No Source of Confusion Here

Love’s Labor’s Lost is one of the few plays that don’t seem to have a literary source (The Tempest is another that comes immediately to mind).  As we discovered yesterday, the title certainly lends no clues… to anything much really.
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Love’s Labor’s Lost: Paging Mr. Zimmerman

The title The Comedy of Errors pretty much sums up its play.  Titus, the Henry’s (to a much lesser extent, but we’ve discussed those before), and Richard all make sense as monikers.  The Taming of the Shrew is about, well, the taming of a shrew.

But what do we make of Love’s Labor’s Lost?

I feel we may be venturing into Bob Dylan territory (or worse yet, the Led Zeppelin zone)

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Anna’s a Pest but She Dances to the Soundtrack of Romantic Comedies

As we noted yesterday, an anapestic foot is an alternative three-syllable poetic meter.  Like most three-syllable feet, it allows for a rhythmical, almost musical poetic line.  And if you start an anapestic line with an iamb, and end it with feminine ending, you practically have a limerick.  So it’s no surprise that the anapest is used quite often in comic verse.

So we have this comic poetic type, and for the first time in the Project we get widespread use of it in Love’s Labor’s Lost.  But, what to make of it?
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That Last Scene… Act Five, Scene Two: And Just Why, Exactly, is This NOT Considered a Problem Play?

As noted last week, the last scene, Act Five, Scene Two, of Love’s Labor Lost is not only the longest in the play at 914 lines, but the longest in the Canon as well, longer than most comedic Act Three and Fours COMBINED.

Ironically, however, not a whole lot happens.  The quick synopsis is this: The men decide to “woo” the women in the guise of being Muscovites, and they plan to woo the women based upon the “favors” or gifts the women have received from them.  Boyet discovers this and warns the women, who decide to mock the Muscovites and switch favors (while wearing masks) so that the wooers woo the wrong women.  The Muscovites, mocked, leave, and the men return as themselves to woo and confess.  The women still cruelly mock them, even through the wild pageant presented by Armado and company.  A messenger from France arrives to tell the Princess her father has died.  The king asks them to stay, but they refuse.  When the King asks her to marry him, she refuses, saying if he will be a hermit for a year and then come to her, she’ll think about it.  And the play ends.  And that takes nearly a thousand lines, or close to forty percent of the play’s length.
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Podcast 31: Love’s Labor’s Lost Intro

This week’s podcast is the launch of our month-long discussion of Love’s Labor’s Lost, including some introductory remarks, a plot synopsis of most of the play, and we’ll do our usual recap of this week’s blog entries.

Errata:
18:51 — Text should be “over Katherine” instead of “over Maria”
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The Last Scene of Act Four and the First Scene of Act Five: Four Woodcocks in a Dish

At the beginning of Act Four, Scene Three of Love’s Labor’s Lost, we find the lovelorn Berowne, paper in hand, ready to write again, but able only to bemoan his fate.  He hates love (which makes him “toil… in pitch — pitch that defiles” [IV.iii.2-3]), but he loves Rosaline.  When he spies one of his comrades coming, he stands asides and watches.  The King enters, sighing; Berowne, in an aside to us, states his joy: “Shot, by heaven!” (IV.iii.20).  He’s not the only one feeling Cupid’s shaft, as the King proceeds to read his poem… it’s a sonnet, but a sixteen-line sonnet.  Before Berowne can comment, “one more fool appear(s)” (IV.iii.42), and the King stands back to watch.  This time it’s Longaville, and like his King, he’s full of sighs.
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Act Three and the First Part of Act Four: Words and Letters

Act Three of Love’s Labor’s Lost begins the next morning.

or at least, I think…. though I suppose it could be the same day, but then this would need to be a very long day indeed…

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The Rest of Act One, and Act Two (all one scene of it): Putting More Dominoes in Place…

When we left off after the first scene in Love’s Labor’s Lost, the King and his three attendants (Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville) had agreed to study and forgo the company of women for three years, and we had learned of Don Armado, the Spanish mangler of English, and had met Costard the clown (shepherd, really, but who’s kidding who?).  Armado had seen Costard “consort(ing)” with Jaquenetta, and had made a citizen’s arrest of both; the Spaniard had sent Costard to the King and had kept Jaquenetta in his custody, just in case.
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Act One, Scene One: Oh, Wise Guys, eh?

The opening of Love’s Labor’s Lost is a quiet beginning, one of exposition (as opposed to a BANG or processional).  The King of Navarre, a landlocked region in the north of Spain, bordered by other Spanish states in all directions, save the north-northeast, where Navarre shares a border with France, enters with his three… let’s call them attendants, for now: Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine.

now according to the character list and the stage direction, the King’s name is Ferdinand, but that name is never used in dialog… so we’ll just call him “the King” from here on out for the rest of the month… oh, yeah… and I’m going with Love’s Labor’s Lost instead of Love’s Labour’s Lost… ‘cuz we’re here in America, ya hear?  anyway…

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A Shifting of Linguistic Gears

As I begin the first read-through Love’s Labor’s Lost, I’m noticing that we’re heading into some interesting territory, linguistically speaking.  Within two dozen lines, we begin to see rhyme, and a lot of it.  Nearly half of the lines of the opening scene rhyme (130 of 294), and not just in the standard AA BB CC … variety, either.  Before we hit line 50, we’re seeing ABAB schemes, and by the end of the scene, those ABAB schemes are split between two characters.  Much more complex than what we’ve seen up to now.
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