Love’s Labor’s Lost – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Act 1, Scene 1 (333-40, The King of Navarre and several of his lords vow to withdraw from active life and to avoid women so they can study intently for three years; Biron reminds the King that he is expecting a visit from the Princess of France, which means they will break their vow the minute she arrives; Constable Dull delivers a letter from the Spanish soldier Don Armado accusing the servant Costard of disobeying the King’s order to stay away from women.)

Ferdinand, King of Navarre tells the members of his hoped-for “academe” that they will all, in some sort, give the lie to Time and win renown in the classical way: by being remembered gloriously in times to come. And as for the here and now, he says, “Navarre shall be the wonder of the world; / Our court shall be a little academe, / Still and contemplative in living art” (334, 1.1.12-14). They will reopen sessions at Plato’s sacred grove of learning, so to speak, right here in Navarre, and attain the learning that is to be had by such dedicated study. [1]

What, we must ask, are the rules for membership in good standing in this hallowed school? They are as follows: first, not to have anything to do with women; second, to fast one day in each week and eat only one meal on the other days; and to sleep only three hours every night. It seems fair to point out that, in real life, there is no way that any of these restrictions would aid the members in learning: depriving men of pleasurable society, sustenance, and sleep absolutely ensures that little to no learning is going to take place at our honorable academy.

As for the concept of academe, those who take part in Plato’s delightful discussions about all sorts of philosophical subjects, including the nature of love (in The Symposium) and its role in life, are by no means hermetically sealed off from the rest of life. Most of Plato’s dialogic partners and listeners were rather worldly characters, and that seems to have been true as well of the man who plays the leading role in the dialogues, Socrates. Men such as Alcibiades, [2] for example, were certainly what we would describe as “read into” the political, military, and commercial affairs of Athens—they were not hermits, and would not have thought of learning as something one does in isolation from the rest of life.

Dumaine and Longueville have no trouble signing their contracts, but Biron’s protest strikes wittily at what seems to be the King’s severance of learning from life, at the obvious lack of common sense in his plan. Biron claims that all he really wants to do is “live and study here three years” (334, 1.1.35), not avoid females, food, or adequate sleep.

It is Biron who first asks the purpose of such a learning project as the King proposes: “What is the end of study? Let me know” (334, 1.1.55), he asks, and the King’s answer—not a very impressive one, really—is “that to know which else we should not know” (334, 1.1.56). This barren formula gives Biron a chance [3] to introduce some common sense into the scheme. He rejects the abstemious, high-sounding program put forth by King Ferdinand.

Against the King’s scheme, Biron asserts the force of Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm, the cool “chaos theorist” of Jurassic Park fame, who upbraids the suits around him by pointing out, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” [4] A king like Ferdinand of Navarre can, if he insists, make a show of withdrawing from the world for a time, delegating his worldly responsibilities to trusted agents (provided his position is secure enough). But should he do that? [5]

Indeed, the early modern humanist conception of the vita contemplativa, [6]the retired or scholarly life, was not usually intended to deny the broader link between learning and necessary action in the world. “The aim of well knowing,” wrote the learned—and very active—courtier, poet, and soldier Sir Philip Sidney, is “well doing.” [7] There has always been tension between the demands and desires at play in the contemplative and active lives, and it is this tension that the beginning acts of Love’s Labor’s Lost introduce and explore. [8]

Biron’s rejoinder to the King at 335, 1.1.72-93 first reasserts the age-old truism that promoting truth by pushing books is bound to fail. As the Bible says, “there is none end in making many books, and much reading is a weariness of the flesh.” [9] At some point or another, every learner on earth has said or thought something of the sort. Biron counters the King’s weariness-tending regimen, then, by boldly asserting an erotics of learning: as the Norton editors point out, the argument he makes in English-sonnet-form from lines 80-93 is essentially Petrarchan, and allied with the humanist scholar Marsilio Ficino. [10]

What best excites the desire for truth? Why, says Biron, it’s the dazzling eyes of one’s lady: the lover’s eye should, he says, look upon “a fairer eye, / Who, dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, / And give him light that it [his own eye] was blinded by” (335, 1.1.81-83). It is passion that drives people, not some dry desire for abstract, systemic knowledge. Biron would no doubt prefer Maimonides’s conception of learning as a series of lightning flashes, each of which leaves us again in a state of darkness, [11] over Ferdinand’s determined, steady model of accumulation and aggregation.

When he is accused of being like the frost that destroys the spring buds, Biron offers another answer worthy of the Bible: he says that he, and we, should “like of each thing that in season grows” (336, 1.1.107). Again, Ecclesiastes may be the inspiration here: “To all things there is an appointed time, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” [12]

Oddly, though, it is Biron himself who introduces the notion that the King’s scheme is penitential in nature: “Yet confident I’ll keep what I have sworn, / And bide the penance of each three years’ day” (336, 1.1.114-15). He has signed on at last, and in spite of his supposedly principled opposition.

Well, to borrow another famous line from everyone’s favorite dinosaur movie, “Life finds a way.” [13] The Princess of France and her ladies in waiting will soon enter the scene, just as Biron points out to the King. They are going to arrive on an embassy relating to the rights to Aquitaine. Apparently, it’s time for some negotiations to take place. So much, then, for the noblemen of Navarre’s sacred pledge to avoid women! Calendaring is evidently not a strong point of the Ferdinandian administration, and as he says, the ladies must be accommodated “on mere necessity” (336, 1.1.147).

In any case, we (meaning the soon-to-be members of Ferdinand’s “academe” and the audience) want to know from the King of Navarre what Sir Toby Belch, in Twelfth Night, wants to know from the Puritanical steward Malvolio: “Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, / there shall be no more cakes and ale?” [14]

The King answers in his sonnet-laced response that, for fun—cakes and ale, in Sir Toby’s terms—there will be one Don Adriano de Armado, whom the King calls “a refinèd traveler of Spain, / A man in all the world’s new fashion planted …” (337, 1.1.161-62). A truer description would be “braggart soldier,” or miles gloriosus, as such a character was called in ancient Roman comedy. [15] And for more rustic entertainment, there’s always Costard.

Armado makes his entrance via a letter accusing Costard of accosting Jaquenetta, a “country wench,” as she’s called in the play’s dramatis personae, and from it we can see why the King finds him such an easy mark for “minstrelsy” (entertainment). The letter is as good an instance of fustian as may be found—full of ridiculous phrases and overblown expressions.

We do, however, get one interesting thing from Armado’s letter, which is that one of King Ferdinand’s rules for his own society must have been extended at some point to all the men in his kingdom: any man who is “taken / with a wench” (339, 1.1.271-72) becomes liable to up to one year’s imprisonment. Harsh! But at least for Costard the King shortens the penalty to one week of fasting with only “bran and water” to eat (339, 1.1.282).

Biron scoffs that no one is going to obey laws like that. Rulers may be able to reroute the individual’s libido for wider social and political purposes, but it can’t simply be suppressed or abolished.

Act 1, Scene 2 (340-43, Armado confesses to his page, Mote, and then to Jaquenetta that he is enamored of her; Armado is to take charge of Costard, who is imprisoned for violating the King’s order about avoiding women.)

Here we meet Don Armado, the fashionable man who is set (though not knowingly) to be the comic entertainment for the otherwise austere band of noble scholars we met in the first scene. But we also meet his page or servant Mote, who, in spite of his diminutive name (it means “speck”) proves himself to be far more clever than his employer. Mote not only more than amply parries Armado’s halting jests but engages in witty aside-slinging that brings us, the audience, into the fun at Armado’s expense.

What Mote does right away is expose the Spaniard miles gloriosus or “braggart soldier” as not so much a man of action as an incompetent wordmonger—he even calls his employer (to us) a “cipher” or zero. (341, 1.2.52) When Armado declares himself in love with the country girl Jaquenetta, he asks Mote for some classical heroic examples—some reference to “men of good / repute and carriage” (341, 1.2.63-64) to justify and exalt this feeling.

Mote presents Armado with the figures of Hercules and Samson, and at once surreptitiously undercuts the comparisons by changing the connotation of the word “carriage”: “Samson … was a man of good carriage, great / carriage, for he carried the town gates on his back like a / porter, and he was in love” (341, 1.2.65-67). This reduces Armado to a pack ass, a load-bearing fool rather than a great lover. If what Armado seeks with his silly wordplay, definition-making, and pretentiousness is differentiation and distinction, Mote is there to ensure that he reaps a different harvest.

Mote’s quatrains on Jaquenetta’s color are also excellent. Armado says that she is “most immaculate white and red” (341, 1.2.82), but the clever page rhymes out the trouble with this Petrarchan [16] claim: “If she be made of white and red, / Her faults will ne’er be known, / For blushing cheeks by faults are bred, / And fears by pale white shown” (341, 1.2.89-92). If Armado were literally correct in his description, Jaquenetta’s natural complexion would function as a mask obscuring her faults. Just as words so often lead away from the trail of deeds, so would this young woman’s face.

Finally, when Armado and Jaquenetta meet, she is sarcastic and reads him for the fool he is. No doubt he thinks, like every inept male suitor when a disastrous encounter has ended, “That went well!” Costard is led off to his prison-fasting sentence, and then Armado engages in a fit of Petrarchanism that show him to be cleanly divorced from reality. He is obsessed with Jaquenetta, and sure that love itself is an “evil angel” (343, 1.2.155).

What to do? The only hope of amelioration, thinks Armado, is pen and paper, and cries out, “Assist me, some extempo- / ral god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet” (343, 1.2.163-64).

ACT 2

Act 2, Scene 1 (343-49, The French Princess and her entourage of ladies arrive at Navarre; the King welcomes them but won’t allow them entrance to his court—they will, he insists, need to room in some tents out in the fields; the King’s lords take an interest in particular ladies who accompany the Princess.)

As the Princess of France and her attendants gather outside the gates of King Ferdinand’s Palace, Boyet shows an unpleasant tendency to Renaissance-mansplain the vital importance of the diplomatic mission they have been sent to complete: the matter, he reminds her, is “of no less weight than Aquitaine—a dowry for a queen” (343, 2.1.7-8). The Princess sends Boyet off on a quick intelligence-gathering jaunt: he is to find out what the King is thinking. Boyet is to tell the King that the Princess has come “On serious business, craving quick dispatch” (344, 2.1.31) and bring back his response.

The Princess doesn’t quite seem to trust Boyet, but in any case, she now realizes that she is dealing with an all-male society, so as the leader of a group of mostly females, something like “diplomatic relations” must be established. While she is waiting, she takes in the reports her ladies can give of the men in that society.

Maria is familiar with Longueville, who, she says, is “A man of sovereign parts” but somewhat too acerbic, perhaps lacking in empathy. Katherine is acquainted slightly with Dumaine, who, she says, is attractive and intelligent, and seems harmless enough. Still, men like that—men who have “Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill …” (344, 2.1.58), are something of a question mark, and we don’t know if we are ultimately to think well of them. [17]

As for Biron, Rosaline observes that he is quite the wit, but not in ways that go beyond the bounds of good taste. Still, it seems to be a point of critique that he is always on the lookout for an occasion to display his wit: should we find in this a touch of proto-Wildean vanity? The Princess herself seems to treat all three reports on these men as evidence of worthiness.

Boyet soon returns with disconcerting—some would say insulting—news: he tells the Princess, “He rather means to lodge you in the field, / Like one that comes here to besiege his court, / Than seek a dispensation for his oath / To let you enter his unpeopled house” (345, 2.1.86-89). The Princess lets the King know in person that she is not pleased with his determination to give her a “welcome to the wide fields” (345, 2.1.94) instead of inside his court.

The Princess gets the better of the King in this exchange, setting the tone for the rest of the play. She politely but firmly cuts to the chase, saying when the King assures her that he won’t willingly break his oath, “Why, will shall break it—will, and nothing else” (345, 2.1.100). As the Norton marginal note suggests, the word “will” often means “sexual desire.” The Princess’s subsequent words suggest that she is not certain whether he knows this or not, but in any event, she seems aware that behind this whole “scholar scheme” is probably no small amount of fear of women as fully autonomous, sexual beings.

The competition of wit between Rosaline and Biron carries on with this line of thinking. Biron tries to make small talk, asking her, “Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?” He must be surprised to receive in response, “Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?” When Biron admits, “I know you did,” Rosaline comes back with “How needless was it, then, / To ask the question!” (346, 2.1.114-18) She has deftly exposed the egocentrism underlying the “I-form” of Biron’s question—why didn’t he just ask, “Did we not dance in Brabant once?”

As for the substance of the negotiations over Aquitaine, both the King of Navarre and the Princess’s father, the King of France, would as soon receive a large sum of money and give away Aquitaine, which takes on the appearance of a hot potato between the two of them. [18] The King of France claims he issued a payment of 100,000 crowns to Ferdinand, but Boyet can’t, at present, produce the receipt for that supposed payment, so the claim must await confirmation.

The King of Navarre’s firm pronouncement about the ladies’ lodgings cannot be pleasing to them: “You may not come, fair Princess, in my gates, / But here without you shall be so received / As you shall deem yourself lodged in my heart, / Though so denied further harbor in my house” (347, 2.1.171-74). This declaration may or may not be heartfelt, but it comes across as specious rhetoric that does little more than smooth over an insult. No wonder the women are so standoffish later in the play! But more on that anon.

Boyet is tasked by the noble scholars with providing them information about the Princess’s female entourage. It turns out that Dumaine is enamored of Katherine, and Longueville with Maria; Biron is quite fond of the sharp-tongued Rosaline, and, Boyet soon tells the Princess, Navarre is “affected” (348, 2.1.231) with her. Ferdinand’s eyes and words may not have been aligned well enough to express his affection, suggests Boyet, but no matter that: he is in love.

He counsels the Princess to use her charm the better to accomplish her diplomatic mission over the all-important Aquitaine: “I’ll give you Aquitaine and all that is his, / An you give him, for my sake, but one loving kiss” (348, 2.1.247-48). There is some hint of sexual frustration in this formulation by Boyet, as we might have noted from his attempt to kiss Maria a little earlier in the scene. He is one of those characters in Shakespeare who seems to be at the center of the social circle, but remains a kind of outsider, after all is said and done. [19]

ACT 3

Act 3, Scene 1 (349-53, Armado lets Costard out of jail and charges him with conveying a love letter to his beloved, Jaquenetta; Biron also gives Costard a letter, this one intended for his French love interest, Rosaline; in soliloquy, Biron must admit that he has fallen in love.)

Much of the wit-parrying in this short “setup” act resembles the wordplay of the nobles, only on a lower and just short of obscene level since many of the references resolve themselves into sexual innuendos or gestures toward performance of sex acts. To be fair, though, the lords and ladies in this play seem to have no trouble engaging in bawdy repartée.

Costard profits from the only action in this single scene when first Armado and then Biron gives him a letter intended for their respective love interests, Jaquenetta and Rosaline. Costard, whom Armado releases from jail so he can run this errand, is too ignorant to know the meaning of “remuneration,” taking it to mean literally the three farthings Armado has paid him. All the same, he is well remunerated by Armado, and even more so when Biron pays him a full shilling, or twelvepence, to deliver his letter.

Left alone, Biron is astonished at the circumstances in which he now finds himself. He, who saw himself as “a very beadle” (353, 3.1) accustomed to castigating others for their love affectations, is now a pitiful complainant himself. As for his prospective lover, he professes to consider her less than a catch, and possibly unchaste: she is, he says, “A whitely wanton with a velvet brow, / With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes; / Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed / Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard” (353, 3.1.182-85). [20]

Biron rails at Cupid and even at the woman who has caught his attention, but in truth he knows there’s no way out of his predicament. He is as subject as other men to romantic, erotic attractions, and his own weak, if witty, words won’t change the fact.

ACT 4

Act 4, Scene 1 (354-57, during a hunting trip, the Princess, her ladies, and Boyet receive a visit from Costard, who erroneously gives them Armado’s letter for Jaquenetta, not Biron’s letter for Rosaline.)

Out on a deer-hunt in the King’s park, the Princess engages in a bit of innocent flirtation with the Forester supervising her efforts. He does his best to encourage her in her deer-hunting efforts, offering to position her where she “may make the fairest shoot” (354, 4.1.10). She professes to take this advice as praise of her fairness, or beauty, and he is forced to say, “I meant not so” (354, 4.1.13), whereupon she feigns to believe herself slighted when the alleged compliment is taken back.

Next, the Princess professes to be sorry for the deer she may be about to kill: “I for praise alone now seek to spill / The poor deer’s blood, that my heart means no ill” (354, 4.1.34-35). [21] This could plausibly be taken as partly spoken from self-concern since from the time of the ancients, “the hunt” has often been cast as a figure for love pursuits, [22] and the Princess finds herself being pursued by the King of Navarre.

Of course, the roles are sometimes reversed, as in the famous tale of Actaeon being hunted down by the chaste goddess Diana’s hounds. Perhaps that is the Princess’s meaning in playing with the “hunt” motif in the manner that she does: by her own account, she is the one who is receiving praise for her actions. When Boyet joins the fray and mentions shrewish, domineering wives, the Princess says gamely, “praise we may afford / To any lady that subdues a lord” (354, 4.1.39-40).

Soon, Costard enters and gives Armado’s letter to the Princess by mistake. Now this letter that was meant to be private or between just two parties becomes public, with Boyet reading it to the courtly set surrounding him. The letter is full of the writer’s pomposity and strange turns of phrase, obsessive definitions, and so forth—it sounds a bit like a bad attempt to emulate John Lyly’s elaborate prose in Euphues. [23] Oddest of all is Armado’s pretense that he is doing Jaquenetta a great favor by condescending to notice her and pursue her: the very opposite of savvy courtship.

When the Princess asks Costard who gave him this letter, he spills the information that Biron gave it to him and that it was intended for Rosaline. The Princess gives Armado’s letter to Rosaline and says, “’Twill be thine another day” (356, 4.1.107). The Norton gloss on this expression has it as meaning, “Your turn will come,” but it could also mean, “You’ll get a letter soon, and it will be much the same as this silly letter by Armado.”

The rest of Scene 1 consists of a series of bawdy puns and ripostes by Boyet, Costard, Rosaline, and Maria. Costard comes away from the match thinking the courtly Boyet is something of a rustic clown, while his good opinion of the absent Armado is only strengthened. There’s no accounting for taste.

This punning episode makes for an odd premonition of what Corin the Shepherd will say to the Fool Touchstone in As You Like It: “those that are good manners / at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behavior / of the country is most mockable at the court.” [24] In the present case, though, both sides have a good claim to “mockable” status. This will become increasingly clear when we hear the noblemen’s verse efforts to impress the Princess and her ladies.

Act 4, Scene 2 (357-61, the pedant Holofernes, the curate Nathaniel, and Constable Dull talk about the deer that the Princess has shot; Costard and Jaquenetta show up with Biron’s letter for Rosaline, and are encouraged to deliver this letter to the King.)

Holofernes the scholar and Nathaniel the curate [25] converse with each other and are shadowed by the aptly named Constable Anthony Dull. The last-mentioned character has some trouble understanding the other two men, both of whom fancy themselves extremely clever. Nathaniel says of Dull, “His intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal—only / sensible in the duller parts” (358, 4.2.23). All the same, he provides matter for Nathaniel and Holofernes to hash out between themselves, and the three men share their enjoyment of a simple riddle about the moon’s age.

Holofernes offers a sampling of his alleged wit, which begins, “The preyful Princess pierced and pricked a pretty pleasing / pricket …” (359, 4.2.51). This bit of alliterative doggerel (which undercuts the more serious, deer-lethal event to which it alludes) elicits high praise from Nathaniel, and Holofernes is moved to praise his own imaginative “gift,” which he declares is “a fool- / ish, extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions. These / are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of / occasion” (359, 4.2.60-65).

It is by no means certain that Holofernes is describing anything more than a normal imagination, understood in Shakespeare’s time as a combinatory faculty rather than a godlike creative power, as it was for the English Romantics a few centuries later. [26] In any case, the pedant seems pleased with himself.

In come Costard and Jaquenetta, bearing what they mistakenly think is Armado’s letter to her. Once again, a private letter is aired in public, before the wrong hearers: what Nathaniel reads out is Biron’s letter to Rosaline. Part of the English sonnet bears a clear relation to Biron’s remarks at the beginning of Love’s Labor’s Lost, with its insistence that with respect to his intended lover, “If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice” (360, 4.2.104). We will hear more of this Neoplatonist-tending philosophy in a while.

Holofernes doesn’t think much of Biron’s sonnet as verse, saying, “Here are only numbers ratified, but for the elegancy, / Facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret” (360, 4.2.114-15). It’s technically proficient, he suggests, but that’s the best he can say about it. Nathaniel tells Jaquenetta that she should hand this letter over to King Ferdinand without delay, as it may be consequential.

Holofernes invites Nathaniel to dinner at the home of one of his pupils, and Dull is invited to attend as well. There, the pedant promises, he will at greater length take apart Biron’s sonnet as “very unlearned, / neither savoring of poetry, wit, nor invention” (361, 4.2.148-49). Holofernes is a critic who loves an audience.

Act 4, Scene 3 (361-70, the King and his lords arrive sequentially and admit that they have fallen in love; each one hides after making his own confession so he can listen to the next confession; finally, Biron, after berating the others, is himself exposed by the arrival via Costard of his own love letter to Rosaline; all four suitors express their shame at having broken their vows, but Biron devises a clever way to excuse their dishonesty, and then they all set out to provide entertainment for the women whose affections they mean to win.)

The scene begins with Biron reproaching himself for having fallen into a passion for Rosaline: he laments, “By heaven, I do love, and it / hath taught me to rhyme and to be melancholy …” (361-62, 4.3.10-11). Moreover, he thinks, Rosaline must already have his letter.

There is a hint in Biron’s words that his melancholia is not altogether unwelcome to him, and we may be reminded of Robert Burton’s lengthy treatise on that subject, Anatomy of Melancholy. A brief poem in that text goes back and forth on the pleasures and pains of melancholia: “All my joys to this are folly, / Naught so sweet as melancholy,” and so forth. [27] This much is evident from Biron’s admission, “By the world, I / would not care a pin if the other three were in” (362, 4.3.15-16). In love, that is, just as he is.

Just then, Biron’s half-wish begins to come true when King Ferdinand enters carrying a piece of paper, and not realizing that he is being watched. The King’s extended sonnet (it ends with a pair of rhyming couplets) out-Petrarchs Petrarch: “O Queen of queens, how far dost thou excel, / No thought can think, nor tongue of mortal tell” (362, 4.3.36-37).

Next, in comes Longueville, and he, too, has a sonnet testifying to his vow-breaking ways. Both Biron and the King listen in on his poem, which predictably declares the beloved “a goddess” and takes up an attitude of “Sorry, not sorry” on the issue of guilt for breaking his vow (363, 4.3.60; see 66-68). Biron, from his perch, exclaims to himself, “Pure, pure idolatry!” (363, 4.3.70)

Dumaine’s turn comes next. He enters, and Biron, the King, and Longueville are treated to his recitation. Each man, to himself, admits that he would be very happy if the lot of them achieved their romantic desires. Dumaine reads out his thoroughly unremarkable tetrameter poem, and wishes that “the King, Biron, and Longueville / Were lovers too!” (364, 4.3.118-19) He would be content to board such a ship of fools.

Suddenly, Longueville steps forth and denounces Dumaine for making such a wish, which he says is “far from charity” (364, 4.3.122). The King then comes forward and berates Longueville for castigating Dumaine: he says, “I heard your guilty rhymes, observed your fashion, / Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion …” (364, 4.3.134-35). The King seems to have a pretty good memory for all the embarrassing over-the-topness of the poetry he has just heard since he recalls it to each author’s chagrin. What would Biron think, asks the King?

Just then, Biron steps into the limelight, and dares reproach the King himself for transgressing against his vow. Nor does he spare the other two: “But are you not ashamed? Nay, are you not, / All three of you, to be thus much o’ershot?” (365, 4.3.154-55)

Biron keeps talking as if he’s certain nobody knows what he has been up to, but that changes when Jaquenetta and Costard interrupt him in the middle of his hypocritical pronouncement and give the group the letter that Biron wrote to Rosaline. Just like that, he is leveled with the other vow-breakers, and blurts out his confession to the King.

This is a convenient time for Biron to invoke human nature by way of an excuse: “Sweet lords, sweet lovers—oh, let us embrace! / As true we are as flesh and blood can be,” he says, and then “We cannot cross the cause why we are born; / Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn” (366, 4.3. 208-09, 212-13). This is a good argument against setting up puritanical scholarly societies, but the timing is a bit suspicious, we must observe.

Biron is now determined to defend his love interest, Rosaline, against all detractors. He exalts her in rhyme even as the others mock her supposedly dark complexion and hair color: “Is ebony like her? Oh, word divine! / A wife of such wood were felicity” (367, 4.3.242-43). Thus, and much more of the same.

The lovers soon look to Biron to make them feel better, give them some “salve for perjury,” as Dumaine phrases the request (368, 4.3.283). Biron is ready for this request since all he needs to do is reinvoke—for the third time [28] —his Neoplatonist-friendly assertion that passion is the ground of all excellence when it comes to worthy pursuits. He asks the men around him, “when would you , my lord, or you, or you, / Have found the ground of study’s excellence / Without the beauty of a woman’s face? / From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive …” (368, 4.3.293-96). [29]

Love, Biron goes on to say, when “first learned in a lady’s eyes,” does not remain an isolated feeling within, but “Courses as swift as thought in every power, / And gives to every power a double power, / Above their functions and their offices” (369, 4.3.325-27). Love, that is, quickens the lover’s perceptions and, more generally, the spirit. The good is, as Humanist philosophers would say (borrowing from any number of theologians), productive of still more good. [30] From here, Biron easily proceeds to a sweeping, almost religious proclamation: “Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves …” (369, 4.3.356).

Perhaps not surprisingly, Biron’s passionate philosophical defense of embodied love falls flat, and Longueville suggests that it’s time to “lay these glozes by” (370, 4.3.365) and get right to the wooing. And, the King adds, to the winning. What they really need to do, the latter says, is stage an entertaining spectacle for the ladies. Of course, he says this without any intention of lodging them anywhere but where they are: “in their tents” (370, 4.3.368). The King would begin his pursuit still within the framework of his all-male society of scholars—at least for the time being, that hasn’t changed.

What all this suggests is that the King, Longueville, and Dumaine have not taken Biron’s philosophy to heart; they have received from it only the general encouragement that they wanted to hear. It does not lead them to a genuinely liberated conception of male-female relations or female status in itself.

And so the women, literally placed in a separate camp by Ferdinand, are more or less confined by this arrangement to the physical, sensual dimension so often allotted to women. Even though the dream of a scholarly all-male club has been abandoned, the Princess and her ladies are still treated as a threat to the male pretensions of purity and superiority that most likely led to the formation of this “boys’ network.”

Even so, these women—the Princess and her entourage—have a degree of self-awareness and canniness about them that the men who woo them don’t possess. This self-awareness will give the women an advantage as the men’s pursuit advances. That is often the case in Shakespeare, and even more so later on in Restoration drama: if women in such plays have power, it is because they know how to work within the constraints that men have placed on them and to wrest advantages from apparent limitations.

ACT 5

Act 5, Scene 1 (370-73, Armado has been commanded by the King to work up the entertainment for the princess and her entourage; he confers with Holofernes, who suggests staging a pageant of the Nine Worthies.)

Holofernes and Nathaniel have a conversation with each other about Armado, and while Nathaniel asks Holofernes about Armado’s qualities without tipping his hand about his own opinion, the latter man, a scholar or pedant, has no problem launching a punctilious critique against the Spaniard. Holofernes says plenty of things, but the criticism comes down to this: Armado’s “general behavior” is “vain, / ridiculous, and thrasonical,” or boastful, as the Norton marginal note says. (370, 5.1.11-12)

This critique may be on point, but it’s a bit much coming from an outlandishly pedantic fellow like Holofernes, who seems bent upon distinguishing himself by a continual attempt to embellish his own already arcane, Latin-laced speech with still more layers of definition and deviation from the norm of polite discourse. Such a project, we may assume, is undertaken as a way of distinguishing oneself from what the haughty Spanish nobleman Aragon calls in The Merchant of Venice “the barbarous multitudes.” [31] At the apparently easily disregarded expense of comprehensibility, it creates an exoskeleton of mystery around the speaker.

As Mote the Page explains to Costard when they enter along with Armado, Holofernes and Nathaniel “have been at a great feast of lan- / guages and stolen the scraps” (371, 5.1.35-36). Mote also mocks Holofernes’s skills as a pedagogue or teacher of children, saying, “he teaches boys the hornbook (371, 5.1.44). That is a little unfair since pedagogy (including instruction in grammar of the sort Mote refers to) was a major concern for English and Continental humanists of Shakespeare’s time. [32]

All the same, Holofernes seems a foolish fellow. Perhaps his greatest value is as a reproach to a King and his lords who want to take on the mantle of the retired scholar. Is this eccentric, Latin-obsessed pedant really what they’re aiming to become?

Aside from the silly and indecorous wordplay that ensues when Armado speaks with Holofernes, the Spaniard has a purpose in visiting: he has been tasked with whipping up suitable entertainment for the King of Navarre and his lords in their pursuit of the ladies’ affections. That brings Armado to Holofernes and Nathaniel, whom he knows to be learned men. Holofernes knows right off what is to be done: a production of “The Nine Worthies” [33] —that is, a fictive parade of world-famous heroes such as Hercules, Hector, and others of that illustrious stamp. Holofernes apportions the roles—in the event, only five will be presented, not nine—and all is set.

Act 5, Scene 2 (373-94, Boyet tells the Princess that the King and his lords will put on Russian costumes and visit; the ladies will wear masks and exchange with one another the gifts they’ve received, so the King and his lords will all make their vows to the wrong ladies; when the men return dressed as themselves, the ladies will make fun of them for their mistaken vows; Costard ushers in the pageant of the Nine Worthies, but he interrupts it by declaring that Jaquenetta is pregnant by Armado; Armado challenges Costard to a duel. (SYNOPSIS CONTINUES …)A messenger brings news that the King of France is dead; the King of Navarre and his lords keep trying to get the Princess and her women to accept their suits, but the women insist that the men must do penance during her formal year of mourning for her father the King of France; when the year is up, the King and his lords will be free to renew their proposals.

Gifts from the King and his lords arrive for the Princess and her ladies. The Princess has received a diamond pendant from Ferdinand; Rosaline has a brooch from Biron; Katherine a glove from Dumaine; and Maria pearls from Longueville. The women all enjoy a bit of mockery at the expense of the men, and they especially enjoy the Princess’s observation that “None are so surely caught, when they are catched, / As wit turned fool” (375, 5.2.69-70).

Soon, however, Boyet arrives to announce that they will have company, saying “Encounters mounted are / Against your peace” (375, 5.2.82-83). Their plan, he explains, is to dress like “Muscovites or Russians,” and “to parley, to court, and dance, / And every one his love-suit will advance / Unto his several mistress, which they’ll know / By favors several which they did bestow” (376, 5.2.121-25).

The Princess at once figures out a way to frustrate these impostors, simply by masking and exchanging the “favors” or gifts they each have received. What’s the reason for this foiling operation? At first she says, “They do it but in mocking merriment, / And mock for mock is only my intent” (376, 5.2.139-40). Soon, however, she fills in this justification somewhat: “There’s no such sport as sport by sport o’erthrown, / To make theirs ours and ours none but our own. / So shall we stay, mocking intended game, / And they, well mocked, depart away with shame” (377, 5.2.153-56).

The Princess’s justification centers on the women retaining their personal autonomy: they are being treated by the men as objects of merriment and sporting, so they must in turn be victorious in sporting that they engage in for their own sake. The competition may be fun and games for Ferdinand and company, but it entails riskier and more consequential things for the women: the diminution of agency that comes with marriage to a powerful Renaissance-Era man, and the risks and responsibilities that belong to pregnancy, childbirth, and those tasks related to child-rearing that even wealthy women might not be able to pass along to nurses.

Well, let the Russian dancing and parleying begin. The stage directions proclaim, “Enter Black[a]moors with music” (377, 5.2.156 dir.), probably meaning some European musicians made up in blackface. [34] Mote the Page steps forth to give the prologue, and is immediately confounded by Boyet’s quips and the ladies’ refusal to play along, so he ends up exiting the stage, abashed.

The King calls upon the women to dance, but they lead the men on by taking hold of their hands, and then refuse to dance. (378, 5.2.220ff) Dancing, as is often said, is a sublimated form of eroticism, almost a stand-in for sexual activity, so we might observe that the women here are rejecting an activity that lies at the heart of courtship. Courtship itself, in other words, is a kind of dance, so to reject dancing is to reject courtship.

There follows a bit of word-and-wit wrangling by the “Russians” with which lady they know not, what with the masks and the deliberately confusing redistribution of love tokens. Boyet, himself no small wit, remarks that the women’s jests are hitting home: “The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen / As is the razor’s edge—invisible, / Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen” (379, 5.2.257-59).

The men soon pair off with the wrong partners privately, and apparently misdirect their offers of marriage. Rosaline suggests that the women use these mistakes in their next round of mockery: “Let’s mock them still,” she says, “as well known as disguised” (381, 5.2.302).

When the King and his lords return, this time without their Russian disguises, an interesting moment occurs when Biron, the wittiest of Ferdinand’s set, feels compelled to notice Boyet’s evident skills as a wit and ladies’ man: “This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve; / Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve!” (381, 5.2.322-23) There are a few of what sound like the usual English digs at the French over the issue of masculinity, but on the whole, Biron pays tribute to French aplomb at courtship and competitive wit.

The King has what he considers a serious announcement to make, which is, “We came to visit you, and purpose now / To lead you to our court” (382, 5.2.344). But the Princess’s apparently earnest reply is, “This field shall hold me, and so hold your vow. / Nor God nor I delights in perjured men” (382, 5.2.346-47).

This is a reminder to the men that they tend to engage in excessive oath-making and then to treat the vows they’ve issued with something less than the steadfastness they promised: this is part of the “boys’ network” effect mentioned earlier in this commentary. The Princess’s timing is exquisite: just when Ferdinand and his male camp have decided it would be convenient to break a solemnly extended vow, her refusal drives home the point that there was never any need for such extreme vows or for the segregation of Navarre’s society into separate groupings of male and female.

Once their “Russia Hoax” is exposed, the men are abashed. Biron even promises to reform his language, though he does so in extended sonnet form, [35] —quite a performance—part of which runs, “Oh, never will I trust to speeches penned, / Nor to the motion of a schoolboy’s tongue, / Nor never come in visor to my friend, / Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper’s song” (383, 5.2.403-06). Rosaline is right not to put much stock in this compromised declaration.

Biron’s quatrain addiction dovetails with the problem of excessive oaths being bandied about by and among men. We may place both issues under the larger heading of “language deployed for self-serving purposes.” King Ferdinand and his lords have been relying throughout the play on their admirable command of fine language to cushion themselves from anything serious. They treat courtship as a lark even as they keep the women they seek isolated and at a disadvantage. The women are just as skilled at rhetorical jousting, but they have a more grounded understanding of the marital and child-bearing realities that the men breezily avoid.

The men’s discomfort over their exposure is soon pushed aside in favor of “The Nine Worthies,” which is sure to be a hit, considering that the showrunners are none other than Holofernes the pedant and Don Adriano de Armado the braggart soldier or (in Latin) miles gloriosus. What could possibly go wrong? The roles of the nine worthies are apportioned out to Armado as Hector of Troy, Costard as Pompey the Great, Nathaniel as Alexander the Great, Mote the Page as the Infant Hercules, and Holofernes himself as Judas Maccabaeus.

Unfortunately for the production, so much razzing comes from the noble audience—and it’s much ruder than the gentle jokes and literary criticism aimed by the lords and ladies at the humble crew of Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream— [36] that things don’t go smoothly at all: Nathaniel (i.e., Alexander) is crestfallen, and Holofernes (as Maccabeus) is duly insulted at the mean barbs thrown his way by Biron and the others, saying, “This is not generous, not gentle, not humble” (388, 5.2.623).

Still less generous and gentle is what comes next: Costard (Pompey) takes it upon himself to tell the audience that Armado (Hector) has gotten Jaquenetta with child. She is two months along. This revelation incenses Armado, and he challenges Costard, with the nobles not so nobly egging the two of them on. But in truth, Armado is chastened, and promises to reform his conduct.

Marcadé enters with the news that the Princess’s father, the King of France, has died, and we also find out from the newly named Queen that the matter of Aquitaine had already been worked out between the respective parties. Ferdinand, Biron, Dumaine and Longueville cannot enter into the new Queen’s sorrow, and they lamely try to continue their love pursuits, with Biron even complaining, “For your fair sakes have we neglected time, / Played foul-play with our oaths. Your beauty, ladies, / Hath much deformed us, fashioning our humors / Even to the opposèd end of our intents …” (391, 5.2.741-44).

Biron, then, is back to blaming the women for his own and his fellow noblemen’s faulty behavior. The Queen’s response to all this whining and blame-shifting is that she and her ladies have “met your loves / In their own fashion, like a merriment” (391, 5.2.770).

That seems fair. But after all the light jests, the end of the play seems penitential in tone. The death of the French King gives the ladies occasion to impose their year-long conditions for continued courtship. These conditions require the men to reflect upon and work out their imperfections.

The King of Navarre is the first to find out how he can make amends to the newly named Queen of France: he must “go with speed / To some forlorn and naked hermitage, / Remote from all the pleasures of the world” (392, 5.2.780-82). There he is to lead the silent, serious life of a hermit. If this “austere insociable life” (392, 5.2.785) reforms him, he will, says the new Queen, be welcome to tender his vows again, and she will be his at last. Meantime, she will be in isolation, too, mourning for her father, the departed King of France.

Katherine tells Dumaine simply to stay away from her for twelve months, and Maria says much the same to Longueville. As for Biron, thanks to Rosaline’s inventiveness he has a different trial to undergo: he must for a twelvemonth “Visit the speechless sick and still converse / With groaning wretches …” (393, 5.2.837-38), all with the intention of making them smile and laugh at his wit. This is because, says Rosaline, “A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear / Of him that hears it, never in the tongue / Of him that makes it” (393, 5.2.848-49).

Biron is not off the mark when he says, “Our wooing doth not end like an old play: / Jack hath not Jill. These ladies’ courtesy / Might well have made our sport a comedy” (393, 5.2.860-62). In a comedy such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for all its “fierce vexation” in the fairy-haunted forest, Puck is able to say, “Jack shall have Jill, / Naught shall go ill, / The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.” [37]

Love’s Labor’s Lost is an elegant, experimental play whose aim, in part, seems to be to explore and evaluate the era’s love conventions, in particular its reliance on sonneteering and other flights of poetical fancy, on “wit,” and on an elaborate, courtly level of decorum in gesture, dress, and conduct. What is too formal, or not formal enough? Too serious, or not serious enough? Too witty, or not witty enough?

In most comedies, if we leave aside the occasional non-participants and willful outsiders, the play ends with one or more happy marriages, but in this one, everyone goes away empty-handed, at least for one penitential year.

Armado announces that Holofernes and Nathaniel have composed a traditional debate between the spring and the winter, the first argument upheld by the cuckoo and the second by the owl, each poem seeming to distribute joy and sadness both within its respective season, rather than keeping them separate. After this debate is done, Armado ends the play enigmatically, with “The words of Mercury are harsh / After the songs of Apollo. / You that way; we this way” (394, 5.2.934-36).

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93861-6.

Document Timestamp: 12/11/2025 7:17 AM

ENDNOTES

*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.

[1] See the current Norton edition’s note on pp. 328-29 regarding the historical Henri of Navarre, King of Navarre from 1572-89 and then Henri IV of France to 1610, when he was assassinated. Henri founded a philosophical retreat and earned public criticism for it. Marguerite de Navarre, his estranged wife, visited Navarre on an “embassy of reconciliation” that included negotiations over Aquitaine. The negotiations did not go well, and contemporaries blamed the breakdown for a restarting of France’s Protestant vs. Catholic violence in the third and fourth quarters of the sixteenth century. Some of Shakespeare’s audience members may have been familiar with this history, even though it is not directly incorporated. See also “Elizabethan Views of the ‘Other’: French, Spanish, and Russians in Love’s Labor’s Lost.” Felicia Londre. Elizabethan Review Spring-Summer 1995, Volume 3, Number 1. Additionally, see the American Shakespeare Center’s July 2017 post “The Dark Side of Love’s Labour’s Lost.”

[2] See Alcibiades (Britannica.com, accessed 9/3/2024) the statesman and military commander comes to mind, and we could easily make a list of such worldly figures. At issue is the relation, if any, to the world around them. Socrates demanded a certain intellectual rigor from his listeners, but he didn’t demand that they leave the world behind altogether. See Socrates (Britannica.com, accessed 9/3/2024).

[3] As the Norton editors’ footnote 9 for pg. 335 suggests.

[4] See Jurassic Park, 1993. Dir. Steven Spielberg.

[5] We should recall that poet-kings such as Richard II and magical dukes like Prospero in The Tempest run into serious headwinds when they neglect their worldly responsibilities for a life of art and learning.

[6] The debate over whether the vita activa or the vita contemplativa is better dates back to Greek and Roman classical humanists such as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, and makes its way into the medieval era (Saint Augustine in The City of God, et al.) and early modern eras with Italian civic humanism.

Within the context of civic humanism during the European Renaissance, philosophers often demanded from the contemplative life something different than, say, medieval monks dedicated to learning apart from the world. Francesco Petrarca, or in English Francis Petrarch, is a central figure for humanism since his lifetime straddled the medieval and early modern eras; his writings tend to praise the older, religious emphasis on withdrawal from the world, while in practice he is an active Trecento humanist. See, for example, “Vita Activa versus Vita Contemplativa in Petrarch and Salutati,” 1982 by Paul A. Lombardo.” Italica, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 83-92. https://www.jstor.org/stable/479134.

Shakespeare’s play reflects a tension between the two competing visions of life that has persisted from long before and runs beyond Shakespeare’s time. Milton, after all, as Lombardo points out, was still exploring the two value systems in his youthful companion poems “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso.” In modern times, see Hanna Arendt’s The Life of the Mind, published posthumously in 1977-78.

[7] See Sidney, Sir Philip. “The Defence of Poesie,” 1580-81. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 9/3/2024.

[8] Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” See the third stanza. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8/2/2025. Readers familiar with John Keats’s poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” will remember the word-painting the poet gives us a vision of a work of art (an ancient Greek vase) that immortalizes human desire by immobilizing it in the material of the urn itself. The passion that the vase memorializes, he says, will remain forever beyond “All breathing human passion,” beyond all that “leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d.”

The artist has turned passion, it seems, into pure beauty, capturing it in the materiality of the vase, available to us in a brief act of contemplation. Keats is more than insightful enough to see that to preserve passion in exactly this way might be construed as essentially to kill it, as some people capture and kill, say, a butterfly to preserve its beautiful form beyond death.

We might argue that the highest value of the vase’s scenes of passion, then, is to serve as a spur to imagination and, thence, to the active pursuit of passion itself. King Ferdinand, however, seems to think he and his compatriots can simply isolate the passions not just for the few moments that aesthetic contemplation takes, but for three years, placing them in suspended animation while his band of noble scholars seek “pure” knowledge, knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

This seems a dubious proposition, to say the least. Humans simply don’t have that much control over their emotions, least of all over the strongest of all passions, love. This assertion leaves the play’s conclusion somewhat ambivalent, of course, since the women enforce a delay of one year before any unions will come to pass.

[9] See Ecclesiastes 12:12. Geneva Bible, 1599. Biblegateway.com. 9/3/2024.

[10] See Norton footnote 3, pg. 335 of current edition.

[11] Maimonides, Moses (or Rabbi Moses ben Maimon). The Guide for the Perplexed. Trans. M. Friedländer. London: Routledge, 1910. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 9/4/2024. In his Introduction’s “Prefatory Remarks,” Maimonides writes, “At times the truth shines so brilliantly that we perceive it as clear as day. Our nature and habit then draw a veil over our perception, and we return to a darkness almost as dense as before. We are like those who, though beholding frequent flashes of lightning, still find themselves in the thickest darkness of the night.”

He is addressing the expounding of certain principles in Natural Science and of metaphysics as well, but the remark may be instructive for any of the more sophisticated branches of knowledge. Maimonides also discusses the varying degrees to which (and even whether) these “flashes” come to particular individuals: there are “degrees in the perfection of men” with respect to the knowledge they can receive.

[12] See Ecclesiastes 3.1. Geneva Bible. Biblegateway.com. Accessed 9/3/2024.

[13] Again, Ian Malcolm gets the best lines in Jurassic Park.

[14] Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 743-97. See 761, 2.3.105-07.

[15] The term miles gloriosus comes from the title of a comedy by the Roman author Plautus. It means “braggart soldier.” See Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus. Perseus Digital Library. The name of the original braggart is Pyrgopolinices.

[16] Petrarch, noted above as an early Italian humanist scholar, was a great poet, too; by Shakespeare’s time, his style grounded in extremes of emotional experience had become so famous that it was easily parodied. See, for example, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun ….” Shakespeare, William. The Sonnets. In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 656-709. 700.

[17] Shakespeare’s speaker writes of his beloved in Sonnet 94, “They that have power to hurt, and will do none, / That do not do the thing they most do show, / … / … / They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces ….” Shakespeare, William. The Sonnets. In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 656-709. 688.

[18] As mentioned earlier in the Notes, there are many seemingly topical references in Love’s Labor’s Lost, but Shakespeare keeps these references vague enough so that the play is not weighted down with the turbulent background history involving Henri de Navarre.

[19] Even so, Biron speaks with admiration of Boyet’s wit and charm later in the play. See current Norton edition, 381, 5.2.322-23.

[20] As mentioned above, this kind of dispraise is in Shakespeare’s own anti-Petrarchan vein, as in the sonnet that begins, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun ….” Shakespeare, William. The Sonnets. In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 656-709. 700.

[21] There is a similar moment in As You Like It, where Jaques makes the same lament for a wounded deer. When Duke Senior admits that he thinks it unfair that deer should be killed in their own territory, Amiens tells him about Jaques’s grief over much the same thing. See 686, 2.1.21-43. In Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 673-731.

[22] Regarding love and the chase or hunt, Plato’s “Sophist,” for example, mentions “love” as one kind of pursuit for which this broad-ranging metaphor is useful. Ovid makes use of the motif of hunting in Metamorphosesand Ars Amatoria.

[23]See Lyly, John. Euphues. HathiTrust. Accessed 9/9/2024.

[24] Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 673-731. See 699, 3.2.40-42.

[25] An assistant to a vicar, rector, or parish priest.

[26] On Elizabethan and older faculty psychology, including the faculty of “imagination,” see Edward Dowden’s perceptive explanatory article titled “Elizabethan Psychology” in the September 1907 issue of The Atlantic. Accessed 9/9/2024.

[27] Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. 1621. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 7/31/2024. Accessed 9/7/2024. See the poem, “The Author’s Abstract of Melancholy, Διαλογῶς.”

[28] Once near the play’s outset, when he balked at signing the King’s rigorous terms for seclusion from women, another in 4.3 after reproaching himself for breaking his vow, and again a bit later in 4.3.

[29] Similar enraptured argumentation is discoverable in books such as Baldassare Castiglione’s The Courtier, trans. Thomas Hoby in 1561. HathiTrust. Accessed 9/7/2024. Thus Peter Bembo says at one point, “beleaue not … but beautie is alwayes good.”

[30] In his 1852 text The Idea of a University, the Victorian writer (and later Cardinal) John Henry Newman says much the same in defense of the value of education as something good in itself: “Good is not only good, but reproductive of good; this is one of its attributes; nothing is excellent, beautiful, perfect, desirable for its own sake, but it overflows, and spreads the likeness of itself all around it. Good is prolific …” (193). Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 9/9/2024.

[31] Shakespeare, William. The Comical History of The Merchant of Venice. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 467-521. See 490, 2.9.32.

[32] In this regard, just in the English context, it’s worth mentioning William Lily of grammar book fame. See his Short intro. of grammar… 1673 ed. Early English Books Online (EEBO) and U-Mich. One of the era’s well-known educators was Thomas Elyot. See his Book Named the Governor. HathiTrust.

[33] The current Norton edition footnote 8 for pg. 372 introduces the medieval chivalric Nine Worthies tradition.

[34] On the stage directions at this point (377, 5.2.156 dir.), see “Puzzling through a Stage Direction in Love’s Labor’s Lost.” Folger Shakespeare Library blog, Feb. 2024 by Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich. Accessed 9/9/2024.

[35] The rhyme scheme goes, “ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KK.”

[36] Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 406-53. See the Pyramus and Thisbe play within the play, 446-450, 5.1.108-341.

[37] Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 406-53. See 438, 3.2.461-63 and 439, 4.1.67.

Commentaries onShakespeare’s Comedies

ACT 1

ACT 2

ACT 3

ACT 4

ACT 5

ENDNOTES

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Comedies