dull Nor understood none neither, sir.

"That's what she said!":
King This maid will not serve your turn, sir.
Costard This maid will serve my turn, sir.

Oh, misogyny:
Very little. This play loves women. Both in the female characters being witty and wise, and also in the praise the men heap on them. The women are clearly smarter than the men. And there are lovely moments of the men being in love, like Berowne's:

What peremptory eagle-sighted eye
Dares look upon the heaven of her brow
That is not blinded by her majesty?

What little there is is generally in the form of the men trying to convince themselves not to be in love, such as Berowne's:

A woman that is like a German clock,
Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watched that it may still go right!

Down with the Patriarchy:
Princess We are wise girls to mock our lovers so.
Rosaline They are worse fools to purchase mocking so.

Favorite Moment/Line:
King Now, at the latest minute of the hour,
Grant us your loves.
Princess A time, methinks, too short
To make a world-without-end bargain in.
No, no, my lord, your Grace is perjur’d much,
Full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this:
If for my love,—as there is no such cause,—
You will do aught, this shall you do for me:
Your oath I will not trust; but go with speed
To some forlorn and naked hermitage,
Remote from all the pleasures of the world;
There stay, until the twelve celestial signs
Have brought about their annual reckoning.
If this austere insociable life
Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds,
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial and last love;
Then, at the expiration of the year,
Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts,
And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine,
I will be thine; and, till that instant, shut
My woeful self up in a mourning house,
Raining the tears of lamentation
For the remembrance of my father’s death.
If this thou do deny, let our hands part;
Neither entitled in the other’s heart.
King If this, or more than this, I would deny,
To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,
The sudden hand of death close up mine eye!
Hence ever then my heart is in thy breast.