Shakespeare

Shakespeare wrote some sonnets for the play itself, and these were later incorporated within an anthology, The Passionate Pilgrim, which included two of Shakespeare’s “real” sonnets. The “dark lady” of those sonnets seems to have some connection with one of the Princess’s entourage, Rosaline, who is described as being “as blacke as Ebonie”(1487). The connections are there. Whether they are real, or fanciful, is another matter.

Any interpretation is made more complicated by the evident fact that, after its first performances in 1593, Shakespeare revised the play before its presentation at the court of Elizabeth five years later. Many references would have been deleted or changed, and much additional material included. When the text of the play performed before the queen was published, it declared itself to be “Newly corrected and augmented By W Shakespere”. The printer did not always mark Shakespeare’s changes, however. It seems that the dramatist added material in the margins of his papers, or inserted additional sheets, while only lightly marking the passages to be deleted. So it is that, in the quarto text, two alternative versions of speeches may be printed one after the other.

The puzzle of Love’s Labour’s Lost is rendered more puzzling by references to a sequel entitled Love’s Labour’s Won. It is part of an inventory of Shakespeare’s plays compiled by a contemporary in 1598, and a bookseller’s catalogue of 1603 proves that it was printed and sold. But it has entirely disappeared. There have been attempts to identify it with The Taming of the Shrew and with As You Like It, but the difference in title remains a clear obstacle. We must simply assume that it is a “lost” play by Shakespeare, to be placed with another “lost” play entitled Cardenio.

Shakespeare was at ease with his courtly audience, and with the composition of the gentle comedy of Love’s Labour’s Lost he played the role of a privileged servant. He knew the formalities and informalities of court life, just as he knew the exact tone with which noblemen addressed each other. He was at home with the learning of the period, and with the most important scholars and literary men around him. He was, in other words, part of one of the inner circles of Elizabethan society. There are also allusions in Love’s Labour’s Lost to the military campaigns of the Earl of Essex – to the extent that one biographer has suggested that the play is in part a tribute to him⁵-and of course Southampton himself was a close ally of Essex in the world of court intrigue. If Shakespeare was not part of “Essex’s affinity,” to use the formal word for the noble earl’s friends and associates, he was well acquainted with those who were. We may note in a similar spirit of kinship that if Shakespeare was not himself a recusant, he was in close association with fervent adherents to the old faith. Within this cluster of interests – Essex, Southampton, Strange, Roman Catholicism – his own affinities lay.

PART V. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men

The Nine Daies Wonder of William Kempe, whose dance routines were as famous as his clowning and acting. He morris-danced all the way from London to Norwich.

CHAPTER 37 Stay Goe, Doe What You Will