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Love’s Labor’s Lost is one of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies. First published in a quarto edition in 1598, scholars believe the play was drafted around 1594–95 and initially performed for Queen Elizabeth at the Inns of Court. The play has several unusual features. For example, the divisions between acts are rather strange, such that acts 1–3 are all extremely short and acts 4–5 are extremely long. This imbalance in the acts reflects the play’s relatively minimal plot, most of which is set in place in the first three acts, leaving a lot of space for lengthy scenes full of obscene as well as—to modern audiences, at least—obscure jokes. In essence, Shakespeare creates a structure where he can indulge in language and wordplay. Perhaps the key sign of this indulgence is the way this play brings to life the courtly tradition of love sonnets. Shakespeare was famously composing his own sonnet sequence during this same period, and the play takes up the conventional tropes of this poetic pursuit with inspiration as well as gentle mockery.
Another unusual feature of the play is its ending. For one thing, the play ends shortly after the announcement of the King of France’s death. It’s true that conventional understandings of comedy at the time did allow for death to take place offstage, provided that the person who dies isn’t a main character in the play. In this case, the King of France is a distant figure whom we never meet in the play, so the announcement of his passing doesn’t stress the audience. However, the news of death so near the end of the play does cast a pall over the play’s final moments, bringing an abrupt end to the pageant of the Nine Worthies and instigating the ladies’ departure. A second unusual feature of the play’s “comic” ending is the fact that it doesn’t end in marriage. In a humorously metatheatrical moment, Berowne comments on how odd such an ending is: “Our wooing doth not end like an old play. / Jack hath not Jill. These ladies’ courtesy / Might well have made our sport a comedy” (5.2.947–49). But though no marriages take place onstage, the likelihood of future marriage is implied. Though unconventional for the time, the deferred wedding became a feature of many of Shakespeare’s comedies.
If Shakespeare relied on external source material for the main plot of Love’s Labor’s Lost, that source is not definitively known. Scholars have proposed several possibilities. Perhaps the most cited source is a now-lost report of a visit Catherine de’ Medici made to the French king, Henry II, in 1578. The visit was diplomatic in nature and related to the future of the territory known as Aquitaine. This is indeed the initial subject of discussion between the Princess of France and the King of Navarre, but it is ultimately a fleeting and inconsequential aspect of the play. Other scholars have attempted to link characters in Navarre’s court to various historical figures. But while the resonances between names may have been a source of humor for Elizabethan audiences, there is no convincing evidence that Shakespeare based either characters or events on any of these figures.
Perhaps more important are the various other sources the text of the play alludes to. For instance, Armado’s ludicrous verbosity may be derived from the so-called “euphuistic” style found in John Lyly’s romance of 1578, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit. Other key sources of the comedy in the play are commonplace Latin readers that anyone who went to grammar school would have been familiar with. Holofernes the schoolmaster frequently quotes—and often misquotes—Latin phrases that were widely used at the time for Latin instruction. One example comes in act 4, scene 2, where he bungles an attempt to quote some lines from Johannes Baptista Spagnolo (1448–1516), otherwise known as Mantuan, who was famous for his Latin agricultural poems. These and other contemporary sources provide much of the comedy in this play. Although in Shakespeare’s time these references would have been widely and easily understood, modern audiences generally find the comedy of Love’s Labor’s Lost quite obscure. This may explain why the play isn’t frequently taught or produced. But though the obscure sources of humor do make the play challenging for modern readers, the comedy still plays with remarkable ease onstage.
