Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by

HENRY N. HUDSON,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

GINN & HEATH:
J. S. CUSHING, Printer, Boston.

LOVE'S LABOURS LOST.

ONE

NE of the plays mentioned by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia, 1598, as an example of Shakespeare's reputed excellence in Comedy. The same year a quarto edition of the play was published, with the following in the title-page: "As it was presented before her Highness this last Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented." No earlier or later issue of the play in quarto is known to have been made; so that we are in the dark as to what the corrections and expansions were. There was also published the same year, 1598, The Month's Mind of a Melancholy Lover, in which the piece is clearly referred to:

Love's Labour Lost! I once did see a play

Yclepèd so, so called to my pain,

Which I to hear to my small joy did stay,
Giving attendance on my froward dame.

Each actor play'd in cunning wise his part,

But chiefly those entrapp'd in Cupid's snare;

Yet all was feignèd, 'twas not from the heart;

They seem'd to grieve, but yet they felt no care:
'Twas I that grief indeed did bear in breast;
The others did but make a show in jest.

Beyond the forecited notices, we have no external evidence as to the time either of the original writing or of the revision. But the piece itself abounds in unmistakable marks of the Poet's earliest style. Though not, perhaps, much superior as a whole to The Two Gentlemen, yet it has several rare strains of poetry far surpassing any thing in that play. "We find in both," says Staunton, "though in different degrees, the same fluency and sweetness of measure, the same frequency of rhymes, the same laborious addiction to quibbling, repartees, and doggerel

verse; and in both it is observable that depth of characterization is altogether subordinate to elegance and sprightliness of dialogue."

66

No play or tale has come to light, that could have contributed any thing towards the plot or the matter of Love's Labours Lost. But Mr. Hunter cites a passage from Monstrelet's Chronicles, which infers that either Shakespeare himself or the author from whom he borrowed had something of an historic basis for the story: Charles, King of Navarre, came to Paris to wait on the King. He negotiated so successfully with the King and Privy Council, that he obtained the gift of the castle of Nemours, with some of its dependent castle-wicks, which territory was made a duchy. He instantly did homage for it, and at the same time surrendered to the King the castle of Cherburgh, the county of Evreux, and all other lordships he possessed within the kingdom of France; renouncing all claims or profits in them to the King and to his successors, on condition that with the duchy of Nemours the King of France engaged to pay him two hundred thousand gold crowns of the coin of the King our lord." The play has a passage, in ii. 1, that tallies exactly with this:

Madam, your father here doth intimate

The payment of a hundred thousand crowns;
Being but the one-half of an entire sum
Disbursed by my father in his wars.

The point is not only curious in itself, but enables us to fix the time of the play, or rather of the story on which it may have been founded, to about the year 1425, in which the King of Navarre died.

This play is badly printed in all the old copies, abounding in gross textual corruptions, some of them of such a nature as almost to defy the resources of corrective art. Learned editors and commentators have laboured hard and long to get the text into a satisfactory state; but, apparently, something, perhaps much, still remains to be done. Several corrections, none of them my own however, will here be found, that are not to be met with, so far as I know, in any other edition of the Poet's works.

SCENE I. A Park, with a Palace in it.

Enter the KING, BIRON, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN.

King. Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,

Live register'd upon our brazen tombs,

And then grace us in the disgrace of death;

When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,

Th' endeavour of this present breath may buy

That honour which shall 'bate his scythe's keen edge,
And make us heirs of all eternity.

Therefore, brave conquerors,

for so you are,

That war against your own affections,
And the huge army of the world's desires,
Our late edict shall strongly stand in force :
Navarre shall be the wonder of the world;
Our Court shall be a little Academe,
Still and contemplative in living art.1

You three, Birón,2 Dumain, and Longaville,
Have sworn for three years' term to live with me
My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes

That are recorded in this schedule here:

Your oaths are pass'd; and now subscribe your names,
That his own hand may strike his honour down
That violates the smallest branch herein :

If you are arm'd to do as sworn to do,

Subscribe to your deep oath, and keep it too.

Long. I am resolved; 'tis but a three years' fast:
The mind shall banquet, though the body pine:
Fat paunches have lean pates; and dainty bits
Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.

Dum. My loving lord, Dumain is mortified:
The grosser manner of these world's-delights
He throws upon the gross world's baser slaves:
To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die;
With all these 3 living in philosophy.

Biron. I can but say their protestation over; So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,

That is, to live and study here three

years.

1 Art is here used in the classical sense, for liberal learning, as in the academical terms "bachelor of arts" and "master of arts."

2 So this name is constantly pronounced throughout the play, with the accent on the second syllable, Birón, as in the French. In the old editions it is spelt Berowne.

3 All these refers, apparently, to his companions in the proposed life of study and fasting. See Critical Notes.