SOURCE: “Oath-Taking: Love's Labour's Lost,” in Wooing, Wedding, and Power: Women in Shakespeare's Plays, Columbia University Press, 1981, pp. 9-30.

[In the essay below, Dash examines the oaths made by male characters in Love's Labour's Lost, relating these to the representation of honesty and of women in the play.]

“A time methinks too short
To make a world-without-end bargain in.”

(V.ii.788-89)

In Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare employs oaths to reveal how men and women characters perceive the meaning of truth and honesty. During the play, oaths increase in seriousness, progressing from the extravagantly humorous pledge of Act I when the King of Navarre and his men swear not to see women for three years; to the more moderate vow of Act IV, when the gallants plan to woo and win “these girls of France”; to the proposals of marriage of the last scene. Women constitute the subject of men's vows, although the men swear first to reject women, then pledge to pursue them, and finally to marry them. The ironic progression suggests that since the oath-takers are men, Shakespeare is mocking the male tradition of oath-taking, insisting that it be linked with honesty. In contrast, the Princess of France and the women of her court reject the offers of marriage of the King and his courtiers, refusing to be bound by this timeless oath. One of the men objects that this is no way to end a comedy. Thus Shakespeare presents a woman's point of view on honesty and truth, endowing the play with a significance that goes beyond the limits of the comic world.

The play opens at the court of the King of Navarre moments before he and his men sign a vow to dedicate themselves solely to the pursuit of learning:

Our court shall be a little academe,
Still and contemplative in living art.

(I.i.13-14)

He promises present fame and future immortality, confident that these immodest rewards will accrue naturally to the court. “Navarre shall be the wonder of the world” (12). The King assumes his men share his aim, particularly the quest for fame. They need only dedicate themselves to study and abjure the company of women for three years. Of the three courtiers, two—Longaville and Dumaine—comply, even relishing the idea of self-sacrifice.

I am resolved, ’tis but a three years’ fast:
The mind shall banquet, though the body pine

(24-25)

exclaims Longaville. Dumaine is even more extravagant in his pledge:

To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die,
With all these living in philosophy.

(31-32)

However, Berowne, the third man of Navarre's court, protests. Rational and quick-witted, he finds the terms antithetical to the whole spirit of education. Moreover, he believes them too harsh:

… not to see a woman in that term, …
And not be seen to wink of all the day—
When I was wont to think no harm all night, …
O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep.

(I.i.37-47)

Berowne would prefer to be excused from the pledge, explaining by most ingenious arguments that he “swore in jest” (54). His sophisticated reasoning and his rhetorical gifts set him apart from the others. He challenges the King's “study's god-like recompense” (58) with his own interpretation:

Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,
That will not be deep search'd with saucy looks;
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority from others' books.

(84-87)

He describes those things most worth enjoying:

At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows;
But like of each thing that in season grows.

(105-7)

Nevertheless, he capitulates when Navarre insists on a written oath to confirm the verbal pledge. “You swore to that, Berowne, and to the rest” (53). Otherwise, “Well, sit you out; go home, Berowne; adieu” (110). Almost childlike in his petulant persistence, Navarre demands total compliance. And so, threatened with exclusion from the group, the courtier relents. Peer approval overrides reason. He will not break his oath:

… I have sworn to stay with you;
… I'll keep what I have sworn.

(111, 114)

Oaths, whether reasonable or not, link the men. But the play questions the wisdom of such bonding. And the Princess, Rosaline, Katherine, and Maria are the chief challengers.

The extraordinary opening vow permits exploration of the values men and women place on oaths. Unlikely to strut across the stage with swords or magnanimously offer kingdoms for a pledge, women make seemingly colorless vows that lack bravado: vows of marriage. But they are timelessly binding, world-without-end bargains that will alter their lives. The women reject oath-taking as a method of confirming a temporary agreement, skeptical about the morality of vows too easily made and broken. When, for example, in the last act, the King asserts, “The virtue of your eye must break my oath” (V.ii.348), the Princess of France objects, “You nickname virtue; vice you should have spoke, / For virtue's office never breaks men's troth” (349-50). The close relationship between “truth” and “troth” as well as between “troth”—to pledge one's word—and “troth” in the phrase “to plight one's troth” in marriage cannot have been lost on Shakespeare's audience. What makes the play unusual is that its ending confirms the women's skepticism.

Moments after being signed, that opening vow meets its first challenge when Berowne reminds Navarre of the forthcoming diplomatic visit of the Princess of France. She is to negotiate the “surrender up of Aquitaine / To her … father” (I.i.137-38). As we later discover, disagreement exists about the terms of an earlier treaty. But the immediate problem is oath-breaking. What now of an oath forbidding speech with a woman, or of that first decision in the written proclamation that Berowne reads: “‘no woman shall come within a mile of [the] court … on pain of losing her tongue’” (119-22)? Shakespeare exaggerates the terms for the sake of comedy. However, his later development of the character of the men and women around this basic plot reveals his genius. At this moment in the comedy, Navarre concedes that he must do something and so decides to bend his oath, welcoming the women to the park surrounding the palace but permitting them no entrance to the palace itself.

The argument is joined. The men must confront the women; vows must face honest appraisal.

I hear your Grace hath sworn out house-keeping:
’Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord,
And sin to break it.

(II.i.104-6)

The Princess observes his dilemma. Lack of hospitality (“housekeeping”) had not been anticipated. A simplistic oath that seemed merely a rejection of women—debasers of men's higher goals—now turns sinful. Navarre had ignored the possibility of women as equals.

Writing of the reluctance of men to grant women equality, John Stuart Mill observes that it reflects a fear of living with an equal. To support his thesis of women's potential, he cites the training of princesses, their subsequent abilities as rulers, and the effect of this training on their self-esteem:

Princesses, being more raised above the generality of men by their rank than placed below them by their sex, have never been taught that it was improper for them to concern themselves with politics; but have been allowed to feel the liberal interest natural to any cultivated human being in the great transactions which took place around them, and in which they might be called on to take a part.¹

The Princess of France is such a woman.

She sets the tone and provides the example for the women who accompany her. As her father's envoy to the court of Navarre, she must negotiate a delicate political solution. But this role as emissary does not compromise her. Nor does it suggest that her father adversely governs her life, as do some of the fathers in Shakespeare's plays. Rather, like the princesses mentioned by Mill, she has gained by this training. Her father has supported her strength and endorsed her as a person. Her language throughout the play and her attitude toward herself and others clearly indicate her independence. The closing scene confirms the portrait when news of her father's death arrives, interrupting the merriment. Politically and economically independent, she is a woman who knows herself.

Her independence and its exhilarating effect on her women have seldom been discussed in criticism.² Instead, historical parallels for her, the King of Navarre, Berowne, Dumaine, Longaville, and others have preoccupied critics. The tendency has been to justify her on a historical basis rather than a human one. However, the Princess, whose freedom is unique, expresses ideas common to women but seldom spoken. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who found traces of Shakespeare's later genius in this early comedy, observed: “True genius begins by generalizing and condensing; it ends in realizing and expanding.”³ Shakespeare's method for developing the Princess' character reveals this early genius. He particularizes her trait of honesty; she demands it of herself as well as others. And he never destroys her self-awareness and self-identification as a woman.

But the play is seldom seen and the remarkably outspoken Princess infrequently heard. She is the victim of eighteenth-century editing and of bias against outspoken, independent women. During its early years, Love's Labour's Lost was performed at court, both Queen Elizabeth's (1597 or 98) and James' in January 1605.⁴ Records of performances also indicate that it appeared “at the Blacke-Friers and the Globe” sometime before 1631.⁵ It was quite popular in Shakespeare's time, but its subsequent stage history has been bleak. The promptbooks of the nineteenth century and the one attempt at converting Love's Labour's Lost to an opera in the eighteenth century provide clues to its infrequent performance. Those works owe their shape to Alexander Pope, whose edition of Shakespeare's plays first appeared in 1723. Because of Pope's fame, his edition had great influence on attitudes toward the plays and on their form in the theater. Deciding that a passage was too raucous, outspoken, or imperfectly written, Pope would move it out of the text and place it in small print at the bottom of the page. The result in many cases was a divided page. Because of Pope's skill as a writer, the text at the top could be read without interruption. One hardly realized what had happened unless one looked at an asterisk and then turned to the small type at the bottom. The effect on the play and on the balance among characters was tremendous. Some works profited from Pope's insights; others suffered.⁶Love's Labour's Lost was among the latter. It became a thin comedy whose story line alone survived.

Although most later editors rejected Pope's edition and his method, the text, printed by the famous J. Tonson, remained in print. In 1773, when David Garrick thought he would try a production of Love's Labour's Lost if it could be converted to an opera, the adaptor Edward Thompson worked from a Pope text.⁷ In 1839, when Madame Vestris produced the play, Pope's work still provided the skeletal basis for the cuts.⁸ Vestris herself played Rosaline. The Princess' role was greatly abbreviated. Lines with sexual connotations as well as those that establish the Princess as a strong character disappeared.

Samuel Johnson, commenting on the play in his edition of 1765, indicates the general feeling of the age:

In this play, which all the editors have concurred to censure, and some have rejected as unworthy of our poet, it must be confessed that there are many passages mean, childish, and vulgar; and some which ought not to have been exhibited, as we are told they were, to a maiden queen. But there are scattered, through the whole, many sparks of genius; nor is there any play that has more evident marks of the hand of Shakespeare.⁹ (italics mine)

As a result of this protective attitude toward women, many of the lines with sexual connotations, or lines that are direct and bawdy, were omitted. Unfortunately, many of these lines also help to establish the character of the Princess as a strong woman undisturbed by direct language. Three equally self-assertive women accompany her. Although less clearly defined, they too speak with directness. But the Princess is chief among them. Controlling both power and wealth, she is sovereign over herself. Original in her thinking, she is unafraid and undominated. She laughs at the Petrarchan tradition that dictates praise of a woman's beauty and insists on truth even in examining her own thoughts. Was she the product of her age—an age when a maiden queen, fearing no censure of her laughter, could listen and enjoy the language as well as the portraits of women in this comedy?

Direct and abrupt, the Princess' opening speeches offer the first clue to her character. She will insist on honesty, reject flattery, and dismiss flowery, unsubstantiated words, recognizing their hollowness. She listens to Boyet, the male adviser accompanying her party, as he praises her many endowments:

Be now as prodigal of all dear grace
As Nature was in making graces dear,
When she did starve the general world beside
And prodigally gave them all to you.

(II.i.9-12)

Relying on Petrarchan conceits—mannerisms used in the poetry of the period—Boyet meets a sharp reprimand. His speech functions theatrically, triggering a response and offering an incisive character drawing of the Princess:

Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:
Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye.

(13-15)

Refusing praise that seems unrealistic, she insists that beauty may be easily observed and does not need words to create what is not present. This early reference to her own physical appearance is exploited later in her tests of the honesty of others. Now she merely mocks Boyet's use of obviously worn forms of flattery:

I am less proud to hear you tell my worth
Than you much willing to be counted wise
In spending your wit in the praise of mine.

(17-19)

She fails to convince him. With a last flourish, he leaves as her emissary to the King: “Proud of employment, willingly I go” (35). The Princess faults him once more: “All pride is willing pride, and yours is so” (36). Compared with Navarre, who was introduced as a man ambitiously seeking eternal fame, she has been introduced as a woman wary of fame and aware of the pitfalls of pride.

Shakespeare's technique for revealing her character differs from that used with the men. Berowne attempted to dissuade Navarre from his foolish vow. The Princess is never in conflict with her women. Rather, the dramatist parades a series of different men from different economic groups before her. With each she debates the meaning of truth; and each encounter further reveals her point of view.

Intellectually she resembles Berowne. Like him, she enjoys exploring and exploiting verbal meaning. Like him, she delights in philosophic development of an idea. However, the Princess, even when she tends to hypothesize or, introspectively, analyze her own actions, seldom forsakes reason for peer loyalty. Berowne, despite his brilliant argument against Navarre's academy, ultimately capitulates. The Princess, however, does not yield to the pressures of others.

Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One's Own, suggests that a woman of independent income eventually develops an independent perspective. No longer angry or afraid, she can see the defects in the education of men just as she knows that there have been defects in her own education. Woolf describes the healing power of economic freedom and independence:

Indeed, I thought. … I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me. So imperceptibly I found myself adopting a new attitude towards the other half of the human race. It was absurd to blame any class or any sex, as a whole. … Their education had been in some ways as faulty as my own. It had bred in them defects as great.¹⁰

The Princess of France has this clarity and lack of animosity. When she discovers that she must camp in the park surrounding the court, she accepts and respects the King's orders. She does not, however, accept the wisdom of his choice of life style.

Upon meeting him later in this scene (II.i.), she follows the same pattern of close word analysis that she used with Boyet. To the King's “Fair Princess, welcome to the court of Navarre” (90), she responds by examining every word but “Princess”:

“Fair” I give you back again, and “welcome” I have not yet. The roof of this court is too high to be yours, and welcome to the wide fields too base to be mine.

(91-94)

Continuing, she explores the meaning of “teach.” Although couched in modesty—“To teach a teacher ill beseemeth me” (108)—her speeches are spattered with words revealing her own intellectual training: “knowledge,” “ignorance,” and “wise.”

Shakespeare includes political as well as social skills in his characterization. She knows her mission and intends to acquire the rights to Aquitaine by proving that her father had returned “The payment of a hundred thousand crowns” (129). Indulgently, the King rehearses the terms, concluding with:

Dear Princess, were not his requests so far
From reason's yielding, your fair self should make
A yielding 'gainst some reason in my breast,
And go well satisfied to France again.

(II.i.149-52)

But the Princess knows the background of the agreement. She cites documents that go back to the time of Navarre's father. It is unnecessary to review the terms of the agreement here; it is sufficient to know that the Princess' just grasp of the details of a treaty proves her acumen. She is more than a social creature sent to appease the King through the exercise of charm. She is a competent administrator. Navarre must change his estimate.

This brief encounter with him not only enhances the portrait of the Princess, it also emphasizes the disadvantages she faces because of her sex. Despite her economic and political power, she is reduced to the status of an outsider. The equality that should exist between the men and the women does not. Handicapped, the women rely on honesty to deflate and combat the men. Whereas in Act I rustics, a pedant, and a clown mimic and burlesque the main action, suggesting the folly of the nobles, in Act II the entrance of the women signals the major contrast. Meeting the men in the Park of Navarre, each woman wins a silent admirer. Two—Berowne and the King—attempt light, insincere conversation. Each is rebuffed for dishonesty and superficiality. Conventional forms are laughed at by unconventional, free women.

“You shall be welcome, madam, to my court (II.i.95), avers the King when he first meets her. “Conduct me thither” (96), responds the Princess. But, because of his oath, he cannot. “Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?” (114) asks Berowne. “Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?” (115) responds Rosaline. “I know you did,” the annoyed Berowne replies (116). “How needless was it then to ask the question” (117). She has forced him to admit the foolishness of conventional patterns of conversation between men and women. She has also pinpointed dishonesty. But some of their conversation falls to the bottom of the page in Pope's and later acting editions.¹¹ And most of the frank joking among the women after the departure of the men also joins the small print.

Flattery may sometimes defeat honesty just as honesty weakened the men's oath. For women, flattery usually concentrates on physical beauty although, as a recent writer observed, “The average woman—and that means a good 95 percent of them—is not beautiful in the way the culture pretends.”¹² A realist, the Princess knows this. At the close of the first scene between the men and the women, Boyet reports to her: “All eyes saw his [Navarre's] eyes enchanted with gazes” (247). But she refuses to be lulled or beguiled by such words. Instead, her physical appearance often provides the test for honesty.

Her drive for forthright appraisal of her not-too-attractive self extends from men of the court to men of another social class. Two opportunities occur in quick succession at the beginning of Act IV: her short interview with the Forester, and her light responses to Costard.¹³ In the first, the Forester directs her to an excellent vantage point for shooting deer:

Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice,
A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.
princess:
I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot,
And thereupon thou speak'st the fairest shoot.

(IV.i.9-12)

Once again she picks up the allusion to her appearance, this time creating a difficulty for the Forester by intentionally misreading his line. Unfairly, perhaps, she insists that he choose between honesty and flattery. To his, “Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so” (13), she quickly acts astonished, “What, what? First praise me, and again say no? / O short-liv'd pride! Not fair? alack for woe!” (14-15). The poor Forester, completely confused, attempts to adopt the proper stance. “Yes, madam, fair” (16), he retracts. But the Princess will not accept his answer:

Nay, never paint me now;
Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow.
Here (good my glass), take this for telling true:
Fair payment for foul words is more than due.

(16-19)

The Princess has made her point. The way she looked to herself in her “glass” was the standard she would use to test the truth of others' statements. The speech also forms an important link to the beginning of the play. In her reference to “short-liv'd pride” she reminds us of that first scene when Navarre sought to create the “wonder of the world” and dreamed of immortal fame.

But Pope moved most of this exchange and the one that follows to the bottom of the page. And when the play finally arrived on the stage in the mid-nineteenth century, many of these same lines were excised. The major woman's role, instead of belonging to the Princess, went to Rosaline.¹⁴ Because she is paired romantically with Berowne, critics mistakenly consider her his equivalent among the women. Dark-haired, alert, bright, with many of the play's good lines, she nevertheless does not parallel him. Instead, the Princess of France, paired with Navarre romantically, most resembles Berowne. For she is intellectually and verbally the most gifted of the women.

The second example of the Princess relating honesty to a description of her own person occurs in a confrontation with one of the play's rustics. Searching for the proper addressee of a letter, Costard barges onto the scene. When he asks for the “head lady,” he learns only that she is the “highest.” Unwilling to accept what might be a double meaning, he persists until assured, “The thickest and the tallest” (IV.i.47). “The thickest and the tallest! … / Are not you the chief woman? You are the thickest here” (48-51). For the third time, she has chosen to measure honesty by statements about her physical size. The thickest and the tallest, she is a woman who knows herself not “slimly” but well.

In Costard, the play's Clown, Shakespeare creates a character who tries people's patience. Their varying responses to him offer a measure of their personalities and their self-control. Early in the play, for example, listening to the King's reading of a letter, Costard constantly interrupts. Eventually, Navarre orders, “Peace! … No words” (I.i.226, 229). Later, Berowne's outbursts are less restrained. Attempting to retain the Clown's attention, Berowne explodes: “Why, villain, thou must know first” [before you can act] (III.i.159). But this reprimand does not inhibit Costard who, most respectfully, continues on his own tangent. “I will come to your worship tomorrow morning,” he promises. Berowne despairs: “It must be done this afternoon. Hark, slave, it is but this” (160-63). Finally, in Act IV, Costard's errors so embarrass Berowne that he swears, “Ah! you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do me shame” (IV.iii.200), and exclaims, “Will these turtles be gone?” (208).

Compared with the hostility expressed by words like “villain,” “slave,” “loggerhead,” “turtle,” and “fool,” the Princess' language shows remarkable restraint. Reminding Costard of his errand—the delivery of the letter—she insists he focus on his business, “What's your will, sir? What's your will?” (IV.i.52). Her directions to the Clown illustrate her characteristically tenacious concentration on the business at hand, revealed as early as her first scene when she sent Boyet on his way rather than allowing him time for chatter and flattery. Her equable “sir” indicates her patience and self-control. Nevertheless, when she expresses annoyance with Costard, critics tend to misread her actions. The most recent example is Richard David's comment: “Obviously the Princess is snubbing Costard for his impertinence.” David then adds a cryptic reference to an earlier editor, “Furness makes a doubt of it.”¹⁵ To understand David, one must turn to the early twentieth-century Variorum where Horace Howard Furness asks: “In these words of the Princess may there not be detected an impatient eagerness to cut short Costard's rather uncomplimental references to her figure?”¹⁶ What had been quizzical wondering becomes definite assertion. Was David influenced by Furness? The critic attributes vanity to the Princess, whereas the text implies the opposite. David's comment seems to reflect the editor's bias rather than the dramatist's intention and creates an unnecessary inconsistency in characterization. Thus may traditional notions of female behavior inhibit understanding of one of the women characters. Basically, the exchange with Costard is the last and most direct indication of the Princess' seeking honesty in description of her own person.

Shakespeare next develops his portrait on a more complex level, extending the test for honesty from the physical to the intellectual and the philosophical. And, finally, the value of Boyet to the Princess becomes apparent. For it is he, not the Forester, who challenges her statements. And it is he who acts as a refracting glass for the varied facets of her nature. When, following her exchange with the Forester, she ruminates on the vanity of the human quest for fame, Boyet wonders at her honesty. Speaking of fame, she says:

As I for praise alone now seek to spill
The poor deer's blood, that my heart means no ill.

(IV.i.34-35)

Boyet, thus far primarily a flatterer, alertly probes her words:

Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty
Only for praise' sake, when they strive to be
Lords o'er their lords?

(36-38)

I am calling your bluff, he insists. To him, her seeming humility isn't quite sincere. Women too, in a very different context, seek praise, just as Navarre in Act I hoped for fame and immortality. But women's fame, unfortunately, is built on their wishing to be “lords o'er their lords.”

Again, truth triumphs. The Princess agrees that, yes, indeed, “praise we may afford / To any lady that subdues a lord” (39-40). Her answer characterizes a feminist's awareness. She does not smile at his innuendo. Nor does she modestly disagree that women have no aspirations to fame. Aware of the male world in which she moves—and made more aware by Navarre's foolish vow—she applauds any success, however slight, that women may achieve. The exchange between her and Boyet illustrates the dramatist's remarkable insight into the mind of a woman and his ability to create, as Pope observed, characters as “Individual as those in Life itself.”¹⁷ The nuances in this portrait testify to the importance of the Princess as the most fully defined of the woman characters. She is Berowne's intellectual counterpart.

Criticism of the play, however, has overlooked their resemblances. Concentrating on the romantically paired couples, it has lost sight of the variations among the women. Rosaline, because she is linked with Berowne, receives the greatest attention. But Shakespeare has invented two different types of pairing—the intellectual and the romantic. In this play they are not interchangeable. Taking their cue from the world they know, however, the critics acknowledge only the latter. Edward Dowden and H. H. Furness, for example, offer two interpretations. After crediting the women with clearer insight than the men, Dowden writes:

And yet the Princess, and Rosaline, and Maria, have not the entire advantage on their side. It is well to be practical; but to be practical, and also have a capacity for ideas is better. … Berowne is yet a larger nature than the Princess or Rosaline. His good sense is the good sense of a thinker and of a man of action. When he is most flouted and bemocked, we yet acknowledge him victorious and master; and Rosaline will confess the fact by and by.¹⁸

Although Dowden mentions the Princess and Maria, he sees the major pairing as that between Berowne and Rosaline. His “by and by” takes us out of the play and into the world beyond the theater, a world where women do not set the rules. Neither the play's open-ended conclusion nor the Princess' “capacity for ideas” has relevance in such criticism. Dowden responds to the text less as a scholar and more as a man influenced by the contemporary culture.

H. H. Furness also found Berowne superior to Rosaline but arrived at his conclusion by comparing Berowne and Rosaline to other romantic couples in Shakespeare's plays. In that context, Rosaline proves weaker than other women, whereas Berowne proves superior to other men. Through a complex process of analysis and comparison of sets of romantic pairs, the editor conclusively proves Berowne's superiority to Rosaline.¹⁹ But a close study of the text reveals that Berowne's equivalent in strength is not Rosaline—with whom he is romantically coupled—but the Princess of France.

The play continues to explore the relationship between oaths and truth. In Act IV, the first oath is challenged when the men individually—but overheard by one another—sigh for the different women of France: Navarre for the Princess: “‘O queen of queens, how far dost thou excel / No thought can think, nor tongue of mortal tell’” (IV.iii.39-40); Longaville for Maria: “Ay me, I am forsworn!” (45); and Dumaine for “O most divine Kate!” (81).

Berowne's unmasking is more extreme. He is the victim of Costard's inattention to details. The letter meant for Rosaline is misdelivered and falls into Navarre's hands. Read aloud for all to hear, it forces Berowne to acknowledge that his bond with the others has become a broken vow. He then proposes: “Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O, let us embrace!” (IV.iii.210). He forces them to confront the truth, but not for long. They now demand he exercise his rhetorical skill and intellectual ability to “prove / Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn” (280-81). In one of the longest and most magnificent speeches in the play, he convinces them that their former oath—to pursue study and lead the celibate life—was “Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth” (289). Joyously, he weaves supports for his earlier thesis.

So effective is his argument that the men once more turn to oath-taking. They have learned little. Having forsaken one course of action, they swear once more, revealing their inability to temper enthusiasm with reason. Nor has the persistent Navarre, whose extravagant speech characterized the earlier movement of the play, learned to temper optimism with caution. “Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!” (363), he rallies them. To Longaville's query, “shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?” the King, who deals in absolutes, confidently asserts “and win them too” (368-69). He is still a man unaware of the character of the Princess.

Like the first set of vows, the second, although more reasonable, is similarly immoderate. This time the men do not plan seclusion and a life of scholarship, but action on a field of battle—specifically the wooing of the women. The King proposes entertainments. Once again, he moves with extreme self-confidence. Not scholars in a study, they are to be soldiers in the field. They have shifted from the introverted to the extroverted life. Nevertheless, once again their goal is total victory and therefore unbalanced: not fame on their gravestones, but success in the Park of Navarre. It is they, not the women, who first invent the games to be played, the tricks to be practiced in a masquerade. Their masculine egos in command, all but Berowne assume victory. He alone is skeptical:

Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;
If so, our copper buys no better treasure.

(IV.iii.382-83)

The text's lines, although consistent in their definition of character, prove a problem for Richard David, who comments: “Berowne's note of warning here comes in rather inharmoniously after his magnificent address of loyalty to Love.”²⁰ But Berowne's verbal pyrotechnics have little to do with his underlying beliefs, as was evident in the first scene. His major role is as spokesman for the men, being the most brilliant and poetic among them. Actually the speech indicates that at least one of the men of Navarre's court has an understanding of the dignity and individuality of the women whom they plan to woo.

Resembling the Princess, the women express both their approval of the men and their skepticism about the male dedication to a cause—whether “academe” or women. “O that I knew he were but in by th' week!” (V.ii.61), exclaims Rosaline of Berowne.

A huge translation of hypocrisy,
Vildly compiled, profound simplicity(21)

(51-52)

is Katherine's evaluation of the verses of Dumaine while Maria expresses her doubts by desiring that the pearls sent by Longaville be longer and the letter shorter. Her comment, too, is relevant. Deriding the “fool'ry in the wise” (76) as an attempt “to prove, by wit, worth in simplicity” (78), she is expressing what the audience felt at the close of Act IV when listening to the men's rather simplistic approach to wooing.

Having sent gifts and flowery words to the women, the men expect easy acceptance. Instead, convention is once again challenged. The men, having decided to mask as Muscovites, encounter masked women. Masks meet masks. Truth, like the true identity of the women, is not easily uncovered. The wooers must rely on external symbols of the women behind the masks. But the women have exchanged gifts with one another. Again the men take oaths to convince the women as well as themselves of their serious intent. Each man pledges undying love to a masked symbol.

The dramatist once again suggests the weakness of oaths as proof of conviction. For the men have wooed the wrong masked women. “The King is my love sworn,” exclaims Rosaline who had posed as the Princess (V.ii.282). “And quick Berowne hath plighted faith to me” (283), returns the Princess. Although the women graciously admit, “There's no such sport as sport by sport o'erthrown” (153), the scene furnishes another example of the danger of swearing, and prepares the way for the final exchange.

In the scene of reconciliation after the Muscovite adventure, Berowne faces his most difficult moment in the play. For he is uncertain whether to reply in words and fancy phrases or whether, in the method of the women, to resort to honesty. To Rosaline's challenge, “Which of the vizards was it that you wore?” (385), Berowne retorts with questions. “Where? when? what vizard? why demand you this?” (386). He begins to close the plot's circle.

“Necessity will make us all forsworn / Three thousand times within this three years' space” (I.i.149-150), he had said in Act I after joining the others in oath. In Act V, he merely laments: “Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury” (V.ii.394). Doubly perjured, in fact, are the men: first, for having forsworn their original oath; second, for having pretended no knowledge of the Muscovites. And they will be further perjured before the comedy ends. For oath-taking is a habit difficult to break.

The oath-maker confronts the truth-sayer in Act V. Navarre still believes in his invulnerability. To the Princess' warning, “When she shall challenge this [your overture], you will reject her” (V.ii.438), the King swiftly answers with an oath, “Upon mine honor, no” (439). His self-confidence persists. Not daunted by her “Peace, peace, forbear: / Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear” (439-40), he continues to consider himself wiser than the woman who warns him. With bravura, he exclaims, “Despise me when I break this oath of mine” (441). “I will” (442), she answers simply. When the plot unfolds, the revelation of the exchange of tokens leads to yet another forswearing. The Princess' warnings anticipate her closing words of rejection: “No, no, my lord, your Grace is perjur'd much, … / Your oath I will not trust” (790, 794).

What type of character is the King, and what leads him to these excessive displays? We know that he is interested in fame in the present as well as the future, fame that will survive the grave. Moreover, he is at the opening of the drama fairly certain that he can achieve this fame through dedication to study. We also learn from Boyet very early in the comedy that Navarre is a man of great reputation. Later, in the King's opening encounter with the Princess, we note his self-confidence, his certainty that he, rather than she, knows the proper path for the man of wisdom. Countering her criticism of his actions with questions of a political nature, he challenges her in the area where, supposedly, he is the wiser. Nevertheless, his wisdom lacks sensitivity and intellectual depth.

In the last scene, the dramatist draws together the two strands—oath-taking and truth-telling—that weave through this comedy. The news of the death of the King of France is a clever device for joining these elements. Once again, Navarre functions as antagonist, providing the background against which the Princess' varied talents sparkle. While she is thinking of her father and of returning to her kingdom, the King is thinking of himself. To her declaration, “I will away to-night,” he responds, “I do beseech you stay” (V.ii.727-28). But he goes beyond that. He makes an offer of marriage that she doesn't understand:

And though the mourning brow of progeny
Forbid the smiling courtesy of love
The holy suit which fain it would convince,
Yet since love's argument was first on foot,
Let not the cloud of sorrow justle it
From what it purpos'd; since to wail friends lost
Is not by much so wholesome-profitable
As to rejoice at friends but newly found.

(744-51)

Navarre's speech reveals an awareness of the tenuous relationship between them while at the same time minimizing, and thus distorting, the closeness of the ties between father and daughter. The dramatist cunningly gives lines to Navarre that establish a semantic parallel that does not exist, thereby emphasizing the intellectual ineptness of the King and the superiority of the Princess. She, on the other hand, unable to believe that a proposal of marriage could occur at this moment, thinks that she has suddenly lost her ability to comprehend subtle verbal meanings. For a person who has treasured her intellectual agility, this is a double blow. Not only is she bereft of father, but also of wit. “I understand you not, my griefs are double” (752), she admits.

Her intellectual counterpart, Berowne, then steps in, suggesting that “honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief” (V.ii.753). Because this second parallel has seldom been recognized by critics, Berowne's sudden intervention has been questioned. Samuel Johnson believed that the speech was “given to a wrong person.”²² Johnson suggests giving the first line (752) to the Princess; the next several, beginning “And by these badges,” to the King. But Shakespeare's distribution of these lines supports the methods he has developed throughout the comedy of contrast, comparison, and parallelism to help define the portrait of the Princess.

When she does understand Navarre's meaning, she brings those two faculties—a keen mind and a desire for honest words—to her speech:

We have receiv'd your letters full of love; …
… rated them
At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy, …
But more devout than this in our respects
Have we not been.

(V.ii.777-83)

Thus does she evaluate the antics they have enjoyed. She then moves to the more complex question of oaths. Unlike Berowne who, though intellectually aware of the folly of Navarre's plot, had allowed peer pressure to override reason, the Princess remains true to her intellectual self. To the King's “Now at the latest minute of the hour, / Grant us your loves” (787-88), she responds:

A time methinks too short
To make a world-without-end bargain in.

(788-89)

And she suggests that he not perjure himself again. Evaluating the type of oath now being asked of her, she knows that it requires more than a moment's consideration.

If Shakespeare was unsuccessful in retaining the comic tone, as some critics have argued, he was remarkably successful in creating, although in sketch form, the portrait of an independent woman. Writing at a time when new perceptions of women were challenging the old, the dramatist molded a character who was individual, one who drew her strength from understanding herself—a woman functioning in a man's world and questioning that world's values.²³

In a play where vows are made and broken, Shakespeare questions this approach to swearing by introducing the vow of marriage at a serious moment in the action. Marriage is a vow whose implication women know. It will inhibit their independence; it will tie them forever. “A world-without-end bargain” implies a sense of eternity, that which the King, in the first scene, had craved through learning. The phrase has a grandeur beyond the confines of the comic world. If such bargains are not to be broken, by brilliant talk, ingenious reasoning, and clever turns of phrase, new rules for oath-taking must be found.

Truth, vows, and eternity coalesce in the comedy's last moments. Ending as it does with “Jack hath not Jill,” but with the promise of reconsiderations of the men's proposals a year later, the play asks for new attitudes toward women. It suggests seeing them as full, complex individual characters. Although a romantic comedy, the play is an exploration of the meaning of words as a key to perceiving truth, particularly those words—swear and oath—which often govern our future lives.

Notes

1. John Stuart Mill, “The Subjection of Women,” in Essays on Sex Equality, p. 189.

2. A notable exception is the excellent book by William C. Carroll, The Great Feast of Language in “Love's Labour's Lost.”

3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shakespearean Criticism, 1:92.

4. Edmund K. Chambers, William Shakespeare, 1:331, 338; 2:330-32.

5. Ibid., 1:332, 338.

6. See chapter 6, in Wooing, Wedding, and Power: Women in Shakespeare's Plays, Columbia University Press, 1981.

7. Folger Prompt LLL 1. See also George Winchester Stone, Jr., “Garrick and an Unknown Operatic Version of Love's Labour's Lost,” pp. 323-28.

8. Folger Prompt LLL 2.

9. Samuel Johnson, Johnson on Shakespeare, 7:287.

10. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, p. 38.

11. Warburton's edition of 1747 retains Pope's cuts. See Irene Dash, “Changing Attitudes Towards Shakespeare as Reflected in Editions and Staged Adaptations of The Winter's Tale from 1703 to 1762,” chapter 6.

12. Una Stannard, “The Mask of Beauty,” in Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran, eds., Woman in Sexist Society, p. 193.

13. Alexander Pope reduces IV.i.11-40 and 42-52 to small type at the bottom of the page thus eliminating most of this exchange. The Works of Mr. William Shakespear, 2:122-23.

14. Folger Prompt LLL 2, 8, 3, and 6. (According to Charles H. Shattuck, The Shakespeare Promptbooks, p. 233, no. 6 is a Daly 1874 book.) See also George C. D. Odell, Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving 2:187, 202-3, 222, 278. William Winter, in Shakespeare on the Stage, observes, “The comedy was produced in London for the first time in more than 240 years on September 30, 1839, at Covent Garden when Eliza Vestris (Mrs. Charles Mathews) began management of that theatre,” with Vestris playing Rosaline and “the beautiful Louisa Nisbett as the Princess,” p. 184. But note also that some shift of emphasis must have occurred when Ada Rehan became leading actress of Daly's company because she had the role of the Princess and Edith Crane, who was less famous, played Rosaline, p. 194.

    According to Marvin Spevack, Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare, Berowne has 15.23 percent of the speeches, 22.09 percent of the lines; Navarre has 11.14 percent of the speeches, 11.20 percent of the lines; the Princess of France has 9.90 percent of the speeches, 10.25 percent of the lines; Rosaline has 6.28 percent of the speeches, 5.97 percent of the lines.

15. Richard David, ed., Love's Labour's Lost, p. 62.

16. Horace Howard Furness, ed., A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, 14:117.

17. Pope, Works of Shakespear, 1:ii-iii.

18. Edward Dowden, Shakespeare: His Mind and Art (London, 1875), p. 62. Reprinted in Furness, Variorum Shakespeare, 14:362.

19. Furness, Variorum Shakespeare, 14:xix.

20. David, Love's Labour's Lost, p. 110.

21. “Vildly” means “vilely” and “simplicity” is often interpreted as “foolishness.”

22. Johnson, Johnson on Shakespeare, 7:285.

23. Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641, pp. 610-70 and passim.

The text used throughout is The Riverside Shakespeare, G. Blakemore Evans, textual editor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. For the sake of clarity, the square brackets appearing in the Riverside text have been eliminated. When used in this book, square brackets indicate interpolation by the author.