Book
Love’s Labour’s Lost
First published 1598
The King of Navarre and three companions swear to devote themselves to study while avoiding women for three years. Their plan collapses almost immediately when the Princess of France arrives on diplomatic business with three ladies, creating a contest of concealment, courtship and verbal ingenuity.
Letters are misdelivered, vows are exposed and an elaborate entertainment goes wrong, but the comedy refuses the expected sequence of marriages. News of the French king’s death sends the women home and postpones the romances for a year, giving the play an unusually provisional ending in which wit and desire are tested against time, obligation and mortality.
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