Love's Labour's Lost - Not Gentle

Holofernes. This is not generous, not gentle, not humble.
...
Princess. Alas, poor Maccabeus, how hath he been baited!
(Love's Labour's Lost, 5.2.617, 619)

This passage practically leapt off the page at me, and Holofernes' accusation is, I think, probably one of the very most important lines in the whole play. Holofernes, a Latin-quoting schoolmaster, is playing the character of Judas Maccabeus in a sort of pageant of worthy and famous men. This pageant is meant as entertainment for the Princess and her waiting gentle-women, and as such was requested by the King and his men as part of their campaign to win the ladies. However, since that time their plans have been somewhat

impeded by the ladies' tactic of treating the gentlemen as figures of fun, much to their chagrin.

This ridicule seems to have brought out the worst kind of desperate defensiveness in all the men, and they respond by savagely mocking these lower-class fellows who - at their bidding! - are attempting to please them with their acting. They are MEAN. And Holofernes, who has henceforth appeared as rather a foolish fellow, pulls himself together and straight-up rebukes these guys! He tells them the truth about their behavior and leaves with his dignity, at least in my eyes, restored by his bold and clear proclamation. And he gains the Princess' compassion. Perhaps Holofernes' moment of clarity helps the women to decide on a course of action, having seen the men's behavior as what it is - ugly, selfish, not generous, not gentle, not humble.

Love's Labour's Lost - Failure of Wit

Biron. O, never will I trust to speeches penn'd,
Nor to the motion of a schoolboy's tongue,
Nor never come in vizard to my friend,
Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper's song!
Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical; these summer-flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation:
I do forswear them; and I here protest, ....
Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd
In russet yeas and honest kersey noes...
(5.2.2325-2235)

As I mentioned before, I found all the frivolous wit in this play very annoying. Imagine my delight when Biron, one of the main offenders, realizes the error of his ways and promises to be more homely, plain (russet and kersey) and sincere in his use of language. All the elaborate posturing that the men have "put on" order to win the women - wearing masks, disguises, writing flowery sonnets - was not only ineffectual, it was actually counter-productive in a way because it kept the true self hidden. How could a person love someone that was a caricature of a Renaissance lover without knowing the real individual underneath? Though the men were very confident that they would have no problems courting the Princess and her ladies - "Longueville. Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France? King. And win them, too!" - the mocking responses of the women seem to show that it isn't just the twist of fate at the end that makes their love's labour's lost; rather, their showy, by-the-book wooing is not as valuable as simple sincerity. Perhaps all of love's "labour," if expressed as Biron explains in opening quotation, is just a loss and a waste.

Love's Labour's Lost - Oathbreakers!

Biron....Then fools you were these women to forswear,
Or keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love,
Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men,
Or for men's sake, the authors of these women,
Or women's sake, by whom we men are men,
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn,
For charity itself fulfills the law,
And who can sever love from charity?
(4.3.1700-1710)

Biron and the rest of the boys in the King's court have taken a vow not to pursue any woman, in order not to be distracted from study. But when actual women appear on the scene, the students quickly turn into lovers - and like expert rhetoricians, they easily justify breaking their oaths. Surely a stupid vow is better broken than kept? And it's not difficult to convince me that their vow was foolish. However, there's something very jarring about the cavalier way that the men blithely set their vows aside - we've seen this kind of self-justifying argument against keeping your word before, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and it wasn't pretty.

The women seem to sense that something isn't right with this promise-breaking thing. They simply can't trust that the men mean what they say - and they might very well be right. Who's to say that someone who breaks one oath won't break another? And so the gentlemen, who so confidently planned to win their ladies, are confronted with accountability for their words:

Princess. Nor God nor I delight in perjured men...
...virtue's office never breaks men's troth.
(5.2.2266, 2270)

Love's Labour's Lost - A Lack of Common Sense

Biron. What is the end of study? let me know.

King. Why, that to know, which else we should not know.

Biron. Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense?

(Love's Labour's Lost, 1.1.56-58)

This whole week Love's Labour's Lost has been annoying me. I found myself dismayed by how much I disliked it - a rambling comedy about frivolous, unkind, proud, mendacious people. The very set-up is extremely silly - the King of Navarre ropes three of his lords, plus the Spanish dandy Don Adriano, into vowing to dedicate themselves to study and not even look at women for three years. But when the Princess of France and her three waiting women arrive on the scene, who thinks for one minute that the boys will hold to their oath?

Despite all the Renaissance trappings that decorate this play - the masks, the disguises, the sonnets, the elaborate wordplay - I found Shakespeare's general portrait of the King and his lords to be an almost uncannily accurate depiction of young people with pretentions to intellectualism. The opening quotation demonstrates this - while preening themselves on their studiousness, finding out things beyond "common" perception, they don't even pay attention to or value "common sense," thinking themselves above it. Perhaps this is one of the major reasons that I found all the characters in Love's Labour's Lost so irritating - as a college student, I already spend enough time with 20-somethings who think that they are better and smarter than everyone else, disdaining "ordinary" life and relationships, yet managing to get into more than their fair share of romantic tangles. I suppose it's kind of sweet really - one way to read this play, right? - but it does get wearing after a while.

However - spoiler alert! - the title, "Love's Labour's Lost," gives us the clue that this play is perhaps not only what it seems to be on the surface. After heartily disliking the play throughout the first four acts, I felt a lot better after reading the final act. Hooray, I don't have to hate Shakespeare for writing this play anymore!