LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST (circa 1590) is the most obviously experimental of Shake speare's plays and for that reason is reckoned his earliest unaided work (that it was actually earlier than 'The Comedy of Errors,' which was written under classic guidance, cannot be asserted). It has one of Shakespeare's two or three most original plots and technically one of the worst, though it is distinctly entertaining. The central situation is the converse of that in Tennyson's 'Princess' : for the sake of study a company of young gentlemen have bound themselves to absurd regulations against com munication with women. Around the inevi table shattering of these self-imposed vows the author puts together a loose succession of scenes quite lacking in coherence, but sug gested by all the varied ideas which at the time happened to be in his mind; his recollection from Stratford of the comicality of the country par son, schoolmaster and yokel; his almost naive admiration of the superficially brilliant London lords and ladies; and hisyet far from intelli gent interest in foreign affairs. The chief fig ures are leading personages in contemporary French history: the Princess of France (Queen Catherine de Medici), Henry of Navarre, two Huguenot generals associated with him (Lcrnga ville and Biron), and — bizarrely enough — Na varre's arch-enemy, the Duc de Mayenne (Du maine). These veteran diplomats and war riors are represented as sentimental young peo ple of the most charming wit and volatility. Insouciance is the keynote; the play's the thing; but nothing that happens realty matters and the plot leads nowhere. This comedy is
primarily interesting as a study in style. Lyly exerts the strongest literary influence and there is much echoing of his mannered prose, as well as of his artificial pictures of social life at court ; but rhyming couplets, blank verse, quatrains, anapaestic rhyme, hexameter, dog gerel and various lyric measures are all experi mentally employed. Naturally enough, greater maturity appears in the lyric than in the dra matic portions. Masefield calls the final song ((When daisies pied and violets blue') "the loveliest thing ever said about England.* Un consciously, but certainly, Shakespeare mirrors himself in his chief figure, Biron, and the com edy is revelatory in the most important degree of the author's mental tendencies at the begin ning of his career. An admirable and promis ing sanity appears in Biron-Shakespeare's final renunciation of the flimsy brilliancies which so enchanted him: The play enjoyed a lasting esteem on the Eliza bethan stage. There is no question that the text as we have it includes alterations and ad ditions made when Shakespeare's art had fur ther developed—probably when the comedy was revived for performance before Queen Elizabeth herself on Christmas of either 1597 or 1598 (consult Gray, H. D., 'The Original Version of "Love's Labour's Lost," etc. Stanford Univ., 1918). Another court per formance, before James I, was given by Shakespeare's company at Whitehall early in January 1605.