256

LOVE LABOURS LOST.

It has escaped the notice of all the commentators and editors, old, middle, and new, that the story of this play is made to arise out of an event in the genuine history of the relations between the kings of France and Navarre.

The following passage will be found in the Chronicles of Monstrelet:

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 a 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 contract about the two hundred thousand crowns forms the link by which the story of this drama is connected with a real historical transaction. The poet, or the inventor of the story, whom the poet follows, represents Ferdinand, who is become King of Navarre by the death of Charles, who is called his father, which is at variance with history, challenging the payment of one half of this sum, and insinuating even (but the passage is a little obscure) that no part of the two hundred thousand crowns had been paid.

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.
But say that he or we (as neither have)

Received that sum; yet there remains unpaid

A hundred thousand more.-Act ii. sc. 1.

* The Chronicles of Enguerraud de Monstrelet, &c. translated by Thomas

Johnes, Esquire, 8vo. 1810, vol. i. p. 108.

The claim is disputed on the part of France :

Boyet, you can produce acquittances
For such a sum from special officers

Of Charles his father.-Act ii. sc. 1.

and it is for the purpose of settling this disputed account that the Princess of France goes in embassy to the court of Navarre, whence arise all the pleasant embarrassments of the principal portion of the whole plot.

Whether such disputes did really occur, and whether there was ever any embassy either by a Princess (which is not likely to have been the case), or by any other person, for the purpose of composing them, is wholly immaterial; for suppose that the embassy was a part of genuine history, we soon drop all that is historical, and enter on what is only an agreeable fiction. It is sufficient to shew that the link exists; that, unlike in this to most of the romantic dramas, there is a little germ of historic truth in Love Labours Lost, just as there is in Love Labours Won or The Tempest, marking them as twin plays, whose originals are to be sought in one and the same volume; a book of romances, in which the stories are slightly connected with the real facts and personages of history.

The King of Navarre, to whom the King of France undertook to pay the two hundred thousand crowns, died in 1425, and, as the action of the play took place not long after, the time of it may be fixed to the year 1427, or very near that period.

And this leads to the remark that a proper decorum is kept in the names which are given to the principal characters in the play. They are those of persons or families who at that particular period were celebrated in French history, and it seems even that whoever devised the story, and gave these names to persons who appear in it, had looked in the Chronicles

of Monstrelet. Thus the lord of Longueval, Longavil, is named by that Chronicler as a French nobleman who was active against the English during the regency of the Duke of Bedford. John de Beauraine also occurs, whose name we have in the Berowne of the play, which did not become Biron, as we now have it, till the appearance of the second folio in 1632. Dumain may seem to be modelled on Dunois, and Boyet on Boys, both eminent names in the history of the French wars of that age. Perigort and Alençon of course are well-known titles, and, though Jacques Falconbridge has an English air, there was a French Count de Fauquenburgh who was slain at Agincourt. Whether this propriety was Shakespeare's own, or he took the names as he found them, must remain undetermined till the happy day when the volume which contains the original stories on which he wrought in this play and in The Tempest shall be brought forth from its hiding-place.

The name of this play has been variously represented by the original editors and by those of later date; nor are the variations immaterial, since there is a different meaning in every one of the various forms in which we find it. In the title-page of the first quarto it is Loues Labors lost, while in the running-title it is Loues Labor's lost. The latter of these is the title in both the folios. Meres gives it Love labours lost, and this, which approaches very near to the title in front of the first quarto, is probably that by which the author intended it should be called. And this for several reasons; first, it has the true Shakesperian flow, running trippingly on the tongue, as all his titles do. Secondly, it suits better than any other the point in the drama to which, however we read it, the title must be supposed to refer:

I thank you, gracious lords,

For all your fair endeavours.—Act v. sc. 1.

that is, the efforts which the King and the three gay bachelors had made to entertain the Princess and her ladies, which were all frustrated, lost, by the unexpected intelligence of the death of the Princess's father. And, finally, the title in this simplest form alone admits of having as its counterpart the title given to another play, Love Labours Won. Of all the forms the halting title Love's Labour's Lost, adopted by Mr. Malone, Mr. Collier, and others, is the worst.

Perhaps the most perfect form in which the title could be exhibited would be by the introduction of an hyphen, Love-Labours Lost.

We may assume with confidence that Love Labours Lost preceded Love Labours Won; wherefore, if the reasoning in the remarks on The Tempest leads to a just conclusion, this play was written before 1596. Indeed, it has many marks of being an early work, before the great poet had taken his own standing, and framed his romantic dramas in the style of which The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, and As You Like It, are such exquisite specimens. The first known date respecting it is that it was performed before Queen Elizabeth, with some omissions we may hope, at Christmas 1597.

It appears to have been the frequent practice of Shakespeare in the preparation of the romantic dramas, while he took a story from some printed book for the main plot, to introduce an underplot which was wholly of his own invention. In the Much Ado all respecting Benedick and Beatrice is his; in The Tempest Stephano and Trinculo are doubtless his own; and in As You Like It Touchstone and Audrey; and in the play before us, in Holofernes, Nathaniel, Moth, Costard, Dull, and Jaquenetta, we have a group of very entertaining persons, to whom suitable action is assigned, of whom it will hardly be doubted that they are the pure creation of the mind of Shakespeare. They are too English to be found in any

foreign romance. It is perhaps the greatest defect in the structure of the play that they are not more intimately connected with the more important business of the piece. It is also, when speaking of the defects, (as those must who desire the expression of their devotion to be regarded as sincere and discriminated,) a very serious disappointment to find that there is no fulfilment of the promise given near the beginning of the play, in the following lines:

This child of fancy that Armado hight,

For interim to our studies, shall relate

In high-born words the worth of many a knight,

From tawny Spain, lost in the world's debate.-Act i. sc. 1.

Here is a beautiful promise, but where is the fulfilment of it? The words fill the mind with images of chivalry, the fields of Roncesvalles and Fontarrabia, peculiarly appropriate in a story of Navarre. Bishop Warburton, who in due time will recover his station as one of the most sagacious, as well as most profoundly learned, of the critics who have employed themselves on these writings, seems to have explained rightly the last clause "lost in the world's debate" by referring it to the contest between the Christians and the Saracens, the great "debate" of the civilized world. Modern editors leave this really difficult or uncertain expression, without affording any assistance to readers, many of whom must here want it, if they desire to understand as well as read. Even the few words of Warburton are not preserved.

The non-fulfilment of the expectation which these words raise is one proof that in this play Shakespeare was working on a story formed for him, not inventing one for himself; and this is further proved, so that there can be no doubt in the world about it, by the long speech of Ferdinand, in which the poet endeavours to express in verse what is more befitting for prose—the intractable matter of a money account.