56 pages • 1 hour read
William Shakespeare, Henry R. WoudhuysenLove's Labour's Lost
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1598A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act IChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act I, Scene 1 Summary
Content Warning: The source text references period-typical stereotyping around ethnicity, cultural origins, and misogynistic attitudes. In 4.3, in particular, the characters discuss the physical features of women in a way that reflects racist notions of beauty.
The King of Navarre enters with three Lords in his court: Longaville, Dumaine, and Berowne. He holds a written oath they have drawn up, swearing to dedicate three years to studying. He envisages his court becoming a school for contemplative thought. He believes this will make them famous, enabling them to vanquish death by living on in their reputation.
Longaville and Dumaine sign the oath without hesitation, extolling the merits of giving up worldly pleasures to enhance the mind. However, Berowne is reluctant: He says he only swore to study for three years but did not agree to the other conditions, including fasting, completely avoiding women, and barely sleeping. The others argue that he already agreed to these, to which he says he was only joking and asks what the point of studying is. The King says that the point is to gain knowledge otherwise unknown. Berowne argues that according to the oath, food, sleep, and women will be unknown, so if he signs it they will become the things he needs to seek knowledge of.
Related Titles
By these authors
All's Well That Ends Well
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare, Іван Франко, Barbara A. Mowat, Ivan Franko, Panteleimon Kulish, Cynthia Marshall, Ludwig Tieck, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Paul Werstine
As You Like It
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare, Roma Gill, William Aldis Wright, Francis Fergusson
Cymbeline
William Shakespeare, Harold Bloom, Gabriele Baldini
Hamlet
William Shakespeare, Israel Gollancz, Harold Bloom, Rex Gibson, Henry Norman Hudson, Max J. Herzberg, L.A. Sherman
Henry IV, Part 1
William Shakespeare, David Scott Kastan
Henry IV, Part 2
William Shakespeare, David Scott Kastan, David Bevington
Henry V
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Michael Neill, Paul Werstine
Henry VIII
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
Henry VI, Part 1
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 3
William Shakespeare, John D. Cox, Eric Rasmussen
Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare, Roma Gill, Harold Bloom, William Allan Neilson
King John
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
King Lear
William Shakespeare, William James Rolfe
Macbeth
William Shakespeare, Jack Armstrong, Carmen Kahn
Measure For Measure
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
Much Ado About Nothing
Gail Kern Paster, Robert Jackson, Barbara A. Mowat, Henry Norman Hudson, F.H. Mares, Henry Irving, Frederick S. Boas, Paul Werstine, William Shakespeare
Nature
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Mapes Dodge, George Darley, William Motherwell, George Eliot, John Milton, Clement Scott, George Arnold, Robert Browning, James Thomson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., William Ernest Henley, Denis Florence MacCarthy, William Cullen Bryant, John Sterling, John Clare, Izaak Walton, Matthew Arnold, James Whitcomb Riley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Jenner, William Gilmore Simms, Charles G.D. Roberts, Henry Timrod, William Cox Bennett, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, George MacDonald, William Shakespeare, Matthias Claudius, Alexander Hume, James Beattie, Thomas Gray, Craig Franklin, John Cunningham, Norman Rowland Gale, James Gates Percival, Joel Benton, Thomas Heywood, Richard Hovey, Anna Boynton Averill, Charles Sangster, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dora Hill Read Goodale, Joanna Baillie, Thomas Nashe, Henry Wotton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Howard Bryant, John G.C. Brainard, Thomas Campbell, Eduard Mörike, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, David Gray, William Cowper, W.B. Yeats, William Prescott Foster, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Thomas Carew, William Howitt, John B. Tabb, Jones Very, Henry Fielding, Barry Cornwall, Samuel Daniel, John Keats, Homer, George Francis Savage-Armstrong, John Leyden, Tomas Peter, Thomas Hood, Philip Pendleton Cooke, Richard Watson Gilder, Ethelwyn Wetherald, William Wordsworth, Euripides, Joseph Blanco White, Edmund Clarence Stedman, G.W. Pettee, Robert Tannahill, Ebenezer Jones, John Chalkhill, Abraham Cowley, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Russell Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lisle Bowles, Leanne Yau, Charles Harpur, Sonia, Edith M. Thomas, Charles Kingsley, Lord Byron, Ebenezer Elliott, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, Richard Henry Horne, Jason in Panama, Walter Scott, Hartley Coleridge, Duncan Campbell Scott, Alfred Tennyson, John Davies, Aristophanes, Charles G. Eastman, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, William Browne, Robert Burns, Samuel Rogers, Ludwig H.C. Hölty, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Celia Laighton Thaxter
Featured Collections
Appearance Versus Reality
View Collection
Books that Feature the Theme of...
View Collection
British Literature
View Collection
Comedies & Satirical Plays
View Collection
Laugh-out-Loud Books
View Collection
Marriage
View Collection
Romance
View Collection
Truth & Lies
View Collection
Valentine's Day Reads: The Theme of Love
View Collection