Guide Note

Love's Labour's Lost is a classic comedy by William Shakespeare.

Fast Facts

1. Writer: William Shakespeare
2. Setting: Navarre, Spain
3. Written: 1595-1596
4. First Published: 1598
5. ISBN 1904271103
6. First Performance: 1597 at Court before Queen Elizabeth I
7. Adaptation performed on Broadway in 1859

The play opens with the King of Navarre and three noble companions, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, taking an oath to devote themselves to three years of study, promising not to give in to the company of women. Berowne agrees somewhat more hesitantly than the others, reminding the king that the princess of France and her three ladies are coming to the kingdom and it was suicidal for the King to agree to this law. The King denies what Berowne says, insisting that the ladies make their camp in the field outside of his court. Eventually, over the course of the play the King and his men comically fall in love with the princess and her ladies.

• King of Navarre
• Berowne, Dumaine and Longaville: Lords attending on the King
• Princess of France
• Rosalind, Maria, Katharine: Ladies attending on the Princess

• "Your wit's too hot, it speeds too fast, 'twill tire." 2.1

• "Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing." 3.1

• "He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink." 4.2

• "In the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon." 5.1