Love's Labor's Lost

by William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat (Editor), Paul Werstine (Editor)

The authoritative edition Love’s Labor’s Lost from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers.

At first glance, Shakespeare’s early comedy Love’s Labor’s Lost simply entertains and amuses. Four young men (one of them a king) withdraw from the world for three years, taking an oath that they will have nothing to do with women. The King of Navarre soon learns, however, that the Princess of France and her ladies are about to arrive. Although he lodges them outside of his court, all four men fall in love with the ladies, abandoning their oaths and setting out to win their hands.

The laughter triggered by this story is augmented by subplots involving a braggart soldier, a clever page, illiterate servants, a parson, a schoolmaster, and a constable so dull that he is named Dull. Letters and poems are misdelivered, confessions are overheard, entertainments are presented, and language is played with, and misused, by the ignorant and learned alike.

At a deeper level, Love’s Labor’s Lost also teases the mind. The men begin with the premise that women either are seductresses or goddesses. The play soon makes it clear, however, that the reality of male-female relations is different. That women are not identical to men’s images of them is a common theme in Shakespeare’s plays. In Love’s Labor’s Lost it receives one of its most pressing examinations.

This edition
-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by William C. Carroll

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs

Kindle Edition

Published April 21, 2022

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[Richard Fitzgerald · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a particularly stupid story. Four men think of women as seductresses and make a pact to have nothing to do with them so they can study. Because who can study when in a romantic relationship? They all immediately fall in love. Various shenanigans ensue, including the repeating Shakespearian trope of people dressing up as other people. No one gets married, and the women are shown to control their emotions more than the men. The play ends with a nonsense song.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a hard Shakespeare Comedy for me to reread. it has fantastic wordplay, much of which I had to research further as I read. What would have been obvious and funny to an Elzabethean audience was not as clear to me. Compared to the easier to read comedies, this one was much better once you put the effort in to understand some of the wordplay.

[Chesca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hilarious comedy. Four men foreswear anything to do with women and then each promptly fall in love; the ladies think it’s all a great joke; and other characters sprinkle in wonderfully, cleverly silly lines. Loved the playful and witty language (what I understood of it! 😆). Fun to catch a Shakespeare in the Park performance (abridged). I’d like to return to this sometime and read commentary along with it.

A few quotes:

Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits
Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.

Necessity will make us all forsworn
Three thousand times within this three years' space;
For every man with his affects is born,
Not by might master'd but by special grace:
If I break faith, this word shall speak for me;
I am forsworn on 'mere necessity.'

A most acute juvenal; voluble and free of grace!
By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face…

…in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.

What's your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?

As bombast and as lining to the time…

[Nathanflynn]

Read to prep for Shakespeare in the Park. Footnotes did some heavy lifting. Can’t imagine that, say, 3.1 will be a crowd-pleaser, but I’m willing to be surprised