Shakespeare Preview: Love’s Labour’s Lost

A comedy that shares much with A Midsummer Nights Dream, Love’s Labour’s Lost begins with a group of men worried about the short span of their lives. Determined to offset an individual’s ephemeral presence on the earth, King Ferdinand decides that the way to immortality is through significant achievement that will warrant remembrance in ages to come. His strategy for achievement is a curious one: his court will become a temporary hermitage where study and fasting will gain him the fame he seeks. Ferdinand is sure in his strategy:

Our late edict shall strongly stand in force:
Navarre shall be the wonder of the world;
Our court shall be a little academe,
Still and contemplative in living art. I.i.12-14

As part of this edict, women will not be allowed near the court (with punishment worse for the woman who comes within a mile of court than the man who consorts with a woman). But even as the three lords attending the King swear to abide by the three-year’s fasting and study, the King is reminded of the expected arrival of the King of France’s daughter on a matter of serious state business.

Predictably, the Princess arrives with three attending ladies (nicely matching up with the three fasting lords) and ultimately exposing the academe as the silly bit of hubris that it is.

Aside from the matched lords and ladies, Shakespeare populates the play with a number of stock characters and situations for amusements, distractions, and merriment: a clown, a country wench, a conceited foreign fantastic, a play within a play performed by local rustics, and extensive word play.

But Shakespeare pulls back from providing the comedy that seems inevitable from the opening scene and uses the entrance of the women to shine a bit of reality on hasty oaths and the intrusion of death to re-examine insincere attempt at immortality. Instead of the ending the King and his men desire, Shakespeare provides the ending that they, and perhaps we, need.

Love’s Labour’s Lost plays in repetory with The Tempest through July 26.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org