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.
Background
Cultural Context: Elizabethan Theater
Love’s Labour’s Lost is a comedy, one of three main genres (the others being tragedy and history) performed in Elizabethan theatre. The comedy was typically constructed around a romantic plot. William Shakespeare ties Love’s Labour’s Lost into this genre, utilizing common features: the play within a play, mistaken identity, letters going astray, the neat symmetry of lovers. However, Shakespeare actively explores this form as well: He subverts the expected happy ending, which Berowne explicitly notes does not fit with the generic conventions.
Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is generally dated to around 1598-1599, and features some thematic similarities and shared plot devices with Love’s Labour’s Lost. For example, both use disguises to facilitate conversations at cross-purposes. Rosaline and Berowne and Beatrice and Benedict use argumentative sparring as a means of courtship. Benedict and Berowne are both initially reluctant lovers: Benedict becomes completely earnest once he believes Beatrice loves him; Berowne accepts his feelings throughout the course of the play. Both explore love through long soliloquies, using military language to present love as a dangerous competition and suggest that it changes men from a militaristic 
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