How to Do Things With Numbers: Love’s Labour’s Lost and Quantitative Uncertainty

[In the following paper, for reasons of brevity, a working hypothesis has been presented in narrative form: wherever a definite statement of historical fact has been made in support of a literary theory, the authority has been given in the footnotes. The article aims at elucidating certain problems in Love's Labour's Lost by correlating them with certain matters of historical fact which took place in and about the year 1591. The following points constitute problems in Love's Labour's Lost: (a) date of composition and first performance; (b) The unexpected dénoûment in the postponed marriages; (c) The choice of names for the leading male characters, Navarre, Berowne, etc.; (d) The curious emphasis laid upon the killing of the deer by the Princess; (e) The similarity of the Pageant scene at the close of the play to the Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe in The Midsummer Night's Dream; (f) The satire on Euphuism and Sonnets and other courtly affectations; (g) The unique observance by Shakespeare of the unities of time and place. The ensuing narrative has been evolved by applying to these problems the following matters of historical fact: (a) Burleigh's attempts, 1589–94, to force Southampton into marriage with his grand-daughter, Elizabeth de Vere, and Southampton's successful evasion of his betrothal; (b) Southampton's flight to France, 1591, to take part in the war in Normandy; (c) The Royal Progress, 1591, to Portsmouth and certain incidents in the entertainment of the Queen at Cowdray House.]

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Breaking the Bounds of Domesticity: Ecofeminism and Nature Space in Love's Labour's Lost

Shakespeare Bulletin ◽

10.1353/shb.2018.0041 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 36 (3) ◽

pp. 467-483

Author(s):

Miriam Kammer

Keyword(s):

Love's Labour's Lost

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The Good and Bad Quartos of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Love's Labour's Lost"

The Modern Language Review ◽

10.2307/3714706 ◽

1926 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 140

Author(s):

G. Hjort

Keyword(s):

Romeo And Juliet ◽

Love's Labour's Lost

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May Games and Metamorphoses on a Midsummer Night

Shakespeare's Festive Comedy ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691149523.003.0006 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

C. L. Barber

Keyword(s):

Midsummer Night's Dream ◽

A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽

Love's Labour's Lost

This chapter examines Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It argues that the whole night's action is presented as a release of shaping fantasy which brings clarification about the tricks of strong imagination. We watch a dream; but we are awake, thanks to pervasive humor about the tendency to take fantasy literally, whether in love, in superstition, or in Bottom's mechanical dramatics. As in Love's Labour's Lost, the folly of wit becomes the generalized comic subject in the course of an astonishing release of witty invention, so here in the course of a more inclusive release of imagination, the folly of fantasy becomes the general subject, echoed back and forth between the strains of the play's imitative counterpoint.

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