Love's Labour's Lost (Vol. 88) | Patricia Parker (essay date December 1993)
Patricia Parker (essay date December 1993)
SOURCE: Parker, Patricia. “Preposterous Reversals: Love's Labour's Lost.” Modern Language Quarterly 54, no. 4 (December 1993): 435-82.
[In the following essay, Parker highlights the various class and gender relationships in Love's Labour's Lost.]
At the beginning of Love's Labor's Lost, after the men of Navarre have sworn their “three years' fast … not to see a woman in that term” (1.1.24, 37), the Constable enters with a letter from the “magnificent Armado” accusing Costard of a crime that this so-called “shallow vassal” (1.1.253) proceeds to explain:
COST.
The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta: the manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.
BER.
In what manner?
COST.
In manner and form following, sir, all those three: I was seen with her in the manor-house, sitting with her upon the...
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