CRITICISM

Arthos, John. Introduction to The Signet Classic Shakespeare: “Love's Labour's Lost,” edited by John Arthos, pp. xxiii-xxxiii. New York: The New American Library, 1965.

Offers a laudatory overview of theme and character in Love's Labour's Lost.

Cunningham, J. V. “‘With That Facility’: False Starts and Revisions in Love's Labour's Lost.” In Essays on Shakespeare, edited by Gerald W. Chapman, pp. 91-115. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965.

Comments on the style of Love's Labour's Lost and Shakespeare's revisions of the text.

David, Richard. Introduction to The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare: “Love's Labour's Lost,” edited by Richard David, pp. xiii-lii. London: Methuen, 1951.

Concentrates on allusions, sources, textual revision, and topical contexts in regard to Love's Labour's Lost.

Hehl, Ursula. “Elements of Narcissistic Personality Disorders in Love's Labour's Lost.” Literature and Psychology 40, nos. 1-2 (1994): 48-70.

Applies the concepts of narcissistic personality disorder to a psychoanalytic understanding of the principal male figures in Love's Labour's Lost: Berowne, Navarre, and Armado.

Hoberman, J. Review of Love's Labour's Lost. Village Voice 45, no. 23 (13 June 2000): 155.

Views Kenneth Branagh's 2000 filmed version of Love's Labour's Lost as a shameless travesty.

Kiefer, Frederick. “Spring and Winter in Love's Labour's Lost: An Iconographic Reconstruction.” Comparative Drama 29, no. 1 (spring 1995): 91-9.

Studies iconographic images of the seasons in order to consider how Shakespeare may have imagined the figures of Spring and Winter in Love's Labour's Lost on stage.

Lennam, Trevor. “‘The Ventricle of Memory’: Wit and Wisdom in Love's Labour's Lost. Shakespeare Quarterly 24, no. 1 (winter 1973): 54-60.

Suggests that Shakespeare based his Love's Labour's Lost on several educational morality plays of the mid-sixteenth century that deal with the subject of wit.

Nakanori, Koshi. “The Structure of Love's Labour's Lost.” In “Love's Labour's Lost”: Critical Essays, edited by Felicia Hardison Londré, pp. 289-99. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

Studies thematic and language-based elements in Love's Labour's Lost, arguing that the play shares strong structural affinities with Shakespeare's other “festive” comedies.

Proudfoot, Richard. “Love's Labour's Lost: Sweet Understanding and the Five Worthies.” In Essays and Studies 1984, edited by Raymond Chapman, pp. 16-30. London: John Murray, 1984.

Summarizes the principal concerns of Love's Labour's Lost, including courtship, learning, and the social function of language, and surveys the play's comic elements, characters, themes, and the lengthy final scene.

Skura, Meredith Anne. “Armado and Costard in the French Academy: Player as Clown.” In “Love's Labour's Lost”: Critical Essays, edited by Felicia Hardison Londré, pp. 313-23. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

Highlights the metadramatic elements in Love's Labour's Lost, focusing on Armado and his vain attempt to depict the soldierly, heroic ideal on stage.

Wickham, Glynne. “Love's Labour's Lost and The Four Foster Children of Desire, 1581.” Shakespeare Quarterly 36, no. 1 (spring 1985): 49-55.

Considers the Elizabethan drama The Four Foster Children of Desire as a likely partial source for Love's Labour's Lost.

Woudhuysen, H. R. Introduction to The Arden Shakespeare: “Love's Labour's Lost,” edited by H. R. Woudhuysen, pp. 1-106. Walton-on-Thames, UK: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1998.

Surveys the style and formal structure of Love's Labour's Lost, while emphasizing significant themes associated with language in the play.