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    Love's Labour's Lost
    Love's Labour's Lost
    Love's Labour's Lost
    Ebook138 pages1 hour

    Love's Labour's Lost

    By William Shakespeare

    3.5/5

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateDec 1, 1945
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare is the world's greatest ever playwright. Born in 1564, he split his time between Stratford-upon-Avon and London, where he worked as a playwright, poet and actor. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two, leaving three children—Susanna, Hamnet and Judith. The rest is silence.

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    Reviews for Love's Labour's Lost

    3.5/5

    305 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      After seeing the fantastic Shakespeare in the Park original musical adaptation, I decided to read the play itself. The Shakespeare in the Park version interspersed modern lyrics with the original lines in a way that complemented both--and told a psychologically modern story that was set among recent college graduates getting back together again--and falling in love, interspersed with some of the more over-the-top satiric characters. It was hard to believe that the play itself could read anything like that adaptation. But, of course, it did.

      Love's Labor's Lost is about a King and his followers that take a vow to retreat from women to study for three years, a princess and her followers who come upon them and disrupt the vow, and what happens after. The romantic comedy between Berowne and Rosaline drives much of the plot and is up there with the best of Shakespeare's witty, romantic repartee.
    • 2/5
      Eh, not a big fan of The Bard's comedies. The bulk of them come across as a Three's Company episode with better dialogue.

      Love's Labour's Lost is a particularly confused mess. The men declare themselves uninterested in women, then lose their minds over the first women they see, many of whom they admit are not that attractive. The women are keen to meet the men, then rebuff and humiliate them at every turn, then agree to accept their attentions after a suitable period of mourning/penance has passed. The whole situation is patently a platform on which to stage battles of wits, and those neither scintillating nor scathing.

      This is compounded by the puerile interpretations of the Norton editor, one Walter Cohen, who insists that the play is a homoerotic and scatological triumph. Every occurrence of the word "loose" or "end" has a chuckling gloss denoting "ass" or "anus" or "scatological". When "enigma" is misconstrued by a character to be "an egma", it is insisted that "egma" is "enema", and that "salve" is "an anal salvo discharged from the male". Within three lines, the word "goose" is assumed to refer to "prostitute", "a victim of veneral disease", and "buttocks". And all that is just one page from scene 3.1. It gets a bit tiresome.
    • 2/5
      You know what I'm not crazy about? Shakespeare's comedies
    • 5/5
      The 2000 film of this play got me in trouble because I was laughing so loudly at Shakespeare; I was told after the film, "Everybody in this room HATES you." (Guess Americans are not s'posed to laugh at Great Drama--or poetry, either.)
      Arguably Shakespeare's most Shakespearean play, or interplay: the exchanges of wit, what he would have overheard at Middle Temple and among his fellow actors. Rather than the text, I'll comment on Branagh's musical version, with himself as Berowne and Director, Scorsese as producer. It's hilarious, especially for a Shakespearean; I laughed throughout so much (my laugh scares babies) one lady in the audience 25 came up to me after the film to kindly inform, "Everybody in this room HATES you." I thanked her for the admonition.
      Very slow, stagey opening lines by the Prince. Dunno why. They cut the poetry criticism, and substitute the American songbook--Gershwin, Berlin--for poems. The Don Armado stuff (with Moth his sidekick) is broad, not literary: mustachioed, funny body, melancholy humor. Armado's the most overwritten love-letter, parodying catechism; but he is standard Plautine Braggart Soldier ("Miles Gloriosus") by way of commedia dell'arte. Then the Plautine Pedant (commedia Dottore) Holofernia crosses gender, a female professor type. Costard wears a suit, maybe a Catskills standup.
      Branagh cuts the Russian (or fake-Russian) lingo, "muoosa-Cargo" of the masked entrance.
      Wonderful 30's film cliches: female swimmers, the dance scenes, the prop plane's night takeoff. Ends with WWII, grainy newsreel footage of the year, after news of the French Princess's father's death.
      Berowne (pronounced .."oon") is sentenced privately "to move wild laughter in the throat of death…" His judge, Rosaline, points out the Bard' instruction on jokes: "A jest's prosperity lies in the ear / Of him that hears it, never in the tongue / Of him that makes it" (V.end). LLL ends with death and winter (the Russian an intimation?): "When icicles hang by the wall,/ And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,/ And Tom bears logs into the hall,/ And milk comes frozen home in pails.." and the owl talks, "Tu-whit..Tu whoo, a merry note/ While greasy Joan doth keel the pot." That's the European Tawny Owl (male and female must combine for it) so an American director might replace with the same prosody, "Who cooks for youuu?"(the Barred Owl).
      In the penultimate scene, Dull is onstage the whole scene nere speaking a word until Holofernes says, "Thou hast spoken no word the while," to which Dull, "Nor understood none neither, sir."
      Well, no wonder, if he has no Latin, for Costard offers, "Go to, thou has it AD dunghill…as they say." Hol, "Oh, I smell false Latin--dunghill for UNGUEM." The Bard kindly explains the Latin joke, essential for modern American readers.
      Incidentally, Berowne uses Moliere-like rhymed couplets in his social satire on Boyet, V.ii.315ff. His most daring rhymes, "sing/ushering" and maybe "debt/Boyet."
    • 4/5
      A king and his gentlemen vow to remain celibate, studious and moderate in their habits for three years to improve their minds. They have signed their names to this vow. Oops! They forgot that an embassy from France was due soon, consisting of a princess and her ladies! Shenanigans ensue. And wordplay, such wordplay!

      What seemed at first a fairly shallow and cynical plot, developed by the end to be a story of depth. No fools these women, they understood these men better than the men understood themselves, and called them on their foolishness. Shakespeare leaves the ending undecided, as the twelve month penance the men are given by the women is "too long for a play."
    • 4/5
      Love's Labour's Lost is one of Shakespeare's comedies, despite its unique ending in which none of the lovers are conveniently married off, and the men are instead ordered to a year's worth of abstinence to prove their devotion to the women. The ending echoes the opening of the play in a bitterly amusing way: at the start of the play, the men have sworn off women and dissolute living for three years, to improve their minds, and at the end of the play they swear to be faithful for a year and a day (in other words, no women) to prove the constancy of their loves. Will they abide by the second promise, when they were unable to keep the first? The doubt surrounding this proposition closes the play on a jarring note.

      I started with the ending, so let me retrace my steps and explain the premise of the story. The King of Navarre and this three companions have taken an oath to perform three years of study and fasting, abstaining from women to keep their minds clear. One of the men, Berowne, skeptically observes that none of them has the endurance, but he reluctantly agrees. Enter the women: the Princess from France arrives for some political parley, along with her three women companions. The men immediately fall in love; fortunately, each man falls in love with a separate lady in the group. Without any hesitation, they throw aside their oath. In a scene that is replete with wonderful dramatic irony, each man comes out, one at a time, to confess in a soliloquy that he will pursue his new love, while at least one other man is hiding in the wings, eavesdropping. The King overhears the confessions of the others, and rebukes them for breaking their oath, before Berowne points out that he heard the King himself betray their earlier promise, and so they all have a good laugh at each other. They decide to court the ladies in disguise. Boyet, one of the men attending the Princess, overhears their plans and tells the female visitors. Not only are they a little indignant at this turn of events - the King had earlier refused them admittance into the Court, due to his oath, forcing them to camp outside - they are also contemptuous of how easily the men break their promises and of the foolish way they hope to woo them. To repay them for these issues, the women devise their own plot. They will also wear disguises, professing to be someone else, and force the men to court the wrong woman.

      As Shakespeare's women are so often the more clever gender, the plan goes exactly the way the women wish it to. The King and his entourage humbly apologize, and after some playful bickering, all turns out well, for it seems that the women have also fallen in love, each with the man that is most partial to her. This type of miraculous coincidence is to be expected in a comedy, where even fate and destiny work for the eventual good of the characters. Indeed, the story seems headed to the conventional marriage and celebration, when the festive events are interrupted with somber news. The Princess's father has died, and she must return home to mourn for the required year.
    • 4/5
      I was surprised to say I quite liked William Shakespeare's "Love's Labors Lost." Knowing that it isn't often performed today (and that my local library didn't even have a copy of this one,) I really didn't have high expectations. I found it an entertaining, though sometimes challenging read.

      "Love's Labors Lost" is essentially a romantic comedy. The King of Navarre and his courtiers pledge to dedicate themselves to study for the next three years and forsake all women... of course a bevy of beauties immediately emerge to challenge that notion. The play is typical Shakespeare -- word play, messages misdelivered, disguises and people switching places. I'm sure a lot of the puns were lost on me, but I still enjoyed the ones I got.

      While this definitely isn't one of Shakespeare's best, I did find it fun overall.
    • 4/5
      I’m normally a big fan of Shakespeare’s plays, and while I enjoyed parts of this one, it still fell a bit flat for me. The King of Navarre and three of his friends decide they will swear off women and other temptations for three years while they focus on their studies. Of course they decide to do this shortly before the Princess of France and her friends are about to visit. No sooner is the vow made than all four men are swooning over the lovely ladies.

      There are some really funny parts, like when the men try to hold each other to their vow while at the same time writing love letters to their new crushes. As with all of Shakespeare’s comedies, hidden identities and witty dialogue confound the characters as they find themselves unexpectedly falling in love.

      **SPOILERS**

      The play ends with a bit of an unusual cliff hanger. The lovers are all separated when the Princess must return to rule France after hearing of her father’s unexpected death. There is a theory that a sequel to the play existed but there are no surviving copies. The play “Love’s Labour’s Won” is mentioned in other texts from around the same time and it could have been the sequel that resolved the lovers’ future.

      **SPOILERS OVER**

      BOTTOM LINE: This isn’t one of the Bard’s strongest plays, but if you’re already a fan then it’s worth reading. If not, start with one of his better comedies, like Twelfth Night, As You Like It or Much Ado About Nothing.

      “He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink.”

      “As sweet and musical
      As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;
      And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
      Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.” 
    • 5/5
      Love's Labour's Lost is easily one of my favorites in the whole body of Shakespeare's works (excluding his sonnets, of course, which are a whole different animal entirely). As I haven't yet gotten around to reading a different version, I can't comment on how the Folger measures up, but the annotations in this edition seem just about perfect, in that it explains the things that need to be the most and leaves the rest up to personal interpretation.

      The plot of this play is simple in that it could easily be a Renaissance rom-com if not for the superb execution. Per the usual, Shakespeare weaves layer upon layer of literary devices until your mind spins (in a good way), but the humor of this particular play overshadows even the ever-entertaining double entendres. I could read this over and over again for the cutting wit of Berowne alone; throw in Costard, too, and I'm hooked for life. Their exchange at the beginning of Act III makes me smile like an idiot no matter how many times I read it (see also: Berowne's soliloquy about love at the end of Act III, Scene I. Shakespeare was a freaking genius).

      ***Spoilers***
      The only downside to this work is the ending, and even that really depends on how you look at it. Though part of me wants the fan-girly happily ever after, the more somber, uncertain ending lends the play some much needed weight.
    • 4/5
      Bizarre, yet entertaining story of men who renounce the company of women, then are quickly forsworn.

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