Shakespeare\u2019s Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost Commentary A. J. Drake, Ph.D.<\/title><meta name= \"description\" content= \"Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost commentary addresses major themes, major characters such as Berowne, Longaville, Jaquenetta, Armado, literary analysis, drama theory.\"><\/head><\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Commentaries on Shakespeare’s Comedies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-4f6cdd05 uag-hide-mob\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-dcba7b2a wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">HOME<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div 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target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">GUIDES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-d5da63d7 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/shakespeare-links\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">LINKS<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-19d28286\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-69502be5 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act1\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 1<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0ec42142 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act2\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 2<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-6ac70dcb wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act3\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 3<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-bfd6ecc9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act4\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 4<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-55716ff6 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act5\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 5<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0246bad9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#endnotes\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ENDNOTES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nShakespeare, William. Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost.<\/em> Folio. (The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 333-94).<\/p>\n\n\n\nOf Interest:<\/strong>\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rsc.org.uk\/loves-labours-lost\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">RSC Resources<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/Library\/Texts\/LLL\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ISE Resources<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakespeare-online.com\/sources\/lllsources.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">S-O Sources<\/a>\u00a0| <a href=\"https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/explore\/shakespeare-in-print\/first-folio\/bookreader-68\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1623 Folio 142-64 (Folger)<\/a>| <a href=\"https:\/\/name.umdl.umich.edu\/A33253.0001.001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gesta Grayorum<\/em> 1594\/1688; see 43-46, 52-53<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/explore\/shakespeares-works\/loves-labors-lost\/reading-shakespeares-language-loves-labors-lost\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Reading Shakespeare’s Language: Love’s Labor’s Lost (Folger Blog)<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act1\">ACT 1<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 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\u2019s order to stay away from women.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nFerdinand, King of Navarre tells the members of his hoped-for \u201cacademe\u201d 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, \u201cNavarre shall be the wonder of the world; \/ Our court shall be a little academe, \/ Still and contemplative in living art\u201d (334, 1.1.12-14). They will reopen sessions at Plato\u2019s sacred grove of learning, so to speak, right here in Navarre, and attain the learning that is to be had by such dedicated study. <a href=\"#_edn1\" id=\"_ednref1\">[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat, we must ask, are the rules <\/em>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for the concept of academe, those who take part in Plato\u2019s delightful discussions about all sorts of philosophical subjects, including the nature of love<\/em> (in The Symposium<\/em>) and its role in life, are by no means hermetically sealed off from the rest of life. Most of Plato\u2019s 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, <a href=\"#_edn2\" id=\"_ednref2\">[2]<\/a> for example, were certainly what we would describe as \u201cread into\u201d the political, military, and commercial affairs of Athens\u2014they were not hermits, and would not have thought of learning as something one does in isolation from the rest of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDumaine and Longueville have no trouble signing their contracts, but Biron\u2019s protest strikes wittily at what seems to be the King\u2019s 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 \u201clive and study here three years\u201d (334, 1.1.35), not avoid females, food, or adequate sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt is Biron who first asks the purpose of such a learning project as the King proposes: \u201cWhat is the end of study? Let me know\u201d (334, 1.1.55), he asks, and the King\u2019s answer\u2014not a very impressive one, really\u2014is \u201cthat to know which else we should not know\u201d (334, 1.1.56). This barren formula gives Biron a chance <a href=\"#_edn3\" id=\"_ednref3\">[3]<\/a> to introduce some common sense into the scheme. He rejects the abstemious, high-sounding program put forth by King Ferdinand.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAgainst the King\u2019s scheme, Biron asserts the force of Jeff Goldblum\u2019s Dr. Ian Malcolm, the cool \u201cchaos theorist\u201d of Jurassic Park <\/em>fame, who upbraids the suits around him by pointing out, \u201cYour scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn\u2019t stop to think if they should.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn4\" id=\"_ednref4\">[4]<\/a> 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 <\/em>he do that? <a href=\"#_edn5\" id=\"_ednref5\">[5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nIndeed, the early modern humanist conception of the vita contemplativa,<\/em> <a href=\"#_edn6\" id=\"_ednref6\">[6]<\/a>the retired or scholarly life, was not usually intended to deny the broader link between learning and necessary action in the world. \u201cThe aim of well knowing,\u201d wrote the learned\u2014and very active\u2014courtier, poet, and soldier Sir Philip Sidney, is \u201cwell doing.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn7\" id=\"_ednref7\">[7]<\/a> 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\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost <\/em>introduce and explore. <a href=\"#_edn8\" id=\"_ednref8\">[8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nBiron\u2019s 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, \u201cthere is none end in making many books, and much reading is a weariness of the flesh.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn9\" id=\"_ednref9\">[9]<\/a> At some point or another, every learner on earth has said or thought something of the sort. Biron counters the King\u2019s 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. <a href=\"#_edn10\" id=\"_ednref10\">[10]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat best excites the desire for truth? Why, says Biron, it\u2019s the dazzling eyes of one\u2019s lady: the lover\u2019s eye should, he says, look upon \u201ca fairer eye, \/ Who, dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, \/ And give him light that it [his own eye] was blinded by\u201d (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\u2019s conception of learning as a series of lightning flashes, each of which leaves us again in a state of darkness, <a href=\"#_edn11\" id=\"_ednref11\">[11]<\/a> over Ferdinand\u2019s determined, steady model of accumulation and aggregation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen 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 \u201clike of each thing that in season grows\u201d (336, 1.1.107). Again, Ecclesiastes <\/em>may be the inspiration here: \u201cTo all things there is<\/em> an appointed time, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn12\" id=\"_ednref12\">[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nOddly, though, it is Biron himself who introduces the notion that the King\u2019s scheme is penitential in nature: \u201cYet confident I\u2019ll keep what I have sworn, \/ And bide the penance of each three years\u2019 day\u201d (336, 1.1.114-15). He has signed on at last, and in spite of his supposedly principled opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWell, to borrow another famous line from everyone\u2019s favorite dinosaur movie, \u201cLife finds a way.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn13\" id=\"_ednref13\">[13]<\/a> 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\u2019s time for some negotiations to take place. So much, then, for the noblemen of Navarre\u2019s 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 \u201con mere necessity\u201d (336, 1.1.147).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn any case, we (meaning the soon-to-be members of Ferdinand\u2019s \u201cacademe\u201d and the audience) want to know from the King of Navarre what Sir Toby Belch, in Twelfth Night, <\/em>wants to know from the Puritanical steward Malvolio: \u201cDost thou think because thou art virtuous, \/ there shall be no more cakes and ale?\u201d <a href=\"#_edn14\" id=\"_ednref14\">[14]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe King answers in his sonnet-laced response that, for fun\u2014cakes and ale, in Sir Toby\u2019s terms\u2014there will be one Don Adriano de Armado, whom the King calls \u201ca refin\u00e8d traveler of Spain, \/ A man in all the world\u2019s new fashion planted \u2026\u201d (337, 1.1.161-62). A truer description would be \u201cbraggart soldier,\u201d or miles gloriosus, <\/em>as such a character was called in ancient Roman comedy. <a href=\"#_edn15\" id=\"_ednref15\">[15]<\/a> And for more rustic entertainment, there\u2019s always Costard.<\/p>\n\n\n\nArmado makes his entrance via a letter accusing Costard of accosting Jaquenetta, a \u201ccountry wench,\u201d as she\u2019s called in the play\u2019s dramatis personae,<\/em> and from it we can see why the King finds him such an easy mark for \u201cminstrelsy\u201d (entertainment). The letter is as good an instance of fustian as may be found\u2014full of ridiculous phrases and overblown expressions.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe do, however, get one interesting thing from Armado\u2019s letter, which is that one of King Ferdinand\u2019s rules for his own society must have been extended at some point to all the men in his kingdom: any man who is \u201ctaken \/ with a wench\u201d (339, 1.1.271-72) becomes liable to up to one year\u2019s imprisonment. Harsh! But at least for Costard the King shortens the penalty to one week of fasting with only \u201cbran and water\u201d to eat (339, 1.1.282).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBiron scoffs that no one is going to obey laws like that. Rulers may be able to reroute the individual\u2019s libido for wider social and political purposes, but it can\u2019t simply be suppressed or abolished.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 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\u2019s order about avoiding women.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nHere 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 \u201cspeck\u201d) proves himself to be far more clever than his employer. Mote not only more than amply parries Armado\u2019s halting jests but engages in witty aside-slinging that brings us, the audience, into the fun at Armado\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat Mote does right away is expose the Spaniard miles gloriosus <\/em>or \u201cbraggart soldier\u201d as not so much a man of action as an incompetent wordmonger\u2014he even calls his employer (to us) a \u201ccipher\u201d 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\u2014some reference to \u201cmen of good \/ repute and carriage\u201d (341, 1.2.63-64) to justify and exalt this feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMote presents Armado with the figures of Hercules and Samson, and at once surreptitiously undercuts the comparisons by changing the connotation of the word \u201ccarriage\u201d: \u201cSamson \u2026 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\u201d (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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMote\u2019s quatrains on Jaquenetta\u2019s color are also excellent. Armado says that she is \u201cmost immaculate white and red\u201d (341, 1.2.82), but the clever page rhymes out the trouble with this Petrarchan <a href=\"#_edn16\" id=\"_ednref16\">[16]<\/a> claim: \u201cIf she be made of white and red, \/ Her faults will ne\u2019er be known, \/ For blushing cheeks by faults are bred, \/ And fears by pale white shown\u201d (341, 1.2.89-92). If Armado were literally correct in his description, Jaquenetta\u2019s 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\u2019s face.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFinally, 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, \u201cThat went well!\u201d 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 \u201cevil angel\u201d (343, 1.2.155).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat to do? The only hope of amelioration, thinks Armado, is pen and paper, and cries out, \u201cAssist me, some extempo- \/ ral god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet\u201d (343, 1.2.163-64).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act2\">ACT 2<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 1 (343-49, The French Princess and her entourage of ladies arrive at Navarre; the King welcomes them but won\u2019t allow them entrance to his court\u2014they will, he insists, need to room in some tents out in the fields; the King\u2019s lords take an interest in particular ladies who accompany the Princess.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAs the Princess of France and her attendants gather outside the gates of King Ferdinand\u2019s 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 \u201cof no less weight than Aquitaine\u2014a dowry for a queen\u201d (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 \u201cOn serious business, craving quick dispatch\u201d (344, 2.1.31) and bring back his response.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Princess doesn\u2019t 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 \u201cdiplomatic relations\u201d must be established. While she is waiting, she takes in the reports her ladies can give of the men in that society.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMaria is familiar with Longueville, who, she says, is \u201cA man of sovereign parts\u201d 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\u2014men who have \u201cMost power to do most harm, least knowing ill \u2026\u201d (344, 2.1.58), are something of a question mark, and we don\u2019t know if we are ultimately to think well of them. <a href=\"#_edn17\" id=\"_ednref17\">[17]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAs 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBoyet soon returns with disconcerting\u2014some would say insulting\u2014news: he tells the Princess, \u201cHe 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\u201d (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 \u201cwelcome to the wide fields\u201d (345, 2.1.94) instead of inside his court.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe 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\u2019t willingly break his oath, \u201cWhy, will shall break it\u2014will, and nothing else\u201d (345, 2.1.100). As the Norton marginal note suggests, the word \u201cwill\u201d often means \u201csexual desire.\u201d The Princess\u2019s subsequent words suggest that she is not certain whether he<\/em> knows this or not, but in any event, she seems aware that behind this whole \u201cscholar scheme\u201d is probably no small amount of fear of women as fully autonomous, sexual beings.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe competition of wit between Rosaline and Biron carries on with this line of thinking. Biron tries to make small talk, asking her, \u201cDid not I dance with you in Brabant once?\u201d He must be surprised to receive in response, \u201cDid not I dance with you in Brabant once?\u201d When Biron admits, \u201cI know you did,\u201d Rosaline comes back with \u201cHow needless was it, then, \/ To ask the question!\u201d (346, 2.1.114-18) She has deftly exposed the egocentrism underlying the \u201cI-form\u201d of Biron\u2019s question\u2014why didn\u2019t he just ask, \u201cDid we not dance in Brabant once?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for the substance of the negotiations over Aquitaine, both the King of Navarre and the Princess\u2019s 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. <a href=\"#_edn18\" id=\"_ednref18\">[18]<\/a> The King of France claims he issued a payment of 100,000 crowns to Ferdinand, but Boyet can\u2019t, at present, produce the receipt for that supposed payment, so the claim must await confirmation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe King of Navarre\u2019s firm pronouncement about the ladies\u2019 lodgings cannot be pleasing to them: \u201cYou 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\u201d (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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBoyet is tasked by the noble scholars with providing them information about the Princess\u2019s 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 \u201caffected\u201d (348, 2.1.231) with her. <\/em>Ferdinand\u2019s eyes and words may not have been aligned well enough to express his affection, suggests Boyet, but no matter that: he is in love.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHe counsels the Princess to use her charm the better to accomplish her diplomatic mission over the all-important Aquitaine: \u201cI\u2019ll give you Aquitaine and all that is his, \/ An you give him, for my sake, but one loving kiss\u201d (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. <a href=\"#_edn19\" id=\"_ednref19\">[19]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act3\">ACT 3<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 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.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMuch of the wit-parrying in this short \u201csetup\u201d 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 repart\u00e9e.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCostard 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 \u201cremuneration,\u201d 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 <\/em>letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeft alone, Biron is astonished at the circumstances in which he now finds himself. He, who saw himself as \u201ca very beadle\u201d (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, \u201cA 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\u201d (353, 3.1.182-85). <a href=\"#_edn20\" id=\"_ednref20\">[20]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nBiron rails at Cupid and even at the woman who has caught his attention, but in truth he knows there\u2019s 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\u2019t change the fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act4\">ACT 4<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 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\u2019s letter for Jaquenetta, not Biron\u2019s letter for Rosaline.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nOut on a deer-hunt in the King\u2019s 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 \u201cmay make the fairest shoot\u201d (354, 4.1.10). She professes to take this advice as praise of her fairness, or beauty, and he is forced to say, \u201cI meant not so\u201d (354, 4.1.13), whereupon she feigns to believe herself slighted when the alleged compliment is taken back.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNext, the Princess professes to be sorry for the deer she may be about to kill: \u201cI for praise alone now seek to spill \/ The poor deer\u2019s blood, that my heart means no ill\u201d (354, 4.1.34-35). <a href=\"#_edn21\" id=\"_ednref21\">[21]<\/a> This could plausibly be taken as partly spoken from self-concern since from the time of the ancients, \u201cthe hunt\u201d has often been cast as a figure for love pursuits, <a href=\"#_edn22\" id=\"_ednref22\">[22]<\/a> and the Princess finds herself being pursued by the King of Navarre.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOf course, the roles are sometimes reversed, as in the famous tale of Actaeon being hunted down by the chaste goddess Diana\u2019s hounds. Perhaps that is the Princess\u2019s meaning in playing with the \u201chunt\u201d 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, \u201cpraise we may afford \/ To any lady that subdues a lord\u201d (354, 4.1.39-40).<\/p>\n\n\n\nSoon, Costard enters and gives Armado\u2019s 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\u2019s pomposity and strange turns of phrase, obsessive definitions, and so forth\u2014it sounds a bit like a bad attempt to emulate John Lyly\u2019s elaborate prose in Euphues. <\/em><a href=\"#_edn23\" id=\"_ednref23\">[23]<\/a> Oddest of all is Armado\u2019s pretense that he is doing Jaquenetta a great favor by condescending to notice her and pursue her: the very opposite of savvy courtship.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen 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\u2019s letter to Rosaline and says, \u201c\u2019Twill be thine another day\u201d (356, 4.1.107). The Norton gloss on this expression has it as meaning, \u201cYour turn will come,\u201d but it could also mean, \u201cYou\u2019ll get a letter soon, and it will be much the same as this silly letter by Armado.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe 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\u2019s no accounting for taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis punning episode makes for an odd premonition of what Corin the Shepherd will say to the Fool Touchstone in As You Like It: <\/em>\u201cthose 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.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn24\" id=\"_ednref24\">[24]<\/a> In the present case, though, both sides have a good claim to \u201cmockable\u201d status. This will become increasingly clear when we hear the noblemen\u2019s verse efforts to impress the Princess and her ladies.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 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\u2019s letter for Rosaline, and are encouraged to deliver this letter to the King.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nHolofernes the scholar and Nathaniel the curate <a href=\"#_edn25\" id=\"_ednref25\">[25]<\/a> 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, \u201cHis intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal\u2014only \/ sensible in the duller parts\u201d (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\u2019s age.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHolofernes offers a sampling of his alleged wit, which begins, \u201cThe preyful Princess pierced and pricked a pretty pleasing \/ pricket \u2026\u201d (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 \u201cgift,\u201d which he declares is \u201ca 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, <\/em>and delivered upon the mellowing of \/ occasion\u201d (359, 4.2.60-65).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt is by no means certain that Holofernes is describing anything more than a normal imagination, understood in Shakespeare\u2019s time as a combinatory faculty rather than a godlike creative power, as it was for the English Romantics a few centuries later. <a href=\"#_edn26\" id=\"_ednref26\">[26]<\/a> In any case, the pedant seems pleased with himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn come Costard and Jaquenetta, bearing what they mistakenly think is Armado\u2019s letter to her. Once again, a private letter is aired in public, before the wrong hearers: what Nathaniel reads out is Biron\u2019s letter to Rosaline. Part of the English sonnet bears a clear relation to Biron\u2019s remarks at the beginning of Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost, <\/em>with its insistence that with respect to his intended lover, \u201cIf knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice\u201d (360, 4.2.104). We will hear more of this Neoplatonist-tending philosophy in a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHolofernes doesn\u2019t think much of Biron\u2019s sonnet as verse, saying, \u201cHere are only numbers ratified, but for the elegancy, \/ Facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret<\/em>\u201d (360, 4.2.114-15). It\u2019s technically proficient, he suggests, but that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHolofernes 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\u2019s sonnet as \u201cvery unlearned, \/ neither savoring of poetry, wit, nor invention\u201d (361, 4.2.148-49). Holofernes is a critic who loves an audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 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.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe scene begins with Biron reproaching himself for having fallen into a passion for Rosaline: he laments, \u201cBy heaven, I do love, and it \/ hath taught me to rhyme and to be melancholy \u2026\u201d (361-62, 4.3.10-11). Moreover, he thinks, Rosaline must already have his letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere is a hint in Biron\u2019s words that his melancholia is not altogether unwelcome to him, and we may be reminded of Robert Burton\u2019s lengthy treatise on that subject, Anatomy of Melancholy. <\/em>A brief poem in that text goes back and forth on the pleasures and pains of melancholia: \u201cAll my joys to this are folly, \/ Naught so sweet as melancholy,\u201d and so forth. <a href=\"#_edn27\" id=\"_ednref27\">[27]<\/a> This much is evident from Biron\u2019s admission, \u201cBy the world, I \/ would not care a pin if the other three were in\u201d (362, 4.3.15-16). In love, that is, just as he is.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJust then, Biron\u2019s 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\u2019s extended sonnet (it ends with a pair of rhyming couplets) out-Petrarchs Petrarch: \u201cO Queen of queens, how far dost thou excel, \/ No thought can think, nor tongue of mortal tell\u201d (362, 4.3.36-37).<\/p>\n\n\n\nNext, 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 \u201ca goddess\u201d and takes up an attitude of \u201cSorry, not sorry\u201d on the issue of guilt for breaking his vow (363, 4.3.60; see 66-68). Biron, from his perch, exclaims to himself, \u201cPure, pure idolatry!\u201d (363, 4.3.70)<\/p>\n\n\n\nDumaine\u2019s 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 \u201cthe King, Biron, and Longueville \/ Were lovers too!\u201d (364, 4.3.118-19) He would be content to board such a ship of fools.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSuddenly, Longueville steps forth and denounces Dumaine for making such a wish, which he says is \u201cfar from charity\u201d (364, 4.3.122). The King then comes forward and berates Longueville for castigating Dumaine: he says, \u201cI heard your guilty rhymes, observed your fashion, \/ Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion \u2026\u201d (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\u2019s chagrin. What would Biron <\/em>think, asks the King?<\/p>\n\n\n\nJust then, Biron steps into the limelight, and dares reproach the King himself for transgressing against his vow. Nor does he spare the other two: \u201cBut are you not ashamed? Nay, are you not, \/ All three of you, to be thus much o\u2019ershot?\u201d (365, 4.3.154-55)<\/p>\n\n\n\nBiron keeps talking as if he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is a convenient time for Biron to invoke human nature by way of an excuse: \u201cSweet lords, sweet lovers\u2014oh, let us embrace! \/ As true we are as flesh and blood can be,\u201d he says, and then \u201cWe cannot cross the cause why we are born; \/ Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn\u201d (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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBiron 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: \u201cIs ebony like her? Oh, word divine! \/ A wife of such wood were felicity\u201d (367, 4.3.242-43). Thus, and much more of the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe lovers soon look to Biron to make them feel better, give them some \u201csalve for perjury,\u201d as Dumaine phrases the request (368, 4.3.283). Biron is ready for this request since all he needs to do is reinvoke\u2014for the third time <a href=\"#_edn28\" id=\"_ednref28\">[28]<\/a> \u2014his Neoplatonist-friendly assertion that passion is the ground of all excellence when it comes to worthy pursuits. He asks the men around him, \u201cwhen would you , my lord, or you, or you, \/ Have found the ground of study\u2019s excellence \/ Without the beauty of a woman\u2019s face? \/ From women\u2019s eyes this doctrine I derive \u2026\u201d (368, 4.3.293-96). <a href=\"#_edn29\" id=\"_ednref29\">[29]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nLove, Biron goes on to say, when \u201cfirst learned in a lady\u2019s eyes,\u201d does not remain an isolated feeling within, but \u201cCourses as swift as thought in every power, \/ And gives to every power a double power, \/ Above their functions and their offices\u201d (369, 4.3.325-27). Love, that is, quickens the lover\u2019s 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. <a href=\"#_edn30\" id=\"_ednref30\">[30]<\/a> From here, Biron easily proceeds to a sweeping, almost religious proclamation: \u201cLet us once lose our oaths to find ourselves \u2026\u201d (369, 4.3.356).<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerhaps not surprisingly, Biron\u2019s passionate philosophical defense of embodied love falls flat, and Longueville suggests that it\u2019s time to \u201clay these glozes by\u201d (370, 4.3.365) and get right to the wooing. And, the King adds, to the winning.<\/em> 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: \u201cin their tents\u201d (370, 4.3.368). The King would begin his pursuit still within the framework of his all-male society of scholars\u2014at least for the time being, that hasn\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat all this suggests is that the King, Longueville, and Dumaine have not taken Biron\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd 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 \u201cboys\u2019 network.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nEven so, these women\u2014the Princess and her entourage\u2014have 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act5\">ACT 5<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 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.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nHolofernes and Nathaniel have a conversation with each other about Armado, and while Nathaniel asks Holofernes about Armado\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201cgeneral behavior\u201d is \u201cvain, \/ ridiculous, and thrasonical,\u201d or boastful, as the Norton marginal note says. (370, 5.1.11-12)<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis critique may be on point, but it\u2019s 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 <\/em>\u201cthe barbarous multitudes.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn31\" id=\"_ednref31\">[31]<\/a> At the apparently easily disregarded expense of comprehensibility, it creates an exoskeleton of mystery around the speaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Mote the Page explains to Costard when they enter along with Armado, Holofernes and Nathaniel \u201chave been at a great feast of lan- \/ guages and stolen the scraps\u201d (371, 5.1.35-36). Mote also mocks Holofernes\u2019s skills as a pedagogue or teacher of children, saying, \u201che 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\u2019s time. <a href=\"#_edn32\" id=\"_ednref32\">[32]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAll 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\u2019re aiming to become?<\/p>\n\n\n\nAside 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\u2019 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 \u201cThe Nine Worthies\u201d <a href=\"#_edn33\" id=\"_ednref33\">[33]<\/a> \u2014that is, a fictive parade of world-famous heroes such as Hercules, Hector, and others of that illustrious stamp. Holofernes apportions the roles\u2014in the event, only five will be presented, not nine\u2014and all is set.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 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\u2019ve 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. \n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/span><span title='' data-less-title='' data-more-title='' class='yrm-toggle-expand yrm-toggle-expand-1' data-rel='yrm-ZyiO5' data-more='(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)' data-less='READ LESS' style='border: none; width: 100%;'>(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)<\/span><\/span><\/span>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.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nGifts 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\u2019s observation that \u201cNone are so surely caught, when they are catched, \/ As wit turned fool\u201d (375, 5.2.69-70).<\/p>\n\n\n\nSoon, however, Boyet arrives to announce that they will have company, saying \u201cEncounters mounted are \/ Against your peace\u201d (375, 5.2.82-83). Their plan, he explains, is to dress like \u201cMuscovites or Russians,\u201d and \u201cto parley, to court, and dance, \/ And every one his love-suit will advance \/ Unto his several mistress, which they\u2019ll know \/ By favors several which they did bestow\u201d (376, 5.2.121-25).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Princess at once figures out a way to frustrate these impostors, simply by masking and exchanging the \u201cfavors\u201d or gifts they each have received. What\u2019s the reason for this foiling operation? At first she says, \u201cThey do it but in mocking merriment, \/ And mock for mock is only my intent\u201d (376, 5.2.139-40). Soon, however, she fills in this justification somewhat: \u201cThere\u2019s no such sport as sport by sport o\u2019erthrown, \/ 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\u201d (377, 5.2.153-56).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Princess\u2019s 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.<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWell, let the Russian dancing and parleying begin. The stage directions proclaim, \u201cEnter Black[a]moors with music\u201d (377, 5.2.156 dir.), probably meaning some European musicians made up in blackface. <a href=\"#_edn34\" id=\"_ednref34\">[34]<\/a> Mote the Page steps forth to give the prologue, and is immediately confounded by Boyet’s quips and the ladies\u2019 refusal to play along, so he ends up exiting the stage, abashed.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere follows a bit of word-and-wit wrangling by the \u201cRussians\u201d 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\u2019s jests are hitting home: \u201cThe tongues of mocking wenches are as keen \/ As is the razor\u2019s edge\u2014invisible, \/ Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen\u201d (379, 5.2.257-59).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe 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: \u201cLet\u2019s mock them still,\u201d she says, \u201cas well known as disguised\u201d (381, 5.2.302).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen the King and his lords return, this time without their Russian disguises, an interesting moment occurs when Biron, the wittiest of Ferdinand\u2019s set, feels compelled to notice Boyet\u2019s evident skills as a wit and ladies\u2019 man: \u201cThis gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve; \/ Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve!\u201d (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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe King has what he considers a serious announcement to make, which is, \u201cWe came to visit you, and purpose now \/ To lead you to our court\u201d (382, 5.2.344). But the Princess\u2019s apparently earnest reply is, \u201cThis field shall hold me, and so hold your vow. \/ Nor God nor I delights in perjured men\u201d (382, 5.2.346-47).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is a reminder to the men that they tend to engage in excessive oath-making and then to treat the vows they\u2019ve issued with something less than the steadfastness they promised: this is part of the \u201cboys\u2019 network\u201d effect mentioned earlier in this commentary. The Princess\u2019s 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\u2019s society into separate groupings of male and female.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOnce their \u201cRussia Hoax\u201d is exposed, the men are abashed. Biron even promises to reform his language, though he does so in extended sonnet form, <a href=\"#_edn35\" id=\"_ednref35\">[35]<\/a> \u2014quite a performance\u2014part of which runs, \u201cOh, never will I trust to speeches penned, \/ Nor to the motion of a schoolboy\u2019s tongue, \/ Nor never come in visor to my friend, \/ Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper\u2019s song\u201d (383, 5.2.403-06). Rosaline is right not to put much stock in this compromised declaration.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBiron\u2019s 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 \u201clanguage deployed for self-serving purposes.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe men\u2019s discomfort over their exposure is soon pushed aside in favor of \u201cThe Nine Worthies,\u201d 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.<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUnfortunately for the production, so much razzing comes from the noble audience\u2014and it\u2019s much ruder than the gentle jokes and literary criticism aimed by the lords and ladies at the humble crew of Pyramus and Thisbe<\/em> in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em>\u2014 <a href=\"#_edn36\" id=\"_ednref36\">[36]<\/a> that things don\u2019t 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, \u201cThis is not generous, not gentle, not humble\u201d (388, 5.2.623).<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMarcad\u00e9 enters with the news that the Princess\u2019s 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\u2019s sorrow, and they lamely try to continue their love pursuits, with Biron even complaining, \u201cFor 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 oppos\u00e8d end of our intents \u2026\u201d (391, 5.2.741-44).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBiron, then, is back to blaming the women for his own and his fellow noblemen\u2019s faulty behavior. The Queen\u2019s response to all this whining and blame-shifting is that she and her ladies have \u201cmet your loves \/ In their own fashion, like a merriment\u201d (391, 5.2.770).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThat 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe King of Navarre is the first to find out how he can make amends to the newly named Queen of France: he must \u201cgo with speed \/ To some forlorn and naked hermitage, \/ Remote from all the pleasures of the world\u201d (392, 5.2.780-82). There he is to lead the silent, serious life of a hermit. If this \u201caustere insociable life\u201d (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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nKatherine 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\u2019s inventiveness he has a different trial to undergo: he must for a twelvemonth \u201cVisit the speechless sick and still converse \/ With groaning wretches \u2026\u201d (393, 5.2.837-38), all with the intention of making them smile and laugh at his wit. This is because, says Rosaline, \u201cA jest\u2019s prosperity lies in the ear \/ Of him that hears it, never in the tongue \/ Of him that makes it\u201d (393, 5.2.848-49).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBiron is not off the mark when he says, \u201cOur wooing doth not end like an old play: \/ Jack hath not Jill. These ladies\u2019 courtesy \/ Might well have made our sport a comedy\u201d (393, 5.2.860-62). In a comedy such as A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream, <\/em>for all its \u201cfierce vexation\u201d in the fairy-haunted forest, Puck is able to say, \u201cJack shall have Jill, \/ Naught shall go ill, \/ The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn37\" id=\"_ednref37\">[37]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nLove\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost <\/em>is an elegant, experimental play whose aim, in part, seems to be to explore and evaluate the era\u2019s love conventions, in particular its reliance on sonneteering and other flights of poetical fancy, on \u201cwit,\u201d 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nArmado 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 \u201cThe words of Mercury are harsh \/ After the songs of Apollo. \/ You that way; we this way\u201d (394, 5.2.934-36).<\/p>\n\n\n\nEdition.<\/strong>\u00a0Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors.\u00a0The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies + Digital Edition. <\/em>3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13:\u00a0978-0-393-93861-6.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2025 Alfred J. Drake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDocument Timestamp: 12\/11\/2025 7:17 AM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"endnotes\">ENDNOTES<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n*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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref1\" id=\"_edn1\">[1]<\/a> See the current Norton edition\u2019s 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 \u201cembassy of reconciliation\u201d that included negotiations over Aquitaine. The negotiations did not go well, and contemporaries blamed the breakdown for a restarting of France\u2019s Protestant vs. Catholic violence in the third and fourth quarters of the sixteenth century. Some of Shakespeare\u2019s audience members may have been familiar with this history, even though it is not directly incorporated. See also \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/ER1995-v3-1A-Londre_Eliza-Views-LLL.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Elizabethan Views of the \u2018Other\u2019: French, Spanish, and Russians in Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u201d Felicia Londre. Elizabethan Review <\/em>Spring-Summer 1995, Volume 3, Number 1. Additionally, see the American Shakespeare Center\u2019s July 2017 post \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/americanshakespearecenter.com\/2017\/07\/the-dark-side-of-loves-labours-lost\/#:~:text=The%20most%20interesting%20interpretation%20of,the%20Princess%20of%20France\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Dark Side of Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref2\" id=\"_edn2\">[2]<\/a> See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/Alcibiades-Athenian-politician-and-general\">Alcibiades<\/a> (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\u2019t demand that they leave the world behind altogether. See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/Socrates\">Socrates<\/a> (Britannica.com, accessed 9\/3\/2024).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref3\" id=\"_edn3\">[3]<\/a> As the Norton editors\u2019 footnote 9 for pg. 335 suggests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref4\" id=\"_edn4\">[4]<\/a> See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0107290\/\">Jurassic Park<\/em><\/a>, 1993. Dir. Steven Spielberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref5\" id=\"_edn5\">[5]<\/a> We should recall that poet-kings such as Richard II and magical dukes like Prospero in The Tempest <\/em>run into serious headwinds when they neglect their worldly responsibilities for a life of art and learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref6\" id=\"_edn6\">[6]<\/a> The debate over whether the vita activa<\/em> or the vita contemplativa<\/em> 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,<\/em> et al.) and early modern eras with Italian civic humanism. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWithin 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, \u201cVita Activa versus Vita Contemplativa in Petrarch and Salutati,\u201d 1982 by Paul A. Lombardo.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/journal\/italica\">Italica<\/em><\/a>, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 83-92. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/479134\">https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/479134<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nShakespeare\u2019s play reflects a tension between the two competing visions of life that has persisted from long before and runs beyond Shakespeare\u2019s time. Milton, after all, as Lombardo points out, was still exploring the two value systems in his youthful companion poems \u201cL\u2019Allegro\u201d and \u201cIl Penseroso.\u201d In modern times, see Hanna Arendt\u2019s The Life of the Mind, <\/em>published posthumously in 1977-78.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref7\" id=\"_edn7\">[7]<\/a> See Sidney, Sir Philip. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/1962\/1962-h\/1962-h.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Defence of Poesie<\/a>,\u201d 1580-81. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 9\/3\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref8\" id=\"_edn8\">[8]<\/a> Keats, John. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/23684\/23684-h\/23684-h.htm#Page_113\">Ode on a Grecian Urn<\/a>.\u201d See the third stanza. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8\/2\/2025. Readers familiar with John Keats\u2019s poem \u201cOde on a Grecian Urn\u201d 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 \u201cAll breathing human passion,\u201d beyond all that \u201cleaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe might argue that the highest value of the vase\u2019s 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,<\/em> placing them in suspended animation while his band of noble scholars seek \u201cpure\u201d knowledge, knowledge for the sake of knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis seems a dubious proposition, to say the least. Humans simply don\u2019t have that much control over their emotions, least of all over the strongest of all passions, love. This assertion leaves the play\u2019s conclusion somewhat ambivalent, of course, since the women enforce a delay of one year before any unions will come to pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref9\" id=\"_edn9\">[9]<\/a> See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Ecclesiastes%2012&version=GNV\">Ecclesiastes<\/em> 12:12<\/a>. Geneva Bible, 1599. Biblegateway.com. 9\/3\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref10\" id=\"_edn10\">[10]<\/a> See Norton footnote 3, pg. 335 of current edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref11\" id=\"_edn11\">[11]<\/a> Maimonides, Moses (or Rabbi Moses ben Maimon). <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/73584\/pg73584-images.html\">The Guide for the Perplexed<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Trans. M. Friedl\u00e4nder. London: Routledge, 1910. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 9\/4\/2024. In his Introduction\u2019s \u201cPrefatory Remarks,\u201d Maimonides writes, \u201cAt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nHe 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 \u201cflashes\u201d come to particular individuals: there are \u201cdegrees in the perfection of men\u201d with respect to the knowledge they can receive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref12\" id=\"_edn12\">[12]<\/a> See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Ecclesiastes%203%3A1-3&version=GNV\">Ecclesiastes <\/em>3.1<\/a>. Geneva Bible. Biblegateway.com. Accessed 9\/3\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref13\" id=\"_edn13\">[13]<\/a> Again, Ian Malcolm gets the best lines in Jurassic Park.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref14\" id=\"_edn14\">[14]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 743-97. See 761, 2.3.105-07.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref15\" id=\"_edn15\">[15]<\/a> The term miles gloriosus<\/em> comes from the title of a comedy by the Roman author Plautus. It means \u201cbraggart soldier.\u201d See Plautus\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0103%3Aact%3Dintro%3Ascene%3Dsubject\">Miles Gloriosus<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Perseus Digital Library. The name of the original braggart is Pyrgopolinices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref16\" id=\"_edn16\">[16]<\/a> Petrarch, noted above as an early Italian humanist scholar, was a great poet, too; by Shakespeare\u2019s time, his style grounded in extremes of emotional experience had become so famous that it was easily parodied. See, for example, Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 130, \u201cMy mistress\u2019 eyes are nothing like the sun \u2026.\u201d Shakespeare, William. The Sonnets.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems,<\/em> 3rd ed. 656-709. 700.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref17\" id=\"_edn17\">[17]<\/a> Shakespeare\u2019s speaker writes of his beloved in Sonnet 94, \u201cThey that have power to hurt, and will do none, \/ That do not do the thing they most do show, \/ \u2026 \/ \u2026 \/ They rightly do inherit heaven\u2019s graces \u2026.\u201d Shakespeare, William. The Sonnets.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems,<\/em> 3rd ed. 656-709. 688.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref18\" id=\"_edn18\">[18]<\/a> As mentioned earlier in the Notes, there are many seemingly topical references in Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost,<\/em> but Shakespeare keeps these references vague enough so that the play is not weighted down with the turbulent background history involving Henri de Navarre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref19\" id=\"_edn19\">[19]<\/a> Even so, Biron speaks with admiration of Boyet\u2019s wit and charm later in the play. See current Norton edition, 381, 5.2.322-23.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref20\" id=\"_edn20\">[20]<\/a> As mentioned above, this kind of dispraise is in Shakespeare\u2019s own anti-Petrarchan vein, as in the sonnet that begins, \u201cMy mistress\u2019 eyes are nothing like the sun \u2026.\u201d Shakespeare, William. The Sonnets.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems,<\/em> 3rd ed. 656-709. 700.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref21\" id=\"_edn21\">[21]<\/a> There is a similar moment in As You Like It, <\/em>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\u2019s grief over much the same thing. See 686, 2.1.21-43. In Shakespeare, William. As You Like It.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 673-731.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref22\" id=\"_edn22\">[22]<\/a> Regarding love and the chase or hunt, Plato\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/1735\/1735-h\/1735-h.htm\">Sophist<\/a>,\u201d for example, mentions \u201clove\u201d as one kind of pursuit for which this broad-ranging metaphor is useful. Ovid makes use of the motif of hunting in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0074\">Metamorphoses<\/em><\/a>and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/47677\/47677-h\/47677-h.htm\">Ars Amatoria<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref23\" id=\"_edn23\">[23]<\/strong><\/a>See Lyly, John. <a href=\"https:\/\/catalog.hathitrust.org\/Record\/001375974\">Euphues<\/em><\/a>. HathiTrust. Accessed 9\/9\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref24\" id=\"_edn24\">[24]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. As You Like It.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 673-731. See 699, 3.2.40-42.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref25\" id=\"_edn25\">[25]<\/a> An assistant to a vicar, rector, or parish priest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref26\" id=\"_edn26\">[26]<\/a> On Elizabethan and older faculty psychology, including the faculty of \u201cimagination,\u201d see Edward Dowden\u2019s perceptive explanatory article titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/1907\/09\/elizabethan-psychology\/638921\/\">Elizabethan Psychology<\/a>\u201d in the September 1907 issue of The Atlantic. <\/em>Accessed 9\/9\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref27\" id=\"_edn27\">[27]<\/a> Burton, Robert. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/10800\/pg10800-images.html\">The Anatomy of Melancholy<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> 1621. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 7\/31\/2024. Accessed 9\/7\/2024. See the poem, \u201cThe Author\u2019s Abstract of Melancholy, \u0394\u03b9\u03b1\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u1ff6\u03c2.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref28\" id=\"_edn28\">[28]<\/a> Once near the play\u2019s outset, when he balked at signing the King\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref29\" id=\"_edn29\">[29]<\/a> Similar enraptured argumentation is discoverable in books such as Baldassare Castiglione\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A18135.0001.001\">The Courtier<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>trans. Thomas Hoby in 1561. HathiTrust. Accessed 9\/7\/2024. Thus Peter Bembo says at one point, \u201cbeleaue not \u2026 but beautie is alwayes good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref30\" id=\"_edn30\">[30]<\/a> In his 1852 text <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/24526\/24526-pdf.pdf\">The Idea of a University<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>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: \u201cGood 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 \u2026\u201d (193). Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 9\/9\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref31\" id=\"_edn31\">[31]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Comical History of The Merchant of Venice.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 467-521. See 490, 2.9.32.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref32\" id=\"_edn32\">[32]<\/a> In this regard, just in the English context, it\u2019s worth mentioning William Lily of grammar book fame. See his <a href=\"http:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A48562.0001.001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Short intro. of grammar\u2026<\/em> 1673 ed.<\/a> Early English Books Online (EEBO) and U-Mich. One of the era\u2019s well-known educators was Thomas Elyot. See his <a href=\"https:\/\/catalog.hathitrust.org\/Record\/000392037\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Book Named the Governor<\/a><\/em>. HathiTrust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref33\" id=\"_edn33\">[33]<\/a> The current Norton edition footnote 8 for pg. 372 introduces the medieval chivalric Nine Worthies tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref34\" id=\"_edn34\">[34]<\/a> On the stage directions at this point (377, 5.2.156 dir.), see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/blogs\/collation\/puzzling-through-a-stage-direction-in-loves-labors-lost\/\">Puzzling through a Stage Direction in Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u201d Folger Shakespeare Library blog, Feb. 2024 by Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich. Accessed 9\/9\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref35\" id=\"_edn35\">[35]<\/a> The rhyme scheme goes, \u201cABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KK.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref36\" id=\"_edn36\">[36]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream.<\/em> Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 406-53. See the Pyramus and Thisbe play within the play, 446-450, 5.1.108-341.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref37\" id=\"_edn37\">[37]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream.<\/em> Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 406-53. See 438, 3.2.461-63 and 439, 4.1.67.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shakespeare\u2019s Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost Commentary A. J. Drake, Ph.D. Shakespeare, William. Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost. Folio. (The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 333-94). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"iawp_total_views":45,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[163,168,167,166,36,165,164,162,169,129],"wf_page_folders":[6],"class_list":["post-213","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-comic-plays","tag-berowne","tag-costard","tag-don-adriano-de-armado","tag-dumaine","tag-elizabethan-drama","tag-holofernes","tag-jaquenetta","tag-king-of-navarre","tag-longaville","tag-shakespearean-comedy"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"ajd_shxpr","author_link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/author\/ajd_shxpr\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Shakespeare\u2019s Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost Commentary A. J. Drake, Ph.D. Shakespeare, William. Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost. Folio. (The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 333-94). 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