Love's Labour's Lost (1598) stages four young aristocratic suitors courting
four French ladies in an improbable Arcadia. Anticipating on Joyce's language
games, this play cannot be seen as yet another festive comedy of love.
It is a laboratory piece which reverses our initial expectations, poised as it is
between comedy and tragedy, merriment and spleen, copia and nihilism.
Here, Shakespeare paves the way for some of the major themes he will
explore later on in his career, such as the value of knowledge, the problems
of inheritance, or female power. He also examines the arbitrary relationships
between verba and res in a dazzling series of puns and quibbles
that bring language, letters and ciphers to the fore. A virtuoso comedy,
Love's Labour's Lost keeps juggling with bawdy words as it puts dramatic
codes upside down, so that it somewhat perversely fails to reach the expected
happy ending.
Love's Labour's Lost: Shakespeare's Anatomy of Wit reassesses this exuberant
and extravagant piece through a close study of its political background, its
religious overtones and its transgressive wordplay while also enhancing the
play's multiple resonances in the world of today.