Jaksen's Reviews > Love's Labour's Lost

I am currently reading all of Shakespeare's plays. This is the seventh, and most disappointing thus far.

Now, this is a comedy with immense amounts of wordplay, puns, various malapropisms, etc., so to fully appreciate this play, and unless one has an inordinate knowledge of early modern English - which I do not - an annotated version is the way to go. This is what I did. I also read a lot of commentary and criticism, both positive and negative. One of the best comments I found was that this play is the best evidence that Shakespeare is meant to be seen on stage, not read, and yes, yes, I found that to be so true. There were times I could not read more than a few pages as I had to read, re-read, read aloud, then decipher the words I did not know, the words which were plays on other words, or malapropisms on words whose definitions have changed over the last 400 years.

But, thankfully, the play is a comedy! Yet somehow the comic intent was often lost on me after deciphering, taking notes, reading and re-reading.

The story...

It concerns four young men - the King of Navarre and three of his friends - who vow to spend three years in study, and eating and sleeping very little. They forswear women, in other words, which right off the bat sets up a lot of possible comedic scenarios.

But even in that first scene the impossibility of doing this is revealed when one of them remembers that the Princess of France is due to visit and that the King cannot possibly hold to his oath if he is to greet and entertain the princess. Well he doesn't allow her into his castle, but makes her pitch a tent in the field. From then on it's all the women can do NOT to bring the men to heel. They disguise themselves in one scene and in another are entertained by the men who put on a play-within-a-play. There are various other characters, including a teacher, a curate and a fool who interact with - and often misunderstand each other. (The King falls in love with the princess and his three friends fall in love with the Princess' three ladies.) This is Shakespeare playing with the audience AND a way to show off his knowledge of words, Latin, his comedic timing, and his skill in developing characters with only dialogue and limited action on stage.

Well, about 100 wordplay, pun laden and endless, repetitious pages of dialogue later, plus copious references to mythology, (which thankfully I do know a lot about), the play ends with the ladies and princess going home to France but promising to return. Really, not a lot happens here other than the endless talking. (Okay, lots of talking = almost any play, but this was overboard.)

Reading it, I often got tired and that hated 'B' word, bored. (Bored is the one word I hate more than any other.) But I was. I kept saying: it's a masterpiece! Go with it! It'll pay off! You'll learn more about words and Shakespeare's skill than in most of his other plays and then...

I got so tired I fell asleep one day reading this in a sunny window. haha! I haven't fallen asleep with a book in my lap in over 20 years!

Still and all, the fault is mine. I might return to this play later, but for now I move on to a good solid tragedy or historical.

The play's the thing, but the thing is not always my thing.

Three stars, for now.