Neither the plan nor the execution of " Love's Labour's Lost" allows it to rank, whether after or before revision, with the trophies of Shakespeare's maturity. The piece is essentially a memorial of Shakespeare's adolescence but it proves that adolescence to have been alert and resourceful, fanciful and meditative, in a degree which knows no exact parallel in history.

SIDNEY LEE.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ1

FERDINAND, king of Navarre,

BIRON,

LONGAVILLE, lords attending on the King.

DUMAIN,

BOYET,

MERCADE,

lords attending on the Princess of France.

DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO, a fantastical Spaniard.
SIR NATHANIEL, a curate.

HOLOFERNES, a schoolmaster.
DULL, a constable.

COSTARD, a clown.

MOTн, page to Armado.

1 This play was first printed in quarto in 1598. The quarto edition was reprinted with trifling changes in the First Folio of 1623. A second quarto edition of 1631 reprints the First Folio version. No list of dramatis personæ is given in any of the early editions. This was first supplied by Rowe in his edition of Shakespeare's works, 1709. The first quarto does not divide the play into either acts or scenes. The First Folio divides it into acts alone. Rowe first subdivided the acts into scenes.

KING

A PARK, NEAR A PALACE

Enter the KING, BIRON, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN

PET FAME, THAT ALL

hunt after in their lives,

Live register'd upon our brazen tombs,

And then grace us in the disgrace of death;

When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,

The endeavour of this present breath may buy

That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge,

And make us heirs of all eternity.

Therefore, brave conquerors,- for so you are,
That war against your own affections
And the huge army of the world's desires,
Our late edict shall strongly stand in force:
Navarre shall be the wonder of the world
Our court shall be a little Academe,

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Still and contemplative in living art.

You three, Biron, Dumain, and Longaville,

Have sworn for three years' term to live with me
My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes

That are recorded in this schedule here:

Your oaths are pass'd; and now subscribe your

names,

That his own hand may strike his honour down

That violates the smallest branch herein:

If

you are arm'd to do as sworn to do, Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too.

LONG. I am resolved; 't is but a three years' fast:
The mind shall banquet, though the body pine:
Fat paunches have lean pates; and dainty bits
Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.

DUM. My loving lord, Dumain is mortified :
The grosser manner of these world's delights
He throws upon the gross world's baser slaves:
To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die;
With all these living in philosophy.

BIRON. I can but say their protestation over;
So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,
That is, to live and study here three years.
But there are other strict observances;
As, not to see a woman in that term,
Which I hope well is not enrolled there;
And one day in a week to touch no food,
And but one meal on every day beside,
The which I hope is not enrolled there;

And then, to sleep but three hours in the night,

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