I. THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY. THE earliest edition of Love's Labour's Lost (or Love's Labours Lost, as Mr. Furnivall believes we should write it) that has come down to us is a quarto published in 1598, with the following title-page (as given in the Camb. ed.): A Pleasant | Conceited Comedie | called, | Loues labors lost. As it was presented before her Highnes | this last Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented | By W. Shake spere. | Imprinted at London by W. W. | for Cutbert Burby. | 1598. No entry of the play upon the Stationers' Registers appears before January 22, 1606-7, when it was transferred by Burby to N. Ling, who may have brought out a new edition, though no copy of it or reference to it is now known. A second quarto, published in 1631, "by W. S. for Iohn Smethwicke" (to whom Ling assigned the copyright in 1607) is apparently reprinted from the folio of 1623. The earliest mention of the play that has been discovered is in the following lines from a poem entitled Alba, or the Months Mind of a Melancholy Lover, by "R. T. Gentleman' (Robert Tofte), published by Burby in 1598: Each Actor plaid in cunning wise his part, It is included in Meres's list, printed in the same year (see M. N. D. p. 9, or C. of E. p. 102).* The quarto of 1598 professes to be "newly corrected and augmented," and there can be little doubt that it is the revised form of a play written some years before, and not improbably Shakespeare's first play. Drake, Delius, and Fleay date it in 1591, Stoke in 1591-2, Chalmers in 1592, and * On the play of "Loue labours wonne," which Meres associates with it, see A. W. p. 9 fol. Malone in 1594. Furnival is inclined to make the date 1588-9,* and White "probably not later than 1588." Among the marks of an early style (cf. Stokes, Chron. Order of Shakespeare's Plays, p. 28) may be mentioned: the introduction of well-known old characters (besides "the Nine Worthies," we have what Biron, in v. 2. 540, calls "the pedant, the braggart, the hedge priest, the fool, and the boy "†); the observance of the "unities;" the abundance of rhyme, the doggerel, the sonnets ‡ (occasionally as speeches); the alliteration, or "affecting the letter," as Holofernes calls it; the quibbles, antitheses, repartees," the sparkles of wit, like a blaze of fireworks" (Schlegel); the proverbial expressions; the peculiar and pedantic grammatical constructions; the words used in their native forms; the display of learning; the pairs of characters; the disguising and changing of persons; the chorus-like, alternate answers; the strained dialogue, etc. It is "a play of conversation and situation" (Furnivall), in which "depth of characterization is subordinate to elegance and sprightliness of dialogue" (Staunton). There is a want of reality about it all; even the occasion-a princess acting as an ambassadress—is unnatural. The play is poorly printed in both the quarto and the folio, and the repetition of sundry typographical errors proves that the latter was set up from a copy of the former. There are, however, variations in the two texts which indi * He says: "I have no hesitation in picking out this as Shakspere's earliest play. The reason that has induced some critics to put it later is, I believe, that it is much more carefully worked-at and polished than some of the other early plays." This he ascribes to the revision of the play; and he refers to some striking evidences of the correction, which will be found in our Notes below. † In the prefixes and stage-directions of the folio, Armado is often "the braggart," Holofernes "the pedant," Nathaniel "the curate," Costard "the clown," and Moth " the boy" or "page." Some of these sonnets were printed by Jaggard in The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599. For others, cf. Sonn. 127, 137. cate that the editors of the folio were occasionally indebted to some other authority than the quarto. II. THE SOURCES OF THE PLOT. The plot, so far as we know, was original with Shakespeare. Dowden remarks: "The play is precisely such a one as a clever young man might imagine, who had come lately from the country with its 'daisies pied and violets blue,' its 'merry larks,' its maidens who 'bleach their summer smocks,' its pompous parish schoolmaster, and its dull constable (a) great public official in his own eyes)—to the town, where he was surrounded by more brilliant unrealities, and affectations of dress, of manner, of language, and of ideas. Love's Labour's Lost is a dramatic plea on behalf of nature and of common-sense against all that is unreal and affected." But, as White says, "that the play is founded upon some older work, its undramatic character, its needless fulness of detail, its air of artificial romance, and the attribution of particular personal traits-such as black eyes and a dark complexion to one, great size to another, and a face pitted with the smallpox to another of the ladies, and the merely incidental hints that one of the king's friends is an officer in the army and extremely youthful-seem unmistakable evidence; and that the story is of French origin is as clearly shown by the nationality of the titles, the Gallicism of calling a love-letter a capon, the appearance of the strong French negative point twice, and the use of seigneur instead of signior." Rev. Joseph Hunter, in his New Illustrations (vol. i. p. 256) suggests that the poet may have got a hint from Monstrelet's Chronicles, according to which Charles, King of Navarre, surrendered to the King of France the castle of Cherbourg, the county of Evreux, and other lordships for the Duchy of Nemours and a promise of 200,000 gold crowns. Sundry passages which appear to have been borrowed or imitated from other writers will be pointed out in the Notes. |