THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE GENERAL EDITOR : W. J. CRAIG 1899-1906: R. H. CASE, 1909 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST <_~ { v--» THE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST EDITED BY H. C. HART I METHUEN AND CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET: STRAND LONDON Second Edition & First Published .... November 1906 Second Edition .... October 1913 2-12.1, Aztil tf/Z CONTENTS PAQE Introduction vii Love's Labour's Lost i INTRODUCTION Date of Play Love's Labour's Lost first appeared in print, in Quarto, in 1598, with the following title : — A Pleasant Conceited Comedie Loues J | Called, | labors lost. As it was before her this | presented Highnes | last Christmas. corrected and W. | Newly augmented | By at London Shakespere. | [Ornamental device] | Imprinted by W. W. for Cutbert I Burby. | 1598. Two points may be noticed at once—that this is the earliest with on the title and that play published Shakespeare's name ; " " the words newly corrected and augmented seem to imply an earlier edition from which this differs appreciably. They can hardly be held with fairness to refer merely to the manner in which the manuscript or prompter's copy, or copies, had been dealt with. And the corrections and augmentations, we are dis- tinctly told, are by W. Shakespeare. } The next publication of Love's Labour s Lost was in the First Folio of 1623, where it is the seventh in order among the comedies. This text is distinguished from the Quarto by a considerable number of mostly unimportant variations generally for the better. These will be dealt with later in the present Introduction. Sidney Lee classes this Quarto amongst those " in which comparatively few faults are visible," in his Intro- duction to the Folio facsimile. The Folio divides the play into Acts, which is not done in the Quarto. The Folio is the more carefully printed. It is also the most authoritative. In 1 63 1 a second edition of the Quarto was printed from the " " S. for Iohn it was Acted Folio, by W. Smethwicke" ; As by viii INTRODUCTION his Maiesties Servaunts at the Blacke-Friers and the Globe." It is of no weight as an authority. We are without any direct evidence as to the date of com- It is not position or of the earliest appearance of the play. mentioned in the Stationers' Register earlier than 1606-7, but it is one of the plays mentioned by Meres in his Wits Treasurie printed in the year 1598: "Shakespeare among ye English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage : for Comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loue Labors Lost, his Loue labours wonne" {Shakespeare Allusion Books, New Shakes. Soc. 1874). And in the same year it was re- ferred to by Tofte, in his Alba (Grosart's reprint, p. 105): "Loves Labour Lost I once did see a play, Ycleped so, so called to my paine." Robert Tofte's words imply that some considerable time had elapsed since he saw it. He had seen the unaugmented play, prior to Christmas, 1 597, probably. In 1599 appeared The Passionate Pilgrim, a piratical col- lection of poetry published by Jaggard. In this anthology are placed three pieces from the play. See notes at IV. ii. 98, IV. iii. 57, and IV. Hi. 98. And in Englands Parnassus (1600) the line IV. iii. 376, "Revels, Daunses, Maskes and merrie houres," is quoted. See Centurie of Prayse (New Shakes. Soc. p. 432). There is also a 1606 reference to the " play in the Centurie. It was one of the Bookes red be me [Drummond of Hawthornden] anno 1606" (p. 71). Internal Evidence of Date We must, therefore, have recourse to the play itself for evidence as to its date of this in its production ; and taking general aspect, no better survey has been given than that of Gervinus (translated by Burnett, 1875). He says: "The comedy of Love's Labour 's Lost belongs indisputably to the earliest dramas of the poet, and will be almost of the same date as The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The peculiarities of Shakespeare's earliest pieces are perhaps most accumulated in this play. The reiterated mention of mythological and his- torical the air of the Italian personages ; learning, and Latin INTRODUCTION ix expressions, which here it must be admitted serve a comic end the older the numerous ; England versification, doggerel verses, and the rhymes more frequent than anywhere else and over almost half of the all this this extending play ; places work among the earlier efforts of the poet Alliteration . is to be met with here still more than in the narrative poems, is the Sonnets and The Two Gentlemen of Verona ; it expressly employed by the pedant Holofernes who calls the art 'to affect the letter.' The style is frequently like that of the Shakespeare Sonnets; indeed the 127th and 137th bear express similarities to those inserted here as well as to other Italian school passages of the play (IV. iii.). The tone of the prevails more than in any other play. The redundancy of wit is only to be compared with similar redundancy of conceit in the narrative poems, and with the Italian style in general " which he at first adopted." Gervinus dwells then upon the structure and management of subject in this play which is indisputably one of the weakest of the poet's pieces." In Furnivall's introduction to Gervinus he gives a summary of " " the tests derived from rhyme, blank verse, and run-on or "end-pause" and "weak-ending" lines (of Hertzberg, Fleay these in Love's Labour's Lost in and others) ; agree placing the earliest period, by their percentages of metrical character- istics as compared with the later plays. Furnivall gives a special analysis in this respect of passages in Love's Labour's Lost, set beside others from King Lear and The Winter's Tale " — the dullest ear cannot fail to recognise the difference between the early Love's Labour's Lost pause, or dwelling on the end of each line, and the later King Lear and The Winter's Tale shift disregard of it, with the following of the pause to, or near to, the middle of the next line." Love's Labour's Lost, ini Furnivall's is earliest opinion, Shakespeare's wholly genuine [ play. Another extract from Furnivall will be quoted in rela- tion to this subject later on. With regard to the parallelisms between the poetry of this play and that of the Sonnets, I may refer here to Furness' Variorum edition (Philadelphia, 1904). In an Appendix upon " this subject, he says : There is none of Shakespeare's plays x INTRODUCTION wherein more echoes of the Sonnets are to be heard than in Loves Labour's L^ost. Very many of these have been noted by Dr. C. F. McClumpha {Modem Language Notes, June, 1900), and he is led to the conclusion that the great similarity between the Sonnets and the play in turns of thought and ex- pression, in phrases and conceits, leads to a belief in a cor- respondence as regards time of composition closer than is generally accepted." Furness cites then a number of parallels of varying force, but of undoubted cumulative weight. He " " dwells expressly on the Dark Lady Sonnet (cxxvii.), and the tilt between Biron and his friends over Rosaline's com- he concludes a list of unusual words plexion ; and with giving tone to a thought, common to the play and the Sonnets, show- ing that their composition cannot have been far removed in point of time. These remarks must be accepted with this modification : it is impossible to class some of Love's Labour's Lost (IV. iii. 286-362, for example) and many of the Sonnets together as being Shakespeare's earliest work. Of the Sonnets some must belong to a riper perfection, just as some of the play must be of later insertion than the early date of the bulk of it. This proviso must not carry us too far; a young poet may write perfect sonnets in the days of his youth perhaps, or even such poetry as has been inserted in the augmented play. But the play taken as a whole, with all allowance for revision, is ob- viously a very immature production. Internal Evidence Besides its peculiarities of composition and structure, there is another class of evidence to be obtained from the play itself over and above those Latin and foreign expressions referred to by Gervinus which will be dealt with later. I refer here to the inferences that may be drawn from the connection of the play with contemporary events and contemporary writers. The first of these form a group of doubtfully convincing considera- tions, and belong rather to the question of sources of the plot or play. With regard to contemporary writers, there is much INTRODUCTION xi to be said. It is a fascinating subject. There are several well- known, or well worthy to be known, writers of this time of whom we can detect reminiscences and echoes. This kind of evidence appeals with different degrees of conviction to different minds. It depends mainly on a close familiarity with the literature of the immediate date for its cogency. It loses its subtlety as soon as the student leaves that environ- ment. A case may, however, be stated for several authors whose works would appear to have been known to Shake- speare when he wrote this play, and their known dates give us a lower limit. I will take first Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, re- printed by Arber, which was published first in 1589 (June? Arber), although much of it was written as early as 1586.