Love's Labor's Lost

This article is about Shakespeare's play. For other uses, see Love's Labor's Lost (disambiguation).

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

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

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

Most scholars believe that Shakespeare wrote Love’s Labor’s Lost in 1594–95. The play was published in quarto form in 1598; an earlier printed version probably existed, though it has not survived. Shakespeare’s sources for this play have been difficult to establish with certainty.

Productions at the Folger

• Love's Labor's Lost (Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, 2002)
• Love's Labor's Lost (Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, 1997)

Early editions

First Folio

LUNA: First Folio: L1v - M6v

Hamnet: STC 22273 Fo.1 no.68

Second Folio

LUNA: Second Folio: L1v - M6v

Hamnet: STC 22274 Fo.2 no.07

First Quarto

LUNA: First Quarto

Hamnet: STC 22294 copy 1

Second Quarto

LUNA: Second Quarto

Hamnet: STC 22295 Copy 2

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  The title page of the 1623 First Folio edition of Love's Labor's Lost. STC 22273 Fo.1 no.68.

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  The 1632 Second Folio title page of Love's Labor's Lost. STC 22274 Fo.2 no.07.

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  The title page of the 1598 First Quarto edition of Love's Labor's Lost. STC 22294 copy 1.

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  The 1632 Second Quarto title page of Love's Labor's Lost. STC 22295 copy 1.

Modern editions

Love's Labor's Lost can be read online with Folger Digital Texts and purchased from Simon and Schuster.

Hamnet link to Folger Edition: PR2753 .M6 2003 copy 2 v.20

In popular culture

Watch the trailer for Kenneth Branagh's 1930's-style musical retelling of Shakespeare's early comedy. The film premiered in 2000.

Notes

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