Deception in Shakespeare's Plays | Cyrus Hoy (essay date 1962)
Cyrus Hoy (essay date 1962)
SOURCE: "Love's Labour's Lost and the Nature of Comedy," in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. XIII, No. 1, Winter, 1962, pp. 31-40.
[In the essay that follows, Hoy maintains that the action of Love's Labour's Lost focuses on the process of "undeceiving the self-deceived," noting that Shakespeare's comedy in general is aimed at dismantling deceptions for the purpose of self knowledge.]
Love's Labour's Lost, says M. C. Bradbrook, "is as near as Shakespeare ever came to writing satire";1 and what, in addition to fine manners, pedantry, and the disguises of love, is being satirized in it is, I would suggest, the infirmity of human purpose. Its fable, which turns on vows sworn and then forsworn under the pressure of circumstance and necessity working hand in hand, is the sufficient proof of this. The treatment of the fable is dry, elegant, and highly mannered, and this is as it should be....
[The entire page is 5881 words long]
Navigate
