Love's Labour's Lost
Synopsis
A glittering, word-drunk comedy of young men who try to outlaw love — and fail. Ferdinand, King of Navarre, persuades three companion lords (Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine) to swear a three-year oath: to study hard, fast, sleep little, and see no women, turning the court into a 'little academe.' The witty Berowne signs against his better judgement. No sooner is the oath sworn than the Princess of France arrives on a diplomatic embassy with three ladies (Rosaline, Maria, Katharine), and the four scholars fall in love at once, each forsworn. Around them swirl a gallery of comic pretenders to language: the fantastical Spaniard Don Armado, who loves the dairymaid Jaquenetta; his sharp page Moth; the rustic clown Costard; the pedant schoolmaster Holofernes and the curate Nathaniel. The men woo by letter and sonnet (and muddle the letters), disguise themselves as Russians to court the wrong, masked ladies, and stage a pageant of the Nine Worthies that collapses into mockery. Then a messenger, Marcade, brings word that the Princess's father, the King of France, is dead. The mood turns grave; the ladies refuse to be won on the spot and impose a year's penance — Berowne, tellingly, must spend it making the sick laugh — before any marriage can be considered. 'Our wooing doth not end like an old play: / Jack hath not Jill.' The comedy closes not with weddings but with the songs of Spring and Winter, and love's labour, for now, lost.
Read
-
ACT I.
The King of Navarre and his lords swear a three-year oath of study and celibacy; the skeptical Berowne signs last and least willingly. The first offender against the new edict is the clown Costard, caught with Jaquenetta and denounced in a fantastical letter from the Spaniard Don Armado — who, it emerges, desires Jaquenetta himself.
- Scene 1 — The King of Navarre's park
Ferdinand, King of Navarre, binds himself and the lords Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine by oath to three years of study, fasting, and shunning women. Berowne mocks the vow even as he signs it. News arrives that the clown Costard has been caught with the wench Jaquenetta, breaking the new law, and Armado's letter denounces him.
- Scene 2 — The park.
Don Armado confesses to his page Moth that he is in love with Jaquenetta, despite his own contempt for love, and resolves to woo her with grand rhetoric. Costard is delivered into Armado's keeping as punishment.
- Scene 1 — The King of Navarre's park
-
ACT II.
The Princess of France arrives on an embassy about the province of Aquitaine, attended by her ladies and the worldly lord Boyet. The King, bound by his oath, must lodge her in the field rather than at court — and he and each of his lords are privately smitten, quizzing Boyet about the ladies' names.
- Scene 1 — The King of Navarre's park. A pavilion and tents at a distance.
The Princess of France and her ladies Rosaline, Maria, and Katharine reach Navarre on business over Aquitaine. The oath-bound King receives them coolly and lodges them outside his gates, but he is taken with the Princess, while Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine each privately ask Boyet the name of the lady who has caught his eye. Boyet teases that the King is already in love.
- Scene 1 — The King of Navarre's park. A pavilion and tents at a distance.
-
ACT III.
Armado frees Costard to carry a love-letter to Jaquenetta; Berowne separately hires Costard to bear his own sonnet to Rosaline. Left alone, Berowne rages comically at himself for breaking his oath and falling — of all people — in love.
- Scene 1 — The King of Navarre's park.
Armado, with much fanfare, releases Costard to deliver a letter to Jaquenetta. Berowne then gives Costard a second letter — his love-poem — to carry to Rosaline, and in soliloquy mocks and marvels at his own surrender to love, the very thing he swore against.
- Scene 1 — The King of Navarre's park.
-
ACT IV.
On the hunt, the misdelivered letters surface — Costard hands the Princess Armado's absurd letter, and gives Jaquenetta Berowne's sonnet, which the learned Holofernes has read aloud. In the play's central scene, the King and each lord in turn read out a love-poem and are caught overhearing one another, until Berowne is exposed too and delivers a soaring defence of love as the truest study.
- Scene 1 — The King of Navarre's park.
The Princess hunts deer in the park and teases the Forester and Boyet. Costard delivers a letter — Armado's grandiose love-letter to Jaquenetta, misdirected — which is read aloud for the company's amusement.
- Scene 2 — The same.
The pedant Holofernes, the curate Nathaniel, and the dim constable Dull trade learned chatter; Holofernes improvises a Latinate epitaph on the Princess's deer. Jaquenetta brings the letter Costard mis-delivered to her — in fact Berowne's sonnet to Rosaline — and Holofernes reads it, exposing Berowne as a lover.
- Scene 3 — The same.
The great overhearing scene: Berowne hides and watches as the King, then Longaville, then Dumaine each enter alone, read aloud a love-poem, and accuse the next of forswearing — until Berowne springs out to shame them all, only to be exposed by Jaquenetta's letter himself. Caught out together, the four agree to abandon the oath, and Berowne crowns the scene with a rhapsodic argument that love, not cold study, is the true 'academe.'
- Scene 1 — The King of Navarre's park.
-
ACT V.
Holofernes and the others plan a pageant of the Nine Worthies. The lords, disguised as Russians, woo the masked ladies — who, forewarned, have swapped favours and mock the men mercilessly. The Worthies' pageant is heckled to a halt; then Marcade brings news of the French king's death. The ladies impose a year's trial on their suitors, and the play ends with the songs of Spring and Winter.
- Scene 1 — The King of Navarre's park.
Holofernes, Nathaniel, Armado, Moth, and Costard arrange to present a show of the Nine Worthies for the royal visitors. Moth and Costard puncture the pedants' learned posturing.
- Scene 2 — The same. Before the Princess's pavilion.
The play's long finale. Forewarned by Boyet, the ladies put on masks and swap the love-tokens the lords have sent, so that when the men arrive disguised as Russians each woos the wrong lady and is mercilessly mocked. Unmasked and out-witted, the lords watch the well-meaning pageant of the Nine Worthies dissolve into heckling. Then Marcade enters with news that the Princess's father is dead. The revels stop; the ladies, doubting the lords' sudden love, set each a year's penance — Berowne to jest in a hospital — before any marriage. The play ends with the rival songs of Spring (the cuckoo) and Winter (the owl), and Armado's 'You that way; we this way.'
- Scene 1 — The King of Navarre's park.
Characters
- Berowne protagonist
The wittiest of the King of Navarre's three companion lords, and the one who from the first mocks the folly of their oath to study and forswear women. A brilliant, self-aware skeptic, he falls hardest of all — for the dark-eyed Rosaline — and speaks the play's great defense of love as the true book of learning.
- King of Navarre major
Ferdinand, King of Navarre, who persuades his lords to swear a three-year oath of austere study, fasting, and avoidance of women — only to fall in love with the visiting Princess of France the moment she arrives. His scholarly 'little academe' collapses into wooing.
- Princess of France deuteragonist
The Princess of France, sent on a diplomatic embassy to Navarre, who leads her ladies with grace, intelligence, and self-possession. Courted by the King, she keeps her wit and her distance — and when news comes of her father's death, imposes a year's penance on the lovers before any match can be made.
- Rosaline major
A dark-complexioned lady attending the Princess, and Berowne's match in wit and mockery. Their sparring courtship anticipates Beatrice and Benedick; at the close she sets Berowne the year-long task of using his jests to comfort the sick, to test whether his love is more than wordplay.
- Longaville supporting
One of the three lords who swear the King's oath; he falls in love with Maria and woos her with a sonnet.
- Dumaine supporting
One of the three lords sworn to the King's oath; he falls in love with Katharine and, like the others, breaks his vow with a love-poem.
- Maria supporting
A lady attending the Princess, beloved of Longaville, whom she remembers from an earlier meeting.
- Katharine supporting
A lady attending the Princess, beloved of Dumaine; she trades barbed wit with Boyet and the lords and recalls a sister who died of love.
- Boyet supporting
A worldly, sharp-tongued French lord who attends the Princess, scouting out the lords' love and relaying their secrets. The young men resent him as a smooth, courtly go-between.
- Don Adriano de Armado supporting
A 'fantastical' Spanish braggart and word-spinner lodged at Navarre's court for entertainment — all inflated rhetoric and threadbare pretension. He loves the country wench Jaquenetta, presents the pageant of the Nine Worthies (as Hector), and is left at the play's end to follow the plough for her sake.
- Moth supporting
Armado's small, quick-witted page, who runs verbal rings around his grandiloquent master and plays the infant Hercules in the Worthies' pageant.
- Costard supporting
A clownish country fellow whose plain-spoken malapropisms puncture the courtiers' fine talk. Caught with Jaquenetta against the new edict, he carries (and muddles) the lords' love-letters and plays Pompey the Great in the pageant.
- Holofernes supporting
A pompous village schoolmaster who drowns every thought in Latin tags, synonyms, and pedantic display — the type of the learned fool. He devises the pageant of the Nine Worthies and plays Judas Maccabaeus, only to be heckled off the stage.
- Sir Nathaniel minor
A curate and admiring sidekick of the schoolmaster Holofernes, echoing his learning; he plays Alexander the Great in the pageant and is mocked out of the part.
- Anthony Dull minor
The dim village constable, who understands nothing of Holofernes and Nathaniel's learned chatter and says almost nothing through the scene he shares with them.
- Jaquenetta minor
A good-humoured country dairymaid, desired by both Costard and the absurd Armado; she is the occasion of the first breach of the King's edict.
- Forester minor
A keeper of the park who attends the Princess's hunt and is teased by her over where the best stand for shooting lies.
- Marcade minor
A French lord who arrives near the end with the grave news of the death of the Princess's father, the King of France — the stroke that turns the comedy sober.
- First Lord minor
A lord attending the Princess of France.
- Spring (Ver) ensemble
The voice of Spring (Latin 'Ver') in the paired songs that close the play. Spring's song, 'When daisies pied and violets blue,' praises the cuckoo — whose call sounds a teasing warning to married men. Sung by the assembled players as one of two seasonal sides.
- Winter (Hiems) ensemble
The voice of Winter (Latin 'Hiems') in the paired songs that close the play. Winter's song, 'When icicles hang by the wall,' answers Spring with homely images of frost and the hooting owl. Sung by the assembled players as the second of two seasonal sides.