Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies. It was likely written in the mid-1590s for a performance at the Inns of Court before Queen Elizabeth I. The story follows the King of Navarre and his three friends as they promise to avoid the company of women for three years so they can focus on studying and fasting. However, they later become infatuated with the Princess of France and her ladies, which causes them to break their promise. Unlike typical comedies, this play ends with the death of the Princess's father, and all weddings are postponed for a year. The play explores themes such as love and desire, thinking about mistakes, and the difference between what is real and what is imagined.
The play was first published in a book called a quarto in 1598. The title page of this book suggests that the play was revised from an earlier version. No clear sources for the plot of the play have been identified. Early editions of the play show different ways of writing apostrophes in the title, but it is most commonly written as Love's Labour's Lost.
Shakespeare's audiences were familiar with the real historical figures and political events in Europe that the play references. Scholars believe the play became less popular over time because these historical and political details became harder for later audiences to understand. The play's complex wordplay, humor based on strict rules, and references to older books or events may also have contributed to its limited popularity compared to Shakespeare's other works. Love's Labour's Lost was rarely performed in the 19th century but has been staged more frequently in the 20th and 21st centuries by groups such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, and the Stratford Festival of Canada. It has also been adapted into a musical, an opera, and for radio, television, and film.
Synopsis
Ferdinand, King of Navarre, and his three noble friends, Lords Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, promise not to interact with women. They commit to three years of study and fasting, though Berowne agrees with some hesitation. The King orders that no woman may approach the court within a mile. Don Adriano de Armado, a Spanish visitor, writes to the King about a secret meeting between Costard and Jaquenetta. After the King punishes Costard, Don Armado confesses his love for Jaquenetta to his servant, Moth. Don Armado sends a letter to Jaquenetta, asking Costard to deliver it.
The Princess of France and her attendants arrive to discuss the transfer of Aquitaine with the King but must stay outside the court due to his decree. When the King visits the Princess and her ladies at their camp, he falls in love with the Princess, and the lords fall in love with the ladies. Berowne gives Costard a letter to deliver to Lady Rosaline, but Costard accidentally swaps it with Don Armado’s letter meant for Jaquenetta. Jaquenetta seeks help from scholars Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel, who determine the letter was written by Berowne and tell her to inform the King.
The King and his lords secretly observe each other and later confess their feelings. The King scolds the lords for breaking their oath, but Berowne reveals the King is also in love with the Princess. Jaquenetta and Costard arrive with Berowne’s letter, accusing him of treason. Berowne admits to breaking the oath, stating that studying love is the most valuable pursuit, and the men decide to abandon their vow. They arrange for Holofernes to entertain the ladies later, then dress as Muscovites and court the ladies in disguise. Boyet, the Queen’s courtier, overhears their plan and helps the ladies trick the men by disguising themselves as each other. When the lords return to their true identities, the ladies mock them and expose their deception.
Impressed by the ladies’ intelligence, the men apologize. After all identities are restored, Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel, Costard, Moth, and Don Armado perform a play called The Nine Worthies. The four lords and Boyet criticize the play, praising only Costard. Don Armado and Costard nearly fight when Costard reveals during the performance that Don Armado has made Jaquenetta pregnant. Their argument is interrupted by news that the Princess’s father has died. The Princess plans to leave immediately, and she and her ladies, preparing for mourning, declare the men must wait a year and a day to prove their love is lasting. Don Armado announces he will take a similar oath to Jaquenetta and then presents the nobles with a song.
Date and text
Most scholars believe the play was written between 1594 and 1595, but not after 1598. Love's Labour's Lost was first published in a book format called a quarto in 1598 by a bookseller named Cuthbert Burby. The title page of the book says the play was "Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere," which has led some scholars to think the play was revised from an earlier version.
The Edinburgh University manuscript, dated to 1598, is one of the earliest known copies of the play. Its title page says it is the same version that was presented to Queen Elizabeth I the previous Christmas, in 1597. The manuscript is in quarto format and was donated to Edinburgh University between 1626 and 1636 by a former student named William Drummond of Hawthornden. This made it part of the university's first collection of literary works.
The play was next printed in the First Folio in 1623, followed by another quarto edition in 1631. Some people believe Love's Labour's Won is a lost sequel to the play.
The speech given by Berowne in Act 4, Scene 3, lines 284–361, may be the longest in all of Shakespeare's plays, depending on how editors choose to present it. Shakespeare critic and editor Edward Capell noted that certain parts of the speech seem repeated and may have been left uncorrected before being printed. Specifically, lines 291–313 are repeated later in the speech and are sometimes left out by editors. If no lines are omitted, the speech contains 77 lines and 588 words.
Analysis and criticism
The title of the play is usually written as Love's Labour's Lost. Early versions of the title used different punctuation and spelling. In the first edition from 1598, it was written as Loues labors loſt. In the 1623 First Folio, it became Loues Labour's Lost, and in the 1631 edition, it was Loues Labours Lost. The modern title, Love's Labour's Lost, first appeared in the Third Folio. Historian John Hale explains that the title could be read in different ways, such as "love's labour is lost" or "the lost labours of love," depending on how it is punctuated. In Shakespeare’s time, punctuation was often omitted. Hale believes the title’s clever use of words and sounds reflects the play’s focus on learning and language. In 1935, Frances Yates noted that the title might have been inspired by a line from John Florio’s His Firste Fruites (1578), which also influenced Shakespeare’s use of a Venetian proverb in the play.
Love’s Labour’s Lost is full of complex wordplay, puns, and references to poetry. Critic John Pendergast said this play more than any other explores how language works and its limits, which led some early critics to think Shakespeare was still learning his craft. Harold Bloom, in The Western Canon (1994), praised the play as "astonishing" and called it Shakespeare’s "first great achievement." The play was likely written for performance at the Inns of Court, where students would have appreciated its style. However, it is not one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, possibly because its focus on language and humor is difficult for modern audiences to understand. The satirical parts of the play, which mock old-fashioned language, are also hard for today’s viewers to grasp.
The play focuses on how men’s desires shape the story. The men’s interest in fame and honor is tied to their view of women as a threat to their masculinity and intelligence. The King and his Lords’ desire for idealized women is shown as confused and mocked throughout the play. At the end, their desire remains unfulfilled, but the women are praised even more. Critic Mark Breitenberg said that the use of idealized poetry, like that of Petrarch, reflects how the men control women through their descriptions of them. Don Armado also shows male desire through his pursuit of Jacquenetta. The theme of desire is linked to the growing awareness of female sexuality in the Renaissance and the fear of being cuckolded. Love, marriage, and power also shape the men’s desires that drive the plot.
The word "reckoning" has many meanings in Shakespeare’s works. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, it often refers to moral judgment, especially the idea of a final judgment related to death. The play mixes fantasy and reality, but the arrival of a messenger announcing the death of the Princess’s father brings the idea of reckoning into focus. Scholar Cynthia Lewis said this moment reminds the characters of the seriousness of marriage. The need to resolve the conflict between Navarre and France is another example of reckoning, though it is handled offstage. This contrasts with the final scene, where reckoning cannot be avoided. Don Armado deals with his reckoning nobly, while the King and his Lords judge themselves when they mock the players in the play about the Nine Worthies.
The idea of rationalization, or justifying reasons, explains how the women change their feelings toward the men. The women convince themselves to fall in love with the men by focusing on the men’s flaws. Lewis said that the ability to rationalize is connected to the difficulty of judging true value, a theme explored throughout the play.
Critic Joseph Westlund said Love’s Labour’s Lost is a "prelude" to Shakespeare’s deeper exploration of imagination in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play includes many fantasy elements, like the men’s promise of abstinence, which is shown as unachievable. Their fantasy is based on the idea that fame will help them avoid death, but this is quickly proven false by the arrival of the Princess and her ladies. This contrast between fantasy and reality creates the play’s humor and irony.
The commoners’ performance of the Nine Worthies highlights the theme of reality versus fantasy. Like the men’s pursuit of fame, the commoners’ play focuses on the idea of fame. The play also explores the Renaissance idea of balancing love’s fantasy with real achievements. Don Armado tries to use examples of the Nine Worthies who fell in love to reconcile these ideas. Time is not important to the plot, as the Princess delays her business to fall in love. This suggests most of the story takes place in a fantasy world. Only the news of the Princess’s father’s death brings time and reality back.
Unlike many of Shakespeare’s plays, music appears only in the final scene of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Two songs, "Ver and Hiems" (about spring and winter) and "The Cuckoo and the Owl," are near the end. Because the exact date of the play is unclear, some believe these songs were added in 1597. Different interpretations of the songs include hopeful messages about the future, sad reflections on the death announcement, or a way to guide the men toward new ideas about love. The songs, which are about seasons, bring back the idea of time. Their opposing themes can be seen as a debate about love’s different attitudes in the play. Scholar Catherine McLay said the songs help explain the play’s central themes and may soften the ending, which some see as unusual for a comedy. The songs are part of traditional comedic structure.
Performance history
The first known performance of the play took place during Christmas in 1597 at the court of Queen Elizabeth. A second performance was recorded in 1605, either at the home of the Earl of Southampton or at the home of Robert Cecil, Lord Cranborne. The first production after Shakespeare's time was not until 1839 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, where Madame Vestris played the role of Rosaline. A review in The Times described the performance as heavy and difficult to follow, stating that the dialogue consisted of clever ideas that became boring if not performed well. The way the play was acted on that night made it seem dull, and the scenery and decorations did little to improve the experience. Other performances in England during the 19th century occurred at Sadler's Wells in 1857 and at the St. James's Theatre in 1886.
Important 20th-century British productions included a 1936 performance at the Old Vic, where Michael Redgrave played Ferdinand and Alec Clunes played Berowne. In 1949, the play was performed at the New Theatre, with Redgrave again playing Berowne. A 1965 production by the Royal Shakespeare Company featured Glenda Jackson, Janet Suzman, and Timothy West in the cast. In 1968, Laurence Olivier directed the play for the National Theatre, with Derek Jacobi as the Duke and Jeremy Brett as Berowne. The Royal Shakespeare Company staged the play again in 1994. A critic named Michael Billington wrote in his review of this production: "The more I see Love's Labour's Lost, the more I believe it is Shakespeare's most charming comedy. It celebrates and satisfies the joy of language, explores the difficult change from youth to adulthood, and reminds us of our shared human limits."
In late summer 2005, an adaptation of the play was performed in the Dari language in Kabul, Afghanistan, by a group of Afghan actors. It was reported to be well received. In 2009, a production by Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, directed by Dominic Dromgoole, toured internationally. Ben Brantley of The New York Times described the performance, seen at Pace University, as "immature" and suggested that the play might be the first example of a type of comedy that later became more common in less refined forms, such as college comedies.
In 2014, the Royal Shakespeare Company presented a double-feature where Love's Labour's Lost, set on the eve of the First World War, was followed by Much Ado About Nothing, which was renamed Love's Labour's Won. Dominic Cavendish of The Telegraph praised the production, calling it "the most joyfully entertaining and emotionally moving RSC offering I've seen in a long time." He noted that similarities between the two plays—such as clever exchanges, conflicts between men and women, and the shift from showy language to sincere emotions—became clear and meaningful.
Adaptations
Alfred Tennyson’s poem The Princess (and, by extension, Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera Princess Ida) is believed by Gerhard Joseph to have been inspired by Love’s Labour’s Lost.
In his novel Doctor Faustus (1943), Thomas Mann includes a fictional German composer, Adrian Leverkühn, who tries to write an opera based on the story of the play.
An opera with the same title as the play was created by Nicolas Nabokov, with a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman. It was first performed in 1973.
In the summer of 2013, The Public Theater in New York City produced a musical version of the play as part of their Shakespeare in the Park series. This was the first new Shakespeare-based musical at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park since 1971. The musical featured a score by Michael Friedman and Alex Timbers, who also directed the production. The cast included Daniel Breaker, Colin Donnell, Rachel Dratch, and Patti Murin, among others.
The 2004 ska musical The Big Life is based on Love’s Labour’s Lost, reworked to tell the story of the Windrush generation arriving in London.
Marc Palmieri’s 2015 play The Groundling, described by the New York Times as "half comedy and half tragedy," was presented as a reflection on the final moments of Love’s Labour’s Lost.
Kenneth Branagh’s 2000 film adaptation moved the story to the 1930s and turned the play into a musical to make it more accessible. The film was not successful at the box office.
Love’s Labour’s Lost was one of the last plays recorded for the BBC Television Shakespeare project, which aired in 1985. The production set the story in the eighteenth century, with costumes and sets inspired by the paintings of Jean-Antoine Watteau. This was the only instance in the project of a play set in a time after Shakespeare’s death. The play also appears in an episode of the British TV show Doctor Who, titled The Shakespeare Code. This episode focuses on Shakespeare and a fictional play called Love’s Labour’s Won, whose final scene is used as a portal for alien witches to invade Earth. All copies of this fictional play disappear along with the witches.
BBC Radio 3 broadcast a radio adaptation of the play on December 16, 1946, directed by Noel Illif, with music by Gerald Finzi for a small chamber orchestra. The cast included Paul Scofield. The music was later adapted into an orchestral suite. Another radio adaptation was aired on February 22, 1979, directed by David Spenser, with music by Derek Oldfield. The cast included Michael Kitchen as Ferdinand, John McEnery as Berowne, Anna Massey as the Princess of France, Eileen Atkins as Rosaline, and Paul Scofield as Don Adriano.
A modern-language adaptation of the play, titled Groups of Ten or More People, was released online in July 2020 by Littlebrain Theatre, a Chicago-based company. This version was set during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and was filmed entirely using the Zoom video conferencing program.