Love's Labour's Lost Theme

Love

Shakespeare had a big vision of love. It's not just physical, spiritual, or intellectual – it's all of the above. In Love's Labour's Lost, love is the great synthesizer of humanity. Most of the characters want to be one thing: a warrior, a scholar, a teacher. They think they can only do these jobs well if they cut out the rest of life (and especially love). They discover, however, that love enhances everything else. For the main characters, physical attraction sparks a journey of towards becoming complete human beings. The journey doesn't end with the play's resolution. By writing an ambiguous ending, Shakespeare seems to suggest that the journey continues.

Education

In Love's Labour's Lost, the main characters are young people figuring how to live. There are no elders there to guide them, so they are self-educating. The men are extreme, taking vows to abstain from women, food, and sleep, the better to focus on their studies. In their world, education is social currency. When they're infected by love, however, their horizons broaden. Their senses sharpen. Their poems improve. The play's great argument is that education is bigger than books alone.

Cunning and Cleverness

In the world of Love's Labour's Lost, where men and women are kept apart, seduction takes the form of language. Instead of a plume of red feathers, the men have their wits. Intellectual conversations and witty banter are mating rituals indulged by nearly all characters that we meet. Prolonged volleys of wits establish sexual chemistry between two potential partners. Intelligence is also powerful, establishing status between characters. If you're not actual royalty, you've got to be the wittiest to stay on top.

Sex

In Love's Labour's Lost, sex and sexual attraction sparks self-discovery. If the characters hadn't been attracted to each other, they wouldn't have renounced their absurd, life-denying vows. If they hadn't renounced their vows, they wouldn't have been free to pursue love. If a character couldn't pursue love, he or she wouldn't experience the mind-bending, cataclysmic change of worldview that comes with it. Of course there's the satirical side of sex, too – the side that leaves a country wench pregnant and engaged to a zany character

Principles

The principles we see in Love's Labour's Lost are too restrictive, and too prescriptive for this open-air world. The play begins with young men taking oaths not to have any contact with women. But these men know nothing about women, and abandon their vow when the Princess of France shows up with her ladies-in-waiting. The play argues for a more liberal approach to principles, especially since the characters are young. They don't know themselves and they don't know the world.

Men and Masculinity

The men in Love's Labour's Lost are young and full of ambition. They want to be great men, strong, smart, and famous. They want to be Hercules and Solomon, all at once. They just don't quite know how to get there. Can't you just imagine this conversation happening: "Maybe if we do nothing but study for three years?" "And lift weights?" "No girls, okay?" But they're young. And they like girls. So they spend the play learning that they can be strong, smart, famous, and in love – and will be better men for it. This play calls into question what it means to be a man and how gender roles should be defined. Although, at the end, we seem to have more questions than answers. How do you think that Love's Labour's Lost conceptualizes masculinity?

Man and the Natural World

Nature is all around Love's Labour's Lost: in the setting, stage directions, and imagery. The action takes place in the open air. Exposure to the elements, which are gentle enough for the women to camp outside, influences the characters' behavior and pervades their speech. They start comparing themselves and others to plants, animals, and celestial bodies – a virtual almanac. They climb trees and hide in bushes. Being in nature gives the characters permission give into their instincts to love.

Time

Time has a big role in Love's Labour's Lost. In the absence of the courtiers' birth parents, Nature and Time work together to teach their young charges. The lessons? Number One: timing matters. Number Two: there are things brought on by Time – like procreation and death – that no oath can control. The women know this, the men are learning it.

Literature and Writing

What happens when you fall in love? In Love's Labour's Lost, every lover must write a love letter. Writing is practically a prerequisite to being in love. Once a character explores the art of love-writing that character must endure the humiliation of either: 1) someone reading your letter aloud to strangers, or 2) your best friends eavesdropping on you and mocking your most intimate confessions. Despite the embarrassment, however, love is a wise and inspirational teacher, whose influence can be most clearly seen in the student's writing.