[In the following essay, originally published in Japanese in 1982, Nakanori argues that Love's Labour's Lost shares strong structural affinities with Shakespeare's other “festive” comedies.]

Some of Shakespeare's works have long been neglected and only recently come to critical attention. Love's Labour's Lost is a typical example, illustrating most vividly the fluctuations in Shakespearean criticism.

Aside from Richard Burbage's opinion, contemporary to the play and praising its “wytt” and “mirthe,” the general tone of its critical history since the Restoration has been negative, although parts of the play were occasionally commended. Until the twentieth century, most critics considered the play a failure or an immature piece. William Hazlitt went so far as to declare: “If we were to part with any of the author's comedies, it should be this.”¹

Even in the age of adaptations, Love's Labour's Lost earned only one such compliment, the anonymous The Students, published in 1762, but never performed. It was not until the 1830s that the original version of the play returned to the stage along with other plays of Shakespeare.

The main reason for this disregard is the play's structural defect; that is, its lack of substantial plot. Four young men swear to reject women's company and to devote themselves to scholarly life but easily give up their resolution upon meeting four young ladies. They approach the ladies in disguise and try to woo them, but end up being ridiculed. Such a flimsy main plot is accompanied by a subplot no less trifling. Critics also charge that the pedantic language is unnatural and too extravagant, not suitable for the action or the characters. As for characterization, the play is not totally devoid of impressive characters, yet they are a far cry from Hamlet or Falstaff. Thus, Love's Labour's Lost came to be regarded as the playwright's earliest experimental work and different from the later comedies.² It is argued from the way the characters enter and exit that the play should be seen as a sort of masque.³ Indeed, it was staged as a musical comedy in 1919.

A diametrically opposed view has gained momentum in the latter half of this century. In this new view, the play is a mainstream Shakespearean comedy, or at least its prototype, certainly not of the alleged minor status. In place of the time-honored concept of romantic comedies, C. L. Barber introduced the “festive” viewpoint and tried to apply it to all Shakespearean comedies. In this perspective, Love's Labour's Lost is a typical festive comedy.⁴ P. G. Phialas argues that the critics have mistaken a difference in degree for one in kind. Relative weight placed on each component may vary, but the entire makeup of the play is clearly the same as that of the other Shakespearean comedies.⁵

These two recent approaches are different in that the former deals with the play's deep structure, while the latter engages in a thematic or moralistic analysis. Both of them, however, emphasize common features that the play shares with the other comedies. On the other hand, the play's language has been attracting increasing attention recently, and many papers try to reevaluate the play from this angle. What was once a cause for critical disregard has turned into an object of admiration. Although as a romantic comedy reminiscent of medieval romance, Love's Labour's Lost is no match for Twelfth Night and As You Like It, I contend that structually the play has unmistakable features of Shakespearean comedies. Even the play's language is not essentially different, though it is entangled with the action in an exceptionally complicated manner due to the disproportionately large emphasis placed on it. I would like to elaborate on my thesis by noting at the outset the check and balance between the two conflicting forces—especially the one working on a structural level—that can be observed throughout Shakespearean comedies.

Such forces operate as the plot unfolds. What is common among many Shakespearean plays and especially marked in his early comedies is a pattern in which the plot movement virtually comes to a halt in much of a scene and shifts to a gallop in the few remaining lines. In Love's Labour's Lost this pattern appears in Act I, Scene 2, wherein Armado and Moth converse. The only thing that is revealed in the first 120 lines of their conversation is that despite his pledge with the King and the lords to three years of scholarly life, Armado has fallen in love with Costard's sweetheart Jaquenetta. It is not until the last part of the scene that she is described in detail. Before that, the audience has no choice but to enjoy the scene as it is: light-hearted wordplay (mainly puns) and a song. And as Costard enters the scene, the plot unfolds quickly. A similar pattern is observable in the latter half of Act I, Scene 1, of Two Gentlemen of Verona, when Proteus talks with Speed, and also in the final act of The Merchant of Venice, when Lorenzo and Jessica talk in the moonlight.

Rather than see such stagnation and activation of the plot movement as a rhythm inherent in the plot itself, we should take it as the coexistence of narrative thrust and an entertainment factor. In other words, Shakespearean comedies harbor two conflicting forces: a centripetal (converging) force driving the story forward and a centrifugal (diverging) force indulging the audience in whatever merriment a particular moment offers. This coexistence is not limited to the level of the scene. The centrifugal factor is found on a smaller scale, for instance, as song and dance and wordplay, or on a larger scale as the carefree life in the timeless “Forest of Arden,” which takes up much of the play. In Love's Labour's Lost the conflicting forces are relatively apparent. So, the charge that the play lacks plot must be reconsidered from this viewpoint.

Three dramatic traditions predominated when Shakespeare began his career as a playwright: medieval moralities, classical tragedy and comedy, and the romance. Moralities and interludes were still performed. The London stage was very much alive with various types of plays including dramatizations of myths and romances by John Lyly and Robert Greene, tragedies written in blank verse by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, and Anglicized classical comedies like Ralph Roister Doister. Among them it was probably the dramatized romances that Shakespeare most consciously drew upon, partly because that was the most popular type of comedy at the time, and partly because throughout his career—from early comedies like The Two Gentlemen of Verona through middle comedies to late plays like Pericles and The Winter's Tale—we can vividly see the influence of romances. Even The Comedy of Errors, which is usually considered to have been modeled mainly on a classical comedy, has been seen by one critic as inspired by the framing romance of the breakup and reunion of a family.⁶

A romance generally has a complicated plot ranging widely in time and space, in which strange things happen in succession. A girl pursues in disguise her estranged lover who got away, and survives numerous difficulties to be reunited with him in the end. A family blown apart by a storm comes together after more than a decade. A chaste wife is persecuted by her jealous husband. Such stories were popular in those days.

The influence of the Roman comedies on Shakespeare was significant as source material rather than as an operational dramatic tradition. It is characteristic of Roman comedies, especially those by Terence, that the plot is closely connected with characterization. The plot somehow derives from characterization, and there is little action independent of the plot.

Moralities (though they are not necessarily comedies) naturally have actions with a certain didactic orientation.

A comedy, as long as it drew upon these three traditions, was created on a progressive principle, and scenes irrelevant to the plot development had no place in it. The dramatic traditions that Shakespeare's flexible and comprehensive mind employed, however, were not limited to those three. Other native traditions—miracles and chronicle plays—must also be taken into account. Among the many kinds of influence (including staging methods) that these plays had on Shakespeare, the most important one for our concern is the emphasis on scenes rather than on plot. While the play as a whole relates a history or unfolds a portion of a character's life, the scenes are not necessarily connected in an organic manner, nor was it unusual for a role to be played by several actors. That Shakespeare adopted such a scene-oriented creative principle is apparent when we turn our eyes from his histories to tragedies like Hamlet, not to mention his comedies.

Depending upon the distribution of emphasis—either on plot development or on individual scenes—various combinations result. What further complicates the matter is the influence of the courtly and popular festivals and entertainments. If we call them “festive elements,” the theatre itself is a festive element in our life. Shakespeare came to integrate festive elements into his theatre, largely due to the circumstances of his age. As C. L. Barber and other critics have pointed out, in addition to obvious festive elements like songs, dances, and plays-within-plays, Shakespeare's comedies often contain an experience in which the characters are temporarily released from reality and return with an insight into society and human nature. And this type of experience is characterized by haphazardry rather than by a clear direction.

These various elements meet in Shakespeare's genius, and the chemistry produces an organism called play. The product as a whole keeps balance while each part of it contains conflicting forces.

Returning to Love's Labour's Lost, we find that the story unfolds along two different axes. One is a thematic development: the King of Navarre and his lords wrongfully defy human nature when they forswear interaction with women, and they come to realize their folly through their contact with the outside world. Instead of restoring natural affection, however, they overly idealize or idolize love, and must face another correction. After they go through several stages, the play ends with a hope of happy marriages. Such a thematic thread may well be spun from impressions of the play. It is also justified, considering the way Shakespeare was to write his later comedies. When the plot unfolds along such a thematic line, each scene or episode is drawn along by a centripetal force.

The other direction concerns theatrical language and entertainment-related expressions abundantly found in the play. They may introduce a scene or episode, or drive the story on to the next scene or episode.

BEROWNE.
All hid, all hid; an old infant play.
Like a demi-god here sit I in the sky,
And wretched fools' secrets heedfully o'er-eye.

(IV.3.74-76)

.....

HOLOFERNES.
… To our sport, away!

(V.1.146)

.....

PRINCESS.
There's no such sport as sport by sport o'erthrown,
To make theirs ours and ours none but our own:
So shall we stay, mocking intended game,
And they well mock'd, depart away with shame.

(V.2.153-156)

While these lines call for entertainment, the motive for doing so often seems arbitrary. Sometimes it looks as though entertainment was needed only to further the plot.

The structure of Love's Labour's Lost should be analyzed along this line. Berowne asks: “But is there no quick recreation granted?” (I.1.159). The King mentions Armado in reply, and immediately enter Dull and Costard with a letter from Armado. The audience has the impression that the comical exchanges between these clownish characters are the very sport Berowne has just requested. The same pattern can be observed in A Midsummer Night's Dream. At the beginning of the play, Theseus orders Philostrate to make necessary arrangements to while away the time merrily until his wedding. As soon as the order is given, Egeus comes with his daughter to seek justice from the Duke. Then begins a panoramic revel lasting till the wedding day.

A Midsummer Night's Dream unfolds before the Duke as a revel performed by the Athenian youths, the mechanicals, and the fairies. And at the same time, unwittingly involving the members of court as participants, it forms itself as a celebratory play. The same structure applies to Love's Labour's Lost. The subplot unfolds as an entertainment called forth by the King and his lords, and the main characters join in to amuse the Princess of France and her ladies with their Russian disguise and the pageant of the Nine Worthies. Finally, the concentric structure of the play reaches another sphere involving the Princess and her ladies, and completes itself as a festive comedy. (In this case, it does not matter whether the play was written for a special occasion.) In a play with such a structure, each scene or episode is regarded as a part of the entertainment, introduced haphazardly, neither based on characterization nor thematic necessity. A scene ends just as a game does: the disguise exposed or an outside force interrupting the revel (i.e., a messenger reports the death of the French King in V.2).

Love's Labour's Lost is thus constructed on the two conflicting forces, centripetal and centrifugal. Yet the relation between the two forces must be an ambiguous one, considering that a more mature comedy has a harmonious atmosphere. These two forces, while seemingly directed in opposite courses—and, indeed, working thus on the surface—ultimately have the same function. Many of Shakespeare's comedies share a pattern in centripetally developing the plot or story. Alone and away from the ordinary world, the hero or heroine faces a physical and psychological crisis, and somehow survives to be rewarded with a happy marriage. This pattern could be generalized further into Northrop Frye's formula. After going through a crisis, there is a restoration of identity of the main characters and the society in which they live. It happens to describe then the same type of human experience enacted during a festival or entertainment. There we are released voluntarily or automatically from the rules of and the protection provided by our daily life, and after going through an intensive experience in the relationship newly formed in nature, return home. And by the homecoming the ordinary world is infused with new energy, just as in a Shakespearean comedy the society is revitalized by a marriage.

In Shakespearean comedies, each scene or moment has a tendency to fade spatially into the festive world, just as it unfolds temporally along the plot line, both expressing the same human experience. This is unique to Shakespeare and not observable, for instance, in Molière's satirical comedies. There, individual characters are deposed to restore social order, and plot is closely related to characterization in its centripetal progress. The more emphasis is placed on individual characters, the less room is left for a comedy to accommodate festivity. In Shakespeare's comedies, on the other hand, restoration of social order is definitely secondary to restoration of individual characters. In a few exceptional works like The Merry Wives of Windsor, which do not center on the common human experience mentioned earlier, the festive element derails the action. In a typical Shakespearean comedy, however, as long as the overall harmony is not disturbed, the festive element adds to the richness of the play. Love's Labour's Lost elucidates this mechanism all the more clearly because it has no definite sources.

Love's Labour's Lost is a festive play also in terms of language. At the outset, the King of Navarre calls for the three young lords to subscribe to the agreed-upon pledge that for a three-year period they renounce women's company and other worldly desires and devote themselves to studies. Unlike the other two who sign immediately, Berowne complains. Is study to be sought at such pains? Can we expect a reward proportionate to the pains? It's unnatural in the first place: I do not desire a rose at Christmas any more than I wish snow in May:

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile:
So ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.

(I.1.77-79)

He argues against study in such highly rhetorical language replete with alliterations and rhymes that we want to quip with the King:

How well he's read, to reason against reading!

(I.1.94)

This irony corresponds with another in the middle of Act V, Scene 2, the climax of this play in terms of language. After their elaborate scheme to woo the ladies is exposed and fails completely, Berowne states his resolve on simplicity in a highly rhetorical language. Instead of employing “taffeta phrases, silken terms precise / Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce affectation, / Figures pedantical” (V.2.406-407), he says,

Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd
In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes!

(V.2.413-414)

After all, Love's Labour's Lost cannot break the spell of language. We feel that Shakespeare, while casting a cynical eye at indulgence in language, cannot escape the trap himself. Indulgence in language, of course, is not confined to the author, but can be found in every character. This play has many instances where, in response to someone uttering a sharp aphorism or making a witty reply, another in the company praises it or makes a note of it.⁷ Indeed, as Moth says: “They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps” (V.1.33-34). It is not too much to say that Love's Labour's Lost is a feast of language through and through. The other plays of Shakespeare also abound in linguistic appeal and wordplay, but this play is unique in that most speeches throughout the play are given some twist by the speakers consciously or unconsciously, and that the words are inseparable from characterization, and they combine to form the action of the play.

The twists in the speeches and wordplay range widely from puns to witty exchanges, but they agree in being a free departure from the context and a free association of meanings. Ambivalent words shift from one meaning to the other and sometimes mix both meanings. Distorted or nearly lost, their meanings become mere sounds or even mere length (honorificabilitudinitatibus). Words become tennis balls to bounce among the speakers, dice to be cast among the players. In such ways, words continually overcome the stagnation of fixed meanings and are revitalized by new associations. For people who do it consciously, this process involves constant relaxing of rigidities and keeping themselves flexible. Thus it may be said to parallel the festive experience, which, as noted before, proceeds from liberation to rebirth.

In the very first scene of the play, the votaries' pledge is no sooner made than broken. We can attribute the cause of the failure not to the visit of the French Princess and her ladies, but to the pledge itself. The rhetorical expressions in Berowne's speech noted above may serve to emphasize that the pledge is a hollow one from the start. According to Rosalie Colie, the action of Love's Labour's Lost lies in the process by which conventional doctrine or expressions are exposed to be artificial and unnatural, and are replaced by seemingly more realistic doctrine or expressions.⁸ For instance, the idea that an academic paradise can be created by excluding women was already out of fashion at the time, and it naturally falters in the play all too easily. To cover up their defeat, Berowne brings up another stereotype (this time, Petrarchan), which again harbors a self-destructive element. It is the Princess and her ladies who respond to it from a realistic point of view and materialize it on the stage. The moment the King's group meets that of the Princess, their words become the target of criticism.

KING.
Fair Princess, welcome to the court of Navarre.
PRINCESS.
‘Fair’ I give you back again, and welcome I have not yet.

(II.2.90-92)

Here she takes his mere formalities literally and retorts in a sarcastic manner—a device Shakespeare is to employ repeatedly in his later works. The more the men elaborate their speech, the more suspicious the women become, for the men's expressions of love are perceived on the level of wordplay. This attitude is illustrated in the battle of wit between Rosaline and Katharine over the various meanings of “light” at the beginning of V.2. Love letters fall into the wrong hands and the masked lovers woo the wrong ladies, stage actions ironizing hollow amatory speech. If love letters and amatory talk are mere words after all, it does not matter from whom to whom they are addressed. Of course, the letters of Berowne and Armado function differently in the plot, but in terms of expression, both of them signify their affection and are therefore interchangeable.

Similarly, the subplot casts a cynical light on the unnatural pledge and the exaggerated expressions of affection of the King and Berowne. Immediately after they subscribe to the pledge, Constable Dull brings Costard before them with Armado's letter reporting that he caught Costard secretly meeting Jaquenetta in defiance of the King's proclamation. The King faces the first test of his resolution. He gives Costard a sentence ordering him to “fast a week with bran and water” (I.1.280). Berowne comments in an aside: “These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn” (I.1.288). Costard complains: “I suffer for the truth, sir; for true it is I was taken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl” (I.1.302-304). Although he is placed in the custody of Armado, Costard acts without any restraint in the later development of the plot. Furthermore, his words come to have a sharper satirical effect than he intended, as his custodian falls in love with Jaquenetta and the proclamation is invalidated by the bad faith of the proclaimer. Costard's function is retained in the latter half of the play, as Jaquenetta's pregnancy brings into relief the hollowness of the love of the youths in the main plot. The subplot involving commedia dell'arte stock characters burlesques the main plot and engenders a similar atmosphere through the theme of love and language. It is a typical example of the function of double plot in Shakespearean comedies.

Don Armado is a pivotal figure for the double plot. That he and Berowne are deliberately contrasted is clear from the way they both fall in love against the pledge they made, and the way they soliloquize at the end of Acts I and III respectively. It is also clearly shown in their language. Yet while Armado, who “hath a mint of phrases in his brain” (I.1.163), indulges in rhetoric as he is reputed to do, he also shows clumsiness in his response to Moth's wit and he can only behave brusquely with Jaquenetta. This is probably due to his function as Berowne's foil, which he also fulfills with his comically embellished love letter. We should also note that he functions as a funhouse mirror: in laughing at Armado, the courtiers see their own follies reflected in him. The most marked characteristic, shared only by Berowne and Armado among all the characters, is that while they cannot resist their feelings of love, they also know the defects of their lovers.

ARMADO.
I do affect the very ground, which is base, where her shoe, which is baser, guided by her foot, which is basest, doth tread.
BEROWNE.
A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,
With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes;
Ay and by heaven, one that will do the deed
Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.
And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!
To pray for her!

(III.1.186-190)

This ambivalent attitude of disillusioned indulgence is the most fundamental one that pervades Shakespearean comedies. It has a similar function to ambivalent words which cannot be pinned down to one meaning or another.

In the pageant of the Nine Worthies, the worlds of the courtiers, the French nobility, and the commoners are merged. And just as the festivity reaches a climax, a messenger arrives to report the death of the King of France. This sudden blow is a reminder, along the thematic line of language, that the “russet yeas and honest kersey noes” of Berowne and others are still too artificial. It also serves an important purpose of changing the mood of the play. It often happens in Shakespearean comedies that the mirthful action suddenly assumes a serious tone at, or very close to, the denouement. Besides being a sobering artistic device, it contextualizes the festive world in the society, be it artificial or natural.

At the end of Love's Labour's Lost, at least, the frivolous love of the youths is placed in the context of human nature and the real society: the ladies will marry them if they can renounce playful language and keep the flame of their love burning. And the closing song of the cuckoo and the owl wraps it all up in an even larger perspective. The song consists of four stanzas—two dealing with spring and the other two with winter—and sounds as if it enveloped the artificial world in the cycle of nature. We should also note that the song, as sung (and perhaps danced) by Holofernes and other characters in the subplot, reflects the mood of the entire play in its comical effect. Finally, in terms of its ironical structure—amorous spring causes jealous husbands to worry, whereas harsh winter has its share of warm domesticity—the song parallels the entire play.

Notes

1. William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (Oxford: The World's Classics, 1817), p. 241. Hazlitt goes on to evaluate the characters, and as each one of them is difficult to leave out, he concludes, “we may let the whole play stand as it is,” with the reservation that he objects to the play's pedantic style.

2. For example, H. B. Charlton, Shakespearean Comedy (London 1938); Alfred Harbage, “Love's Labour's Lost and the Early Shakespeare,” Philological Quarterly 41 (1962), 18-36.

3. Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare: First Series (London 1927).

4. C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Princeton 1959), pp. 87-118.

5. P. G. Phialas, Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies (Chapel Hill 1966), pp. 65-101.

6. Leo Salingar, Shakespeare and the Tradition of Comedy (Cambridge 1974), pp. 66-67.

7. III.1.129; IV.2.60; V.1.16; V.2.29.

8. Rosalie L. Colie, Shakespeare's Living Art (Princeton 1974), pp. 31-50.