Love's Labour's Lost (Vol. 77) - Catherine M. McLay (essay date spring 1967)
Catherine M. McLay (essay date spring 1967)
SOURCE: McLay, Catherine M. “The Dialogues of Spring and Winter: A Key to the Unity of Love's Labour's Lost.” Shakespeare Quarterly 18, no. 2 (spring 1967): 119-27.
[In the following essay, McLay maintains that the songs sung by Spring and Winter at the close of Love's Labour's Lost reflect and expand the play's major themes: the movement “from the artificial to the natural, from illusion to reality, from folly to wisdom.”]
Despite the heretical ending of Love's Labour's Lost,1 an ending where “Jack hath not Jill” (V. ii. 865)2 and the ritual marriage celebrations are denied or postponed “too long for a play” (V.ii.868), the drama does have its connections to the ritual origins of comedy in the concluding Songs or Dialogues of Spring and Winter.3 Although there is considerable controversy over the dating of the play, it is...
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