I

ROVE'S LABOUR'S LOST" may safely be regarded as the earliest of Shakespeare's plays. Its composition may be assigned without much fear of refutation to the year 1591, when its author was twenty-seven years old. He had probably arrived in London in search of a career five years before, and had at length gained a firm hold on the theatrical profession. He had made some progress in the reputation of an actor. Then, growing conscious of the possession of a playwright's capacity, he was ambitious to put that consciousness to a practical test.

In many respects "Love's Labour's Lost" belongs to a class of its own in Shakespearean drama. The plot stands almost alone in Shakespeare's work, in that it is

not known to have been borrowed. Subsequently it became Shakespeare's habit to adapt to his dramatic purposes stories and incidents of which other writers had treated already in printed books. But the slender chain of episode which constitutes the fable of Shakespeare's earliest play, though it is coloured by his reading, is substantially of his own invention.

The plot of the comedy is not above reproach. It is ingenious in motive and construction. In at least one scene, in the last scene of Act IV., where the four lords are detected in breaking their oath against love, and each exposes in turn the perjury of the other

there is an efficiency of stagecraft which betrays full command of theatrical machinery. But elsewhere the piece is loosely jointed. The characters for the most part fall into detached groups which are not strongly knit together. The most distinctive feature of the plot is the transition from a frivolous to a pathetic situation in the concluding scene. The change bears bold testimony to the writer's unconventional originality, to his impatience of routine. With a surprising suddenness, with no preliminary hint, the action of careless banter and irresponsible merriment "begins to cloud." News of death silences the gaiety that has hitherto known no check. Light-hearted lovers are bidden at a moment's notice, when love's guerdon seems won, suspend all thoughts of love: one of them is condemned to face a year's life in

"Some forlorn and naked hermitage, Remote from all the pleasures of the world,"

1

while another is sentenced to imprisonment in a hospital, there to "visit the speechless sick," and "enforce the pained impotent to smile." The wooing which is the burden of three-fourths of the piece, so far from ending with wedding bells "like an old play," is brought to a close by a funeral. Impressive in intention, as is this unforeseen passage from comic gaiety to tragic gravity, it is too abruptly contrived to achieve an effect that is quite satisfying.

The characterisation, too, falls below the most effective standards of dramatic art. It lacks complexity of detail or fulness of tone. The leading personages, Biron, the Princess, and Rosaline-are brilliantly conceived sketches in outline; they are deficient in light or shadow. Of the lesser personages some are almost destitute of distinctive features, others are farcical embodiments of some marked eccentricity of speech or manner and approach the domain of caricature. Wit sways the conversation and provokes abundant merriment at the expense of fashionable foibles, but it rarely strikes the rich note of universal humour. The whole work is indeed a dramatic satire rather than a finished comedy — a satire of current social and political life. Such dramatic effectiveness as may justly be set to the play's credit depends rather on the shrewdness of insight and the good-natured frankness which it brings to the portrayal of contemporary society than on any sustained subtlety or delicacy of development in plot or character.

But despite much that is "overdone or come tardy off," "Love's Labour's Lost" offers unfaltering proof of

the handiwork of a master, albeit a young master, of dramatic language with a true ear for verbal harmony, of a dramatic poet who was first feeling his strength. The deliverances of the Princess and of Rosaline at the close of the play ring with the "elegance, facility, and golden cadence of poesie." But it is on the hero Biron that Shakespeare lavished the finest flower of his nascent skill. Biron alone of all the characters is worthy of admission to the great gallery of portraits which Shakespeare was subsequently to limn. The poetic glow of his panegyric on love (IV. iii. 289–365) is hardly to be matched outside Shakespeare's own mature work. Indeed there is scarcely any prolonged speech of Biron which does not "sparkle" with "the right Promethean fire."

II

But poetic sentiment is not the staple fabric of the piece. The dramatist makes no endeavour to conceal the main source of his inspiration in the passing events and fashions of the day. Contemporary projects of academies for disciplining the young Elizabethan and checking his propensity to riotous living account for the central thread-the monastic vow of the French king and his court-round which the play revolves. The subsidiary embellishments of the plot are of like origin. Modes of speech and dress which were habitual to Elizabethan society are freely pressed by the dramatic satirist into his service. But he does not confine himself to

any single social rank. The inefficiency of rural constables and the pedantry of village schoolmasters fall within the scope of his gently wielded lash as readily as the affectations of lords and ladies of the court.

The literalness of Shakespeare's transcript in this play from living history-from the circumstance of contemporary politics-has few parallels in the work of dramatists of the highest genius. Shakespeare never made quite so bold an experiment in topical drama elsewhere. The hero, the king of Navarre, in whose dominion the scene is laid, bears the precise title of the Huguenot leader in the civil war of France, which was in progress between 1589 and 1594. The true king of Navarre enjoyed on the battle-field the support of many English volunteers of social position, and his fortunes attracted, while Shakespeare was writing "Love's Labour's Lost," unceasing notice in England. The two chief lords in attendance on the king in the play, Biron and Longaville, bear the actual names of the two most active associates of the real king of Navarre across St. George's Channel. The name of the Lord Dumain in "Love's Labour's Lost" is a common anglicised version of the name of that Duc de Maine, or Mayenne, another French general and statesman, who was so frequently mentioned in popular accounts of current French affairs in connection with the king of Navarre's movements that Shakespeare loosely numbered him also among his supporters.

The bestowal on the dramatis persona of the nomenclature of well-known living men extends beyond the