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Comedy play by William Shakespeare

Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid 1590s for a performance at the Inns of Court before Queen Elizabeth I. It follows the King of Navarre and his three companions as they attempt to swear off the company of women for three years in order to focus on study and fasting. Their subsequent infatuation with the Princess of France and her ladies makes them forsworn (break their oath). In an untraditional ending for a comedy, the play closes with the death of the Princess's father, and all weddings are delayed for a year. The play draws on themes of masculine love and desire, reckoning and rationalisation, and reality versus fantasy. Though first published in quarto in 1598, the play's title page suggests a revision of an earlier version of the play. There are no obvious sources for the play's plot. The use of apostrophes in the play's title varies in early editions, though it is most commonly given as Love's Labour's Lost. Shakespeare's audiences were familiar with the historical personages portrayed and the political situation in Europe relating to the setting and action of the play. Scholars suggest the play lost popularity as these historical and political portrayals of Navarre's court became dated and less accessible to theatergoers of later generations. The play's sophisticated wordplay, pedantic humour and dated literary allusions may also be causes for its relative obscurity, as compared with Shakespeare's more popular works. Love's Labour's Lost was rarely staged in the 19th century, but it has been seen more often in the 20th and 21st centuries, with productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, and the Stratford Festival of Canada, among others. It has also been adapted as a musical, an opera, for radio and television and as a musical film. Love's Labour's Lost features the longest scene (5.2), the longest single word 'honorificabilitudinitatibus' (5.1.39–40), and (depending on editorial choices) the longest speech (4.3.284–361) in all of Shakespeare's plays (see "Date and Text" below).

Ferdinand, King of Navarre, and his three noble companions, the Lords Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, take an oath not to give in to the company of women. They devote themselves to three years of study and fasting; Berowne agrees somewhat more hesitantly than the others. The King declares that no woman should come within a mile of the court. Don Adriano de Armado, a Spaniard visiting the court, writes a letter to tell the King of a tryst between Costard and Jaquenetta. After the King sentences Costard, Don Armado confesses his own love for Jaquenetta to his page, Moth. Don Armado writes Jaquenetta a letter and asks Costard to deliver it. The Princess of France and her ladies arrive, wishing to speak to the King regarding the cession of Aquitaine, but must ultimately make their camp outside the court due to the decree. In visiting the Princess and her ladies at their camp, the King falls in love with the Princess, as do the lords with the ladies. Berowne gives Costard a letter to deliver to the lady Rosaline, which Costard switches with Don Armado's letter that was meant for Jaquenetta. Jaquenetta consults two scholars, Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel, who conclude that the letter is written by Berowne and instruct her to tell the King. The King and his lords lie in hiding and watch one another as each subsequently reveals his feelings of love. The King ultimately chastises the lords for breaking the oath, but Berowne reveals that the King is likewise in love with the Princess. Jaquenetta and Costard enter with Berowne's letter and accuse him of treason. Berowne confesses to breaking the oath, explaining that the only study worthy of mankind is that of love, and he and the other men collectively decide to relinquish the vow. Arranging for Holofernes to entertain the ladies later, the men then dress as Muscovites and court the ladies in disguise. The Queen's courtier Boyet, having overheard their planning, helps the ladies trick the men by disguising themselves as each other. When the lords return as themselves, the ladies taunt them and expose their ruse. Impressed by the ladies' wit, the men apologize, and when all identities are righted, they watch Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel, Costard, Moth and Don Armado present the Nine Worthies. The four lords and Boyet heckle the play, saving their sole praise for Costard. Don Armado and Costard almost come to blows when Costard reveals mid pageant that Don Armado has got Jaquenetta pregnant. Their spat is interrupted by news that the Princess's father has died. The Princess makes plans to leave at once, and she and her ladies, readying for mourning, declare that the men must wait a year and a day to prove their loves lasting. Don Armado announces he will swear a similar oath to Jaquenetta and then presents the nobles with a song.

The title is normally given as Love's Labour's Lost. The use of apostrophes varies in early editions. In its first 1598 quarto publication it appears as Loues labors loſt. In the 1623 First Folio it is Loues Labour's Lost and in the 1631 quarto it is Loues Labours Lost. In the Third Folio it appears for the first time with the modern punctuation and spelling as Love's Labour's Lost. Historian John Hale notes that the title could be read as "love's labour is lost" or "the lost labours of love" depending on punctuation. Hale suggests that this parallel nature of product and process was intended and is derived from existing Latin idioms. Hale suggests that the witty alliteration of the title is in keeping with the pedantic nature of the play. In 1935 Frances Yates asserted that the title derived from a line in John Florio's His firste Fruites (1578): "We neede not speak so much of loue, al books are ful of lou, with so many authours, that it were labour lost to speake of Loue", a source from which Shakespeare also took the untranslated Venetian proverb Venetia, Venetia/Chi non ti vede non ti pretia (LLL 4.2.92–93) ("Venice, Venice, Who does not see you cannot praise you").

Love's Labour's Lost abounds in sophisticated wordplay, puns, and literary allusions and is filled with clever pastiches of contemporary poetic forms. In The Western Canon (1994), Harold Bloom lauds the work as "astonishing" and refers to it as Shakespeare's "first absolute achievement". It is often assumed that the play was written for performance at the Inns of Court, whose students would have been most likely to appreciate its style. It has never been among Shakespeare's most popular plays, probably because its pedantic humour and linguistic density are extremely demanding of contemporary theatregoers. Critic Mark Breitenberg commented that the use of idealistic poetry, popularized by Petrarch, effectively becomes the textualized form of the male gaze. In Love's Labour's Lost in particular, it is often used to signify a moral judgement; most notably, the idea of a final reckoning as it relates to death. Though the play entwines fantasy and reality, the arrival of the messenger to announce the death of the Princess's father ultimately brings this notion to a head. Scholar Cynthia Lewis suggested that the appearance of the final reckoning is necessary in reminding the lovers of the seriousness of marriage. There are several plot points driven by fantasy and imagination throughout the play. The Lords and the King's declaration of abstinence is a fancy that falls short of achievement. This fantasy rests on the men's idea that the resulting fame will allow them to circumvent death and oblivion, a fantastical notion itself. Within moments of swearing their oath, it becomes clear that their fantastical goal is unachievable given the reality of the world, the unnatural state of abstinence itself, and the arrival of the Princess and her ladies. This juxtaposition ultimately lends itself to the irony and humour in the play. Different interpretations of the meaning of these songs include: optimistic commentary for the future, bleak commentary regarding the recent announcement of death, or an ironic device by which to direct the King and his Lords towards a new outlook on love and life. In keeping with the theme of time as it relates to reality and fantasy, these are seasonal songs that restore the sense of time to the play. Due to the opposing nature of the two songs, they can be viewed as a debate on the opposing attitudes on love found throughout the play. The Times was unimpressed, stating: "The play moved very heavily. The whole dialogue is but a string of brilliant conceits, which, if not delivered well, are tedious and unintelligible. The manner in which it was played last night destroyed the brilliancy completely, and left a residuum of insipidity which was encumbered rather than relieved by the scenery and decorations." The only other performances of the play recorded in England in the 19th century were at Sadler's Wells in 1857 and the St. James's Theatre in 1886.

Notable 20th century British productions included a 1936 staging at the Old Vic featuring Michael Redgrave as Ferdinand and Alec Clunes as Berowne. In 1949, the play was given at the New Theatre with Redgrave in the role of Berowne. The cast of a 1965 Royal Shakespeare Company production included Glenda Jackson, Janet Suzman and Timothy West. In 1968, the play was staged by Laurence Olivier for the National Theatre, with Derek Jacobi as the Duke and Jeremy Brett as Berowne. The Royal Shakespeare Company produced the play again in 1994. The critic Michael Billington wrote in his review of the production: "The more I see Love's Labour's Lost, the more I think it Shakespeare's most beguiling comedy. It both celebrates and satisfies linguistic exuberance, explores the often painful transition from youth to maturity, and reminds us of our common mortality." In late summer 2005, an adaptation of the play was staged in the Dari language in Kabul, Afghanistan by a group of Afghan actors, and was reportedly very well received. A 2009 staging by Shakespeare's Globe theatre, with artistic direction by Dominic Dromgoole, toured internationally. Ben Brantley, in The New York Times, called the production, seen at Pace University, "sophomoric". He postulated that the play itself "may well be the first and best example of a genre that would flourish in less sophisticated forms five centuries later: the college comedy." In 2014, the Royal Shakespeare Company completed a double feature in which Love's Labour's Lost, set on the eve of the First World War, is followed by Much Ado About Nothing (re titled Love's Labour's Won). Dominic Cavendish of the Telegraph called it "the most blissfully entertaining and emotionally involving RSC offering I’ve seen in ages" and remarked that "Parallels between the two works – the sparring wit, the sex war skirmishes, the shift from showy linguistic evasion to heart felt earnestness – become persuasively apparent."

An opera of the same title as the play was composed by Nicolas Nabokov, with a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, and first performed in 1973. In the summer of 2013, The Public Theater in New York City presented a musical adaptation of the play as part of their Shakespeare in the Park programming. This production marked the first new Shakespeare based musical to be produced at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park since the 1971 mounting of The Two Gentlemen of Verona with music by Galt MacDermot. The adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost featured a score by Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson collaborators Michael Friedman and Alex Timbers. Timbers also directed the production, which starred Daniel Breaker, Colin Donnell, Rachel Dratch, and Patti Murin, among others. The 2004 ska musical The Big Life is based on Loves Labour's Lost, reworked to be about the Windrush generation arriving in London. Marc Palmieri's 2015 play The Groundling, a farce the New York Times referred to as "half comedy and half tragedy", was billed as a "meditation on the meaning of the final moments of Love's Labour's Lost".

Kenneth Branagh's 2000 film adaptation relocated the setting to the 1930s and attempted to make the play more accessible by turning it into a musical. The film was a box office disappointment. The play was one of the last works to be recorded for the BBC Television Shakespeare project, broadcast in 1985. The production set events in the eighteenth century, the costumes and sets being modeled on the paintings of Jean Antoine Watteau. This was the only instance in the project of a work set in a period after Shakespeare's death. The play is featured in an episode of the British TV show, Doctor Who. The episode, entitled The Shakespeare Code, focuses on Shakespeare himself and a hypothetical follow up play, Love's Labour's Won, whose final scene is used as a portal for alien witches to invade Earth. All copies of this play disappear along with the witches. BBC Radio 3 aired a radio adaptation on 16 December 1946, directed by Noel Illif, with music by Gerald Finzi scored for a small chamber orchestra. The cast included Paul Scofield. The music was subsequently converted into an orchestral suite. BBC Radio 3 aired another radio adaptation on 22 February 1979, directed by David Spenser, with music by Derek Oldfield. The cast included Michael Kitchen as Ferdinand; John McEnery as Berowne; Anna Massey as the Princess of France; Eileen Atkins as Rosaline; and Paul Scofield as Don Adriano. A modern language adaptation of the play, titled Groups of Ten or More People, was released online by Chicago based company Littlebrain Theatre in July 2020. This adaptation, set during the early days of the COVID 19 pandemic, was filmed entirely over the digital conferencing program Zoom.

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