Love's Labour's Lost

• The King of Navarre and three lords swear an oath: three years of study, fasting, and no contact with women • The oath lasts about five minutes. The Princess of France arrives with three ladies on a diplomatic mission • Each man falls for a woman. Each tries to hide it from the others. Each is caught — comedy of mutual exposure • The men disguise themselves as Russians to woo the women. The women switch masks and mock them. The men court the wrong women • Wordplay dominates: sonnets, puns, malapropisms, Latin jokes, elaborate conceits. This is Shakespeare's most verbally virtuosic comedy • Supporting cast of comic grotesques: Don Armado (a pompous Spaniard), Holofernes (a pedantic schoolmaster), Costard (a clown), Moth (a page) • The pageant of the Nine Worthies: the comic characters perform a terrible show, mocked by the lords — then a messenger arrives • NEWS: the Princess's father has died. Everything stops. The women impose a year's penance on the men before any marriages • The play does NOT end with the expected marriages. It's the only Shakespeare comedy that ends without resolution • Final song: Spring vs. Winter. "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo" — the play's last line, unexplained and haunting • Shakespeare subverts his own genre: comedy promises marriage, this play withholds it