Pricking the expansive male ego
"Love’s Labour’s Lost" has been taking the wind out of masculinity blowhards for 400+ years
I’m reading through Shakespeare’s plays in an attempt to make sense of the world in which we live. Today, “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, a play that doesn’t get nearly enough love, IMO. For a quick reference to posts on previous plays, click here. Next week, “A Midsummer Night's Dream.”
An idea was conceived by several men: create an exclusive and secluded space, far from the demands of daily life and lasting for only a limited time, designed for people like them to create “community, art, self-expression and self-reliance.” It would be a self-selected group of only the best minds, the creative elite. What could go wrong?
If you’re Burning Man in 2023, a disastrous weather event during your annual festival isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. With the alchemy of hubris, a wash-out is transformed as if by magic into success.
Burning Man has nothing on the principals in Love’s Labour’s Lost. One measly week? Hah! We signed on for three years, man! We’re going to scale heights of art and learning the world has never seen, and we won’t torch it in the last act like some johnny-come-latelys. Our renown will span centuries. And by the way, we’ll do all of this without women. What could go wrong?
Summary
Ferdinand, the King of Navarre, concocts a brilliant scheme to ensure everlasting fame. He’s created an academy based on asceticism and he enrolls three men who share his interests: Longueville, Dumaine, and Biron (spelled Berowne in some editions). The terms of the contract, however, are strict. Biron notes the terms after Longueville and Dumaine have acceded with little resistance:
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.
But there are other strict observances,
As not to see a woman in that term,
Which I hope well is not enrollèd there;
And one day in a week to touch no food,
And but one meal on every day beside,
The which I hope is not enrollèd there;
And then to sleep but three hours in the night,
And not be seen to wink of all the day,
When I was wont to think no harm all night,
And make a dark night too of half the day,
Which I hope well is not enrollèd there.
O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep—
Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep.
Act 1 Scene 1
The King sets steep penalties for failing to follow the rules: a woman who comes within a mile of the court risks losing her tongue, and a man seen talking to a woman must endure “such public / shame as the rest of the court can possible devise.”
As soon as the three men sign their agreement, Biron reminds the King that the French King’s daughter is due to show up within the week, on a mission to negotiate the surrender of Aquitaine. This inconvenient fact must be dealt with, to the convenience of the King. When the Princess arrives with her retinue (yet again conveniently, three women accompany her: Rosaline, Catherine, and Maria), she camps outside the court pending the negotiations.
It takes little imagination to scan where the plot will course. The men all fall in love with the maids, seeking to court them in secret, betraying each other and themselves in the process. A parade of high-camp buffoons cut from the cloth of commedia dell’arte fills the stage in between artless attempts at secret royal courtship: Armado, “an affected Spanish braggart” and his wiser page, Mote; a clown; a curate; a schoolmaster; and a constable.
Upon arrival, the Princess and her ladies take the measure of the King and his men in an instant. They toy with the gullible men, not the wisest after all, who remain oblivious to the end.
In the last scene, a messenger arrives from France, wordlessly conveying news that the King is dead. Everything changes at once. The Princess, till now marked by amusement and an arch wit, transforms in the space of one line from Princess into Queen, who in her grief has no time for childish games. She and her ladies, one by one, rebuff the proposals of their suitors, giving them ultimatums for how they must change to be considered for marriage after a year of mourning. The play, once raucous and ridiculous, ends on a somber note.
Thoughts
The world of Love’s Labour’s Lost is filled with male constructs that define wisdom, art, and the social order. In Navarre, the men have the power to make the rules, and they have the power to change them to suit their own desires or whims. Impulse and emotion rule in this all-male world, where men suffer no consequences for failing to consider facts while making decisions for themselves and others. Possessing power allows them to get away with acts that even the common folk recognize to be treasonous under the King’s own laws.
Having recognized the hollow core of the King’s proclamations from the first scene, the play continues to eviscerate the arbiters of art, wisdom, and morality—all male, all pompous asses. Left to their own devices, they would simply be laughable. But the female court from France affords a different point of view. The men may be silly fools, but they’re toxic, as is their treatment of women.
The women turn the tables on the men. They refuse to be objectified, which one scene dramatizes explicitly. The women trade amongst themselves the love tokens (‘favours’) each man has sent to the woman he’s courting, while masking their true identities: they make themselves literally into the objects sent by the men. As the women predict, each man goes to the woman who wears the ‘favour’ he has sent and seeks to court the wrong woman. Once unmasked, the women disclose the true nature of this courtship: the men court the object, not the woman wearing it.
By the end, the women will have nothing to do with the men as they are. They demand the men change if they are to join the female half of the world.
The demands they make are telling. The Queen admonishes the King of Navarre to become a hermit for a year, fasting and living without comfort. If, after a year of actual deprivation, he still wants to marry, she’ll marry him. Catherine requires honesty of Dumaine, and to forswear wooing her with empty words. Maria tasks Longueville to wait a year and be a ‘faithful friend’ to her. Rosaline sets perhaps the toughest assignment, crafted for her suitor Biron. As foreshadowed in the first scene, the other men accede without protest while Biron pushes back, claiming the demand is impossible, before finally agreeing.
ROSALINE
Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,
Before I saw you; and the world’s large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks,
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts,
Which you on all estates will execute
That lie within the mercy of your wit.
To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain,
And therewithal to win me if you please,
Without the which I am not to be won,
You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick and still converse
With groaning wretches, and your task shall be
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit
To enforce the painèd impotent to smile.
BIRON
To move wild laughter in the throat of death?—
It cannot be, it is impossible.
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
ROSALINE
Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.
A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue that makes it.
Act 5 Scene 2
The demands require each of the men to relinquish the illusions that shape their identities. The King, who proclaimed himself to be an ascetic while luxuriating in power, must actually live as one. The men must live truthfully, to standards set by others. Each has to earn the trust of a woman and befriend her before wedding her.
Biron must disown the wit he wields to harm others, learning how to transform it into humor that lifts up even the most desolate. He must accept that others hold the power to determine his worth: “A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear / Of him that hears it, never in the tongue that makes it.” They must learn humility. They must deflate their male egos. The women’s demands are for honesty, friendship, authenticity. They don’t want to be treated as objects of affection or desire. They don’t want to be minimized nor objectified.
What could go wrong, right?
Comedies traditionally end in weddings, which eluded this play. In a nod to breaking the fourth wall, Shakespeare acknowledges this failure:
BIRON
Our wooing doth not end like an old play.
Jack hath not Jill. These ladies’ courtesy
Might well have made our sport a comedy.
KING
Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth an’ a day,
And then ‘twill end.
BIRON
That’s too long for a play.
Act 5 Scene 2
The labour of their love is lost, indeed. All for nothing their extravagant courtship rituals, their love tokens, their high-flying, whisper-weight verses of love. The characters are sung off the stage first by Spring, then Winter. Armado, the ‘Spanish braggart,’ concludes the play:
ARMADO The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way, we this way. Exeunt, severally
They leave the stage, apart, with the bitterness of Winter at their backs. These two seasons mark the passage of the coming year. We are left with dim prospects for love to survive this waiting period. If the past is prologue, the men won’t be able to live up to their commitments.
Some evidence suggests that Shakespeare also wrote and staged a sequel, Love’s Labour’s Won. The fact that it does not survive says everything.
Ellie’s Corner
We’re enjoying the soft autumn light that spills across the lawn late afternoons. In not many days, the sun will be setting at this time of day. While the earth tilts, Ellie is quite content.
Thanks for reading,
Another mind opening post, thanks! But here’s the burning question on everyone’s mind...if Ellie were a character in a Shakespeare play, who would she be? Or perhaps she’s embedded in several plays, mistress of disguise that she seems to be?