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[CHAPTER TWO
THE EARLY COMEDIES (II)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
and
Love's Labour's Lost]
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- - - II - - -
The central conflict between love and friendship in The Two Gentlemen of Verona never finds a place in Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare's next comedy - despite the presence in the latter of four friends in love, Navarre and his three courtiers. There is a degree of conflict between the men, but as far as personal relationships go in this play, Shakespeare now concentrates on hostility between the sexes, and as it was his intention to present his argument in a stylised interweaving of patterns, he gives the four young men four ladies to love, the Princess and her three attendants. Dowden observed this, and found it a feature held in common with The Two Gentlemen of Verona:
Porteus the fickle is set over against Valentine the faithful; Sylvia, the bright and intellectual, is set over against Julia, the ardent and tender .... So, in Love's Labour's Lost, the king and his three fellow students balance the Princess and her three ladies. The arrangement is too geometrical .... 2.22
Boorman suggested that the essence of the conflict in Love's Labour's Lost is the opposition of the group of men to the group of women, and that this conflict constitutes the play. 2.23 The discord between the men and women is, however, but a facet of a much more profound clash which forms the central conflict, that between Art and Nature. 2.24 Art is represented in the play by any form of artifice, affectation or contrived
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mode of action, the courtiers being its principal spokesmen; at the opposite pole to Art is Nature, represented by natural behaviour, free of sophistication. The most natural characters in the play are Costard, Jaquenetta and Dull, the low-life comics, but the Princess and her ladies, despite their more contrived behaviour, are the principal proponents of Nature.
At the outset of the play the men state their allegiance to Art in taking an oath to cut themselves off from the natural world:
Let Fame, that all hunt after in their liues,
Liue registered vpon our brazen Tombes,
And then grace vs in the disgrace of death:
...
And make vs heyres of all eternitie.
Therefore braue Conquerours, for so you are,
That warre against your owne affections,
And the huge Armie of the worlds desires.
Our late edict shall strongly stand in force,
Nauar shall be the wonder of the world.
Our Court shall be a little Achademe,
Still and contemplatiue in liuing Art.
(I.i.1-3 and 7-14) 2.25
This remarkable declaration seems laudable enough on the surface, but a closer examination reveals underlying conflicts. For a start, the pious and elevated style of language ostensibly proclaims a desire for knowledge and wisdom for its own sake, but no such high-minded aspiration actually motivates the vow. The real end in view is not didactic at all, but, as the opening line declares, it is a self-interested wish for eternal fame. This will not be achieved without some effort, and Navarre's use of martial imagery such as 'braue Conquerours', 'warre against your owne affections' and 'the huge Armie of the worlds desires' alerts his courtiers to the anticipated conflict, which Longaville and Dumain accept passively. Berowne, however, questions the proposed method of study by observing a conflict between words and their meanings, an important feature of this play.
Coleridge found that in Love's Labour's Lost the 'satire is chiefly on follies of words', 2.26 and I have already noted the discrepancy between what Navarre's words proclaim and his actual intention. Berowne's argument revolves about the word 'study' - he admits to swearing to study with the King, but not to following the austere way of life proposed, which he sees as counter-productive and impossible to follow:
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Light [seeking] light, doth light of light beguile:
So ere you finde where light in darkenesse lies,
Your light growes darke by losing of your eyes.
(I.i.77-79) 2.27
More importantly, Berowne feels that the methods proposed by Navarre will never achieve the desired end; they are self-defeating:
So Studie euermore is ouershot,
While it doth study to haue what it would,
It doth forget to doe the thing it should:
And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,
'Tis won as townes with fire, so won, so lost.
(I.i.141-145)
This refers to the necessity, in view of the visit from the Princess and her ladies, of waiving the ridiculously violent penalty to any woman found within a mile of the court - 'On paine of loosing her tongue' (I.i.122) - a penalty Shakespeare makes deliberately excessive to emphasise that the rules which are to govern the men in their academe are out of touch with reality and impossible to live by. This failure to achieve goals applies generally to the actions of the lords within the play, both when they are under their oath of abstinence, and afterwards, when they have abandoned it in pursuit of love. Their behaviour is always governed by Art, and as such, it misses its aim, or worse, achieves a result quite contrary to that desired, like Berowne's town captured with fire. Berowne foresees that the type of fame the vows will bring is not what the King desired: 'These oathes and lawes will proue an idle scorne' (I.i.300).
The oaths taken by the men are in direct conflict with Nature in their demand for celibacy, the main stumbling-block as far as Berowne is concerned; to counter the vow he objects, 'The Spring is neare when greene geese are a breeding' (I.i.97). Spring is a season of fecundity, and green its traditional colour, while a 'Winchester goose' was a prostitute, 2.28 and so 'goose' had sexual connotations, 2.29 which Dumain fails to comprehend. Ironically, Navarre sees Berowne's argument as sterile because it will prevent his own plans for achieving fame from coming to fruition, and so he turns the metaphor back on Berowne, whom he likens to
... an enuious sneaping Frost,
That bites the first borne infants of the Spring.
(I.i.100-101)
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This is similar to Berowne's twisting of the words 'light' and 'study' noted earlier, and so yet again the instability of words is used to forward the dramatic conflict between Berowne and the other courtiers. Berowne, however, is eventually forced to side with the other lords and so becomes, reluctantly, identified with the group opposed to Nature. Once this has been established Shakespeare introduces two of the naturals, Costard and Dull, and the conflict between Art and Nature is effectively launched by a further shifting of words' meanings:
Constab.
Which is the Dukes owne person?
Ber.
This fellow, What would'st?
Const.
I my selfe reprehend his owne person, for I am his graces Farborough ...
(Q I.i.180-183) 2.30
The comic malapropism of 'reprehend' for 'represent' points to the indirect reprehending of Navarre by Dull, when he delivers Armado's letter concerning Costard and that exemplar of fecundity, Jaquenetta: the presentation of their affairs in court may be taken as reproachfully highlighting the sterile vows just taken. Of the letter Costard remarks, 'the Contempts thereof are as touching mee' (I.i.188), which is also significant since contempt is one of the characteristic attitudes of this play: here the contempt is Armado's for Costard, but contempt is found scattered throughout. The lords hold love and the natural life in contempt; Holofernes, Nathaniel and Armado hold ignorance in contempt; the women hold the men in contempt for their initial opposition to love and then for their ridiculous mode of following it; and finally, the gathered company of nobles holds the presentation of the Worthies in contempt. 2.31 In every case contempt is associated to some degree with conflict, and the 'Contempts' of Armado's letter concern the conflict between Art and Nature. Armado has caught Costard and Jaquenetta making love, in defiance of the King's decree. Proudfoot sees some bawdy undertones in the letter, 2.32 which indicate that Armado is not as disinterested in the case as may be thought: he describes Jaquenetta as 'a childe of our Grandmother Eue, a female; or for thy more sweet vnderstanding a woman' (I.i.257-258). To 'understand' had sexual connotations when applied to a woman, 2.33 but to make matters more obvious, Armado compounds this with 'my euer esteemed dutie prickes me on' (I.i.259), 2.34 and closes the letter with the expressive 'heart-burning heat of dutie' (I.i.269-270). We may also note that while he has sent Costard for punishment, in Dull's custody, he has retained Jaquenetta for
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himself, and his falling in love with her is confirmed when he confesses as much to Moth shortly afterwards.
Like Navarre before him, Armado uses martial terms to depict the violence of the conquest between love and the celibacy required by the vow. Armado is a soldier, and so the duelling terms he uses are apt, not only because of their association with conflict, but also because of the sexual innuendo they represent:
I will heereupon confesse I am in loue: and as it is base for a Souldier to loue; so am I in loue with a base wench. If drawing my sword against the humour of affection, would deliuer mee from the reprobate thought of it, I would take Desire prisoner, and ransome him to any French Courtier for a new deuis'd curtsie,
(I.ii.53-59)
and again:
Cupids Butshaft is too hard for Hercules Clubbe, and therefore too much ods for a Spaniards Rapier: The first and second cause will not serue my turne: the Passado hee respects not, the Duello he regards not .... Adue Valour, rust Rapier, bee still Drum, for your manager is in loue; yea hee loueth.
(I.ii.165-172)
Armado likens his conflict with love to a duel fought with Cupid, and the 'first an second causes' were those laid down as being the only ones in which a man had to submit to mortal combat, 2.35 and these were frequently the butt of jokes in comedy. We see, for example, Subtle tell Kastril in Jonson's The Alchemist,
You must render causes, child,
Your first, and second Intentions, know your canons,
And your diuisions, moodes, degrees, and differences,
(Alchemist IV.ii)
and then he adds:
That false precept
Of being afore-hand, has deceiu'd a number;
And made 'hem enter quarrells, often times,
Before they were aware: and, afterward,
Against their wills.
(Alchemist IV.ii)
What Armado implies, then, is that he cannot honorably avoid combat with Cupid, and so he submits to his assaults by falling in love. 2.36 He succumbs on the rather dubious grounds that, as love has proved too strong for the great heroes of antiquity, he cannot hope to emerge
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victorious in shunning love himself. His method of wooing is quite different from that adopted by the lords: while they are romantic lovers, submissive to their ladies, and their approach is anything but direct, Armado is both dominant and direct:
Brag.
I do betray my selfe with blushing: Maide.
Maid.
Man.
Brag.
I wil visit thee at the Lodge.
Maid.
That's here by.
Brag.
I know where it is situate.
Mai.
Lord how wise you are!
Brag.
I will tell thee wonders.
Ma.
With what face?
Brag.
I loue thee.
Mai.
So I heard you say.
Brag.
And so farewell.
Mai.
Faire weather after you.
(I.ii.124-135)
This delightful conversation is simplicity itself, and, if we are to judge from Jaquenetta's pregnancy, successful. 2.37 The only other evidence we have of Armado's wooing is his misdirected letter read out by Boyet, and Westlund compares this with the various sonnets of the lords in the following scenes: the lords 'establish fashionable Petrarchan relationships with their ladies', 2.38 whereas Armado, although ridiculous, is dominant, likening himself to the Nemean lion and Jaquenetta to a lamb (IV.i.89-90), thus making the battle between the sexes totally one-sided. Navarre and his friends, on the other hand, in pursuing their loves by means of Art, allow themselves to be dominated by the women, who are finally able to dictate the terms on which the romantic relationships may proceed. The humour of all this lies in the fact that Armado's absurd letter does not really belong in the realms of Art: he is perfectly sincere, expressing himself in his own natural way.
When the ladies finally make their appearance they are unequivocally aligned with Nature. Boyet is a typical courtier, and in his artful way ascribes the Princess' beauty to Nature:
Be now as prodigall of all deare grace,
As Nature was in making Graces deare,
When she did starue the generall world beside,
And prodigally gaue them all to you.
(II.i.9-12)
To this contrived praise she replies:
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Good L. Boyet, my beauty though but mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:
Beauty is bought by iudgement of the eye.
(II.i.13-15)
Thus the Princess makes her position clear from the beginning by rejecting Boyet's praise: she will have nothing to do with Art. The clash which takes place between her and Navarre when they first meet comes as no surprise, therefore, and Boyet's comparison embodying a suggestion of war should not go unnoticed:
He rather meanes to lodge you in the field,
Like one that comes heere to besiege his Court,
Then seeke a dispensation for his oath.
(II.i.85-87)
Once again words with their shifting meanings are the main weapons used in the conflict. Navarre hopes to welcome the ladies on his own terms, but his welcome is thrown back in his teeth when a subtle play on 'shall' and 'will' by the Princess insists that despite the oath she will accept nothing but a conventional courteous welcome to the court. The serious nature of the Princess' embassage had already been hinted at by Berowne in the first act, and it is now disclosed formally. This weighty conflict is not an issue in the play, however; it provides a pretext for the meeting of the two royal parties and gives a sense of urgency and dramatic tension to their first meeting. Since its resolution is anticipated by Boyet, the matter is thereafter dropped from the play (although there is a passing reference at V.ii.730-731). This leaves the field open for the combat between the sexes, and after a brief skirmish between Katherine and Boyet, the Princess declares war:
This ciuill warre of wits were much better vsed
On Nauar and his bookemen, for heere 'tis abus'd.
(II.i.225-226)
Unfortunately for the men, Boyet has observed their love for the ladies and so the conflict promises to be decidedly one-sided.
The ladies are next encountered in the hunting scene, which, in its use of imagery, is the most important in the play. Gray has related the episode to an actual incident in which Queen Elizabeth shot a deer at Titchfield Park on one of her progresses, 2.39 and so Shakespeare may have been paying an extravagant compliment to Her Majesty in including this
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scene. There were other dramatically more relevant reasons for its inclusion, however, one of which is noted by McLay when she says 'the park atmosphere and the hunt metaphor ... express the youth and fertility of Nature in the spring'. 2.40 I think it is sensible to see the first scene of the play as taking place in the King's palace where he holds court, while the second scene, which introduces the affair between Armado and Jaquenetta, should take place in the precincts of the palace, but out of doors. This would echo the movement from Art to Nature, and the transition is emphatically completed in the next scene, where the Princess and her ladies are kept in the fields, prevented from entering the royal palace by the King's vow. The hunting scene is thus an extension of this idea, identifying the Princess fully with Nature and its fecundity.
The association with fertility is ironically further linked with death, and its presence is dramatically noteworthy as it constitutes the first important appearance of violence in the play. The Princess stresses the violence of the hunt:
Then Forrester my friend, Where is the Bush
That we must stand and play the murtherer in?
(IV.i.7-8)
and later she says
But come, the Bow: Now Mercie goes to kill,
And shooting well, is then accounted ill.
(IV.i.24-25)
This morbid dwelling on the violent aspect of the hunt is surprising, as the hunt was, after all, supposed to be a pleasurable indulgence for gentility, who had no real need of the meat they killed. Shakespeare's point is the paradoxical nature of hunting, 2.41 which gives pleasure only at the expense of considerable suffering for the animal hunted. By analogy, the lords, in their pursuit of love, are careless of the women's feelings, and would cause them pain were it not for the fact that they, unlike the hunted animal, are able to resist the men's advances, maintaining their integrity during the conflict. In taking part in the hunt the Princess sees herself as in opposition to Nature, but the experience is, for her, instructive, contrasting sharply with the lords' sterile, blind opposition to Nature embodied in the rules of their academe. In fact the relevance of the comparison of the men's hunting of fame with the hunting of deer is made evident by the Princess herself:
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Glory growes guiltie of detested crimes,
When for Fames sake, for praise an outward part,
We bend to that, the working of the hart.
As I for praise alone now seeke to spill
The poore Deeres blood, that my heart meanes no ill.
(IV.i.31-35)
While the Princess openly admits her pursuit of glory and apparently regrets it, the lords' ostensibly pious quest for learning is merely a cover for their real goal, eternal fame. The Princess' words 'for Fames sake' and the context of the hunt are intended to remind us of the opening line of the play spoken by Navarre, 'Let Fame, that all hunt after ...', and we may therefore deduce that Shakespeare's deliberate introduction of the violence of the hunt was to serve the purpose of highlighting the difference in character between the lords and the ladies, so adding a new dimension, that of personality, to the conflict between Art and Nature.
Although the Princess sees herself as opposing Nature in the hunt, the unreliability of words serves once again to show that she is really still opposed to Art. She asks the Forester where she should hunt:
For.
Hereby vpon the edge of yonder Coppice,
A stand where you may make the fairest shoote.
Qu.
I thanke my beautie, I am faire that shoote,
And thereupon thou speak'st the fairest shoote.
(IV.i.9-12)
This recalls the earlier discussion of her beauty after Boyet's 'painted flourish' of praise, and it ultimately makes the same point. In the earlier episode we have seen the Princess frankly acknowledge her own beauty, and so we may, perhaps generously, attribute her deliberate misconstruing of 'the fairest shoote' to modesty over her prowess at hunting. Whatever her motive, the outcome is the same as it was in her conversation with Boyet, the rejection of contrived praise: 'my beautie will be sau'd by merit' (IV.i.21).
I mentioned earlier the association of the forest and hunt with fecundity, and two incidents in the scene underline this. The first is the delivery of Armado's letter to Jaquenetta, which Costard mistakenly give to the Princess. In addition to Armado's sexual domination in this comically pompous letter, it should be noted that his visualising himself as a hunter, the Nemean lion, with Jaquenetta as his prey, corresponds to the position now adopted by the ladies who have become hunters, and it is they who dominate the men later in the play when it comes to rivalry
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between the sexes in the wooing game. The second episode which underlines the association of the hunt with fecundity is an extension of the first, taking the form of a particularly bawdy passage of repartee (IV.i.109-144). Here the violence of the hunt is cunningly transformed to sexual imagery: on the surface the dialogue is a perfectly respectable conversation using various terms relating to archery and hunting, but that Shakespeare intended more than this is indicated by Maria's comment, 'Come, come, you talke greasely, your lips grow foule' (IV.i.138) and also Costard's unwitting observation that the 'most inconie vulgar wit' has come 'so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were' (IV.i.143-144). The ribaldry starts with the inevitable joke on the horns of the deer with a quibble on cuckold's horns, and in this Rosaline identifies herself as the hunter, the aggressive party in the battle of the sexes. In the next few lines the horn migrates from the forehead, becoming an emblem of male fertility, as evidenced in Boyet's 'she her selfe is hit lower' (IV.i.119). To 'hit it' thus becomes a euphemism for sexual intercourse, and the 'mark' at which the arrow is aimed is the woman, as seen in Boyet's 'Let the mark haue a pricke in't' (IV.i.133). These bawdy quibbles all related to the fact that Rosaline is being courted by Berowne (as has just been revealed by Costard in his attempt at delivering Berowne's letter), and the general tenor is a gentle mocking of Rosaline by Boyet. As is usual in such repartee there is a playful conflict in the battle of wits. When Rosaline sings 'Thou canst not hit it my good man' (IV.i.127) she implies Boyet is sexually impotent; he retorts 'And I cannot, another can' (IV.i.129), suggesting that Berowne will be her sexual partner. The same slur of impotence is again flung at Boyet by Maria when she says 'your hand is out' (IV.i.134), to which he replies 'And if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in' (IV.i.136). To this Costard adds 'Then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the Pin' (F2 IV.i.137), which, in terms of archery, means she will hit the centre of the target; but Costard's real meaning becomes apparent if it is realised that 'cleave' also means 'cling or hold fast' to something, and 'pin' is yet another euphemism for the male organ. This interpretation is confirmed a few lines later by Boyet's 'I feare too much rubbing' (IV.i.140), in which 'rubbing' does not denote just the conflict he is engaged in with the ladies, but also refers to sexual contact, making it a clever way for Boyet to retire from the fray. 2.42
Although extremely vulgar, this passage aptly uses double entendre to highlight in an amusing, light-hearted way, the antagonism between the
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sexes, one of the central conflicts of the play. It also draws attention to the women's characteristically wry, negative response to any advances by the men, a trait which will become only too obvious in later scenes. Furthermore, the humour of the sexual quibbles on archery and hunting terms softens the effect of the first part of the hunting scene with its insistence on the violence of the hunt and the sober moralising on the pursuit of glory. Violence is never allowed to become too obtrusive, however, and Shakespeare presents the death of the deer in an amusing parody, a report of the event by Holofernes, Nathaniel, and Dull, in which their pedantic philological debate draws attention from the death itself.
Conflict is also present in the next scene, where the inevitable revelation of the inner turmoil of the four men in love takes place. In The Comedy of Errors the love-struck Antipholus of Syracuse presented his inner conflict mainly in asides and short soliloquies, while in The Two Gentlemen of Verona Proteus devoted two serious, lengthy soliloquies to the matter. In Love's Labour's Lost the technique is rather different, avoiding the serious overtones of the previous comedy. The four-fold revelation is not, in fact, the first example of such speeches in the play, for Berowne closed Act III by lamenting, in soliloquy, the inner turmoil caused by love. In such cases Cupid is both desired as an ally and feared as a foe, thus being the prime cause of the conflict. Aronson makes the point that Shakespeare often associates Cupid's blindness with 'the violence and emotional instability caused by lust. Thus, in the comedies, his blindness is associated with the phallic symbol found hanging in front of brothels to attract customers'. 2.43 This ambiguity is a feature of Berowne's speech in which Cupid is referred to as
This wimpled, whyning, purblinde waiward Boy,
This signior Iunios gyant dwarfe, Don Cupid,
...
Liedge of all loyterers and malecontents:
Dread Prince of Placcats, King of Codpeeces.
(III.i.174-175 and 178-179)
The humour in this description shows that Cupid presents no serious threat; in fact, Berowne is almost mocking himself for being in love. He sees himself as being in Cupid's thrall as a punishment for his previous opposition to love, something of a contradiction, in view of his reasons for opposing the vow in Act I:
... it is a plague
That Cupid will impose for my neglect,
Of his almighty dreadfull little might.
(III.i.196-198)
Agnew has drawn attention to the duality of Berowne's character:
What we find in Berowne is a marriage of an emancipated and subtle consciousness on one hand with the reflexes and promptings of a slavish votary on the other and this marriage is as provocative and interesting psychologically as it is paradoxical with reference to received convention regarding the comic lover. 2.44
It is 'the reflexes and promptings of a slavish votary' which give rise to the inner conflict experienced by Berowne, forcing him hypocritically to hide his love from the other lords. His 'emancipated and subtle consciousness', by contrast, is what makes him oppose the concept of the academe when it is first proposed by Navarre, and until the latter part of IV.iii, where all agree to abandon their ideals and pursue love instead, Berowne is torn between his loyalties to the academe and his instinct that the sterile denial of Nature demanded of Navarre's followers can never be maintained.
The source of the conflict is attributed to Cupid: when Berowne sees Navarre approaching he says, 'Shot by heauen: proceede sweet Cupid, thou hast thumpt him with thy Birdbolt vnder the left pap' (IV.iii.21-22), so recalling the earlier hunting scenes. The conquest of love is also expressed in military terms, as seen when Berowne had referred to himself as 'a Corporall of [Cupid's] field', wearing 'his colours like a Tumblers hoope' (III.i.182 and 183). Then finally, once all lovers have been discovered, the military imagery continues with considerable violence and sexual innuendo in
Kin.
Saint Cupid then, and Souldiers to the field.
Ber.
Aduance your standards, & vpon them Lords.
Pell, mell, downe with them: but be first aduis'd,
In conflict that you get the Sunne of them.
(IV.iii.362-365)
The metaphor is more apt than the lords realise, as the ladies put up a spirited resistance to their advances, the subject of much of the final act of the play, where the clash between Art and Nature reaches its climax. The ridiculously contrived mode of wooing chosen by the men is unacceptable to the ladies, who take full advantage of the information Boyet supplies in order to reduce the carefully planned tactics to total chaos. Moth is unable to deliver his prepared speech in the face of the
confusion resulting when the ladies turn their backs on him; Boyet mercilessly mocks the lords by misconstruing their words of introduction to the ladies; and finally the lords are tricked into pledging love to the wrong ladies for the simple reason that they follow the appearance of love, imaged in the emblems worn by the ladies, not the reality, the ladies themselves. Even in this the men may be thought of as devoted to Art, the emblems, not Nature, the ladies. Godshalk observed the predominantly patterned, ordered structure of the play, but set beside this 'competing structures of disruption and disorder'. 2.45 This tendency to chaos manifests itself throughout the play in the minor misunderstandings of words, miscarryings of letters and mistakings of intention, but it reaches its climax in the final episodes of the action.
Apart from the amusing spectacle which the Russian masque affords the audience, it also carries a deeper meaning relating to the antagonism between the lords and ladies. 2.46 The stage direction which introduces the episode reads 'Enter Black moores with Musicke, the Boy with a speech, and the rest of the Lords disguised' (V.ii.157), and the function of the music here is to accompany the dance intended by the lords, as reported by Boyet - 'Their purpose is to parlee, to court, and dance' (V.ii.122). To the Elizabethans, the ordered movements of dancing were a reflection of harmony with strong sexual overtones, as seen in Elyot's Boke Named the Gouernour:
In euery daűce, of a moste aunciente custome, there daunseth together a man and a womã, holding eache other by the hande or the arme, which betokeneth concorde. 2.47
Similarly, in Armin's The History of the Two Maids of More-clacke, we find the association of music, dance and marriage in Humil's reaction to proposed matrimony:
Make the Gods daunce, cause Iouiall mirth
Musicke in heauen for this earthes marriage
Is a triumphant concord to vs all.
(Two Maids A1v) 2.48
For Dekker, the sexual connotations of dancing were even stronger, as seen when Mistress Fingerlock is upbraided in the first part of The Honest Whore: she is a bawd who
... liv'st
Upon the dregs of Harlots, guard'st the dore,
Whilst couples goe to dauncing: O course devill!
(1 Honest Whore III.ii)
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This, in Love's Labour's Lost, the intended dance is a sexual advance by the lords on the ladies, who, being warned in advance, plan their counter-stratagem:
Ros.
But shall we dance, if they desire vs too't?
Quee.
No, to the death we will not moue a foot,
Nor to their pen'd speech render we no grace:
But while 'its spoke, each turne away his face.
(V.ii.145-148)
That 'each turne away his face' ensures that the masquers will be in no doubt as to the ladies' antagonism, and the dance never takes place, the men retreating 'all drie beaten with pure scoffe' (V.ii.263). With their ranks in complete disarray they are totally at the mercy of the ladies. They blame Boyet for their misfortunes and there is a good deal of animosity in their relationship with him, while affairs with the ladies have reached an impasse, with no comic resolution in sight.
At this point of highest dramatic tension Shakespeare brings in Costard to introduce the show of the Worthies. Initially this comes as some relief after the increasingly heated attack by Berowne on Boyet, which threatened to break into violence: Berowne's greeting to Costard is 'Welcome pure wit, thou part'st a faire fray' (V.ii.484). However, as the pageant proceeds the prevailing sense of disorder is not diminished, but augmented, with one after another of the players being mocked and put out of their parts. The lords' taunts and jibes are merciless, in many cases cruel, and Holofernes' comment substantially increases his stature in showing his calm, considered opinion of his ignoble superiors: 'This is not generous, not gentle, not humble' (V.ii.623). Amid the laughter and confusion of the pageant, even at this late stage in the play, Shakespeare offers us a deeper insight into other characters besides Holofernes. Costard is the only player who manages to complete his part, and he takes charge of the proceedings - an unexpected role in view of the presence of Holofernes and Armado also in the cast. Boyet has always taken great delight in mocking others, but until now this characteristic of ridiculing those at a disadvantage has not been observed so prominently displayed amongst Navarre and his courtiers. One obvious function of this united mockery on the part of the lords (as seen by Leggatt) 2.49 is to reconcile Boyet with Berowne and his friends, for after Boyet's first jibe, Berowne says to him, 'Well said old mocker, I must needs be friends with thee' (V.ii.543-544). The Princess, on the other hand, dissociates herself completely from the lords in their attempts at
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disrupting the show. She holds herself aloof in the main, but when she does speak she is always constructive, offering sympathy and encouragement ('The Conqueror is dismaid: Proceede good Alexander'); thanks ('Great thankes great Pompey'); or trying to re-establish order despite the lords' efforts to the contrary ('Stand aside good Pompey') (V.ii.563, 553 and 582).
The state of disorder reaches yet another climax when Armado, in the midst of vain attempts to present Hector, is confronted by Costard with Jaquenetta's pregnancy. This is sweet revenge for Costard, as Armado had rather basely used Navarre's decree to get Costard arrested in order to have Jaquenetta to himself. There has been no apparent animosity on this score between the two men up to this point, however, and so the present quarrel may be largely attributed to the disordered state created by the lords' mockery. Their obvious enjoyment as they spur the two men on to combat, anticipating open violence, indicates an unpleasantly sadistic streak in the nobles; but Shakespeare avoids the physical expression of hostility by interrupting the proceedings with news of France's death brought by Marcade. Order is suddenly, dramatically restored by this, the inexorable intrusion of reality which forces the lords to come to terms with their contrived behaviour. By now they have totally abandoned their unrealistic pursuit of fame, but they do still desire their second goal, to love and be loved. To achieve this they must undergo a penance, a form of initiation into love which is normally the subject of romantic comic plots, but which in Love's Labour's Lost the lords have so far quite avoided (apart, perhaps, from the discomfort of having their ridiculous mode of wooing mocked by the ladies). The ladies therefore duly prescribe for the lords their various acts of mortification to be undertaken in the next twelve months, and to their demands the men must submit. The forms of penance meted out by the ladies are designed to bring the lords to a realisation of their follies, particularly in Berowne's case, as he has to abandon the art of mocking rhetoric and learn the natural speech of humanity. By this means order is restored, with the relationships between the sexes being placed on a sound, realistic footing for the first time in the play, and although this 'doth not end like an old Play: | Iacke hath not Gill' (V.ii.866-867), the true comic resolution, outside the play's action, is reasonably securely in sight. White sees here Shakespeare's 'first considered attempt to fuse the comic expectation of an ending with the romance tendency towards endlessness'; 2.50 without Marcade's disruption the play could have closed
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with the finality of a conventional comic ending, but by postponing the inevitable marriages to a time outside the play, Shakespeare has deliberately created a sense of continuing action, or 'endlessness', truer to life and dramatically more satisfying than a conclusion in which all loose ends are tied up.
The songs which end Love's Labour's Lost echo the movement from disorder to harmony seen in the main body of the play. The song of the cuckoo is full of summery images and is set entirely out of doors, as was most of the preceding play; but despite the apparent happiness of this world, there is an undercurrent of disruption, represented by the cuckoo's mocking cry to all cuckolds. McLay has suggested that the 'entry of Mercade marks the Winter period of the play, the period of suffering and purgation', 2.51 and this is supported by the fact that at this point Berowne says 'the Scene begins to cloud' (V.ii.714), a self-conscious remark calculated to make the audience aware of the abrupt change of tone from the comic, but contrived, world of the play to the more serious realms of reality which extend beyond the actors' final exits. The owl's song represents this winter world of reality, where the harmony of true happiness will be established, not without cost; and, as Westlund says, the pun contained in the owl's 'Tu-whit to-who' (V.ii.910-911) 'places wit and wooing in the context which the ladies, and the play, demand'. 2.52
The comic resolution of Love's Labour's Lost is unconventional in being postponed to a time after the conclusion of the play, but what is remarkable about this unique ending is that the sense of fulfilment generally found in comic endings is nevertheless preserved. To a large extent this must be attributed to the fact that the central conflicts of the play, the battle of the sexes and the conquest between Art and Nature, have been resolved, and the newly established understanding between the four pairs of lovers gives grounds for hoping that the men will meet the demands imposed on them by the women. The degree of violence and disorder encountered in this play has been considerably less than that found in the first two comedies, but comparable with that found in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In Shakespeare's two earliest comedies the element of farce contributes to the amount of violence used in the
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action for comic purposes, while in The Two Gentlemen of Verona physical violence manifests itself only in the forest scenes in the outlaws' abductions and Proteus' attempted rape. Julia's strength of character in these violent scenes is remarkable, as it was earlier when we saw her own violent wishes regarding Silvia's portrait conquered in deference to her love for Proteus. The use of conflict and violence to delineate the character of Julia is more subtle than Shakespeare's similar use in The Taming of the Shrew to highlight Katherina's shrewishness and Petruchio's dominance, and represents a refinement of his art.
Another aspect of violence, the hostile sea imagery, is conspicuous in the first half of The Two Gentlemen of Verona and also in the earlier The Comedy of Errors, giving an uncomfortable feeling of latent violence. For the Syracusians the sea is an instrument of disruption, separating the members of Egeon's family and bringing them to Ephesus, where they meet with further troubles - even possible death. Similarly, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the sea voyages to Milan bring the central characters to a hostile environment where they undergo certain trials: the men find their friendship tested, while Julia's love for Proteus is put under equal stress. Despite these instances of disruption, which may be attributed to the malevolent influence of the sea, the image used by Shakespeare is two-sided: the sea brings conflict and violence, but it also finally restores harmony, for it is through the trials associated with the sea that happiness is won.
In the last of these early comedies, Love's Labour's Lost, physical violence never manifests itself on the stage, but the hunting scene with its reported death is thematically important, while the narrowly averted violence between Armado and Costard in the final scene heightens the tension and sense of disorder. The death of France, although only reported, is violently climactic in its effect: the disorderly pageant is brought to an abrupt end, as are the ridiculous love affairs of the men, who, instead, are made to submit to harsh, but realistic, tests to prove their love.
Disorder and conflict are present in all of the early comedies, although the Elizabethan concept of world order is important in only the first two, where we see the consequences of the disruption of this order. In the two later early comedies the concern for divine order is of considerably less importance, but the relationships between men and women are still the centre of focus. The plot of The Two Gentlemen of Verona is based on the conflict between love and friendship, and it reaches its
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climax in the romantic offer of Silvia which Valentine makes to his unworthy friend. In Love's Labour's Lost there is once again considerable interest in the conflict between love and friendship, with the men's loyalty to the ideals of their academe giving rise to male bonding akin to that between Proteus and Valentine in the earlier play, though shorn of its romantic conventions. The course of events in the later comedy is quite different, however, and the conflict is not based on competition for the same woman, but on an inability of the men to reconcile their natural, creative sexual drives with the sterile demands of the academe. Furthermore, there is an opposing female bonding which arises as a reaction to the misogynic tenets to which the men subscribe, and this results in a conflict between the sexes not found in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, but recalling that between Katherina and Petruchio. It differs, however, in that the women are not shrews, and it is the men whose behaviour is socially unacceptable.
In all four plays Shakespeare has tackled serious issues concerning the relationships between men and women and his mode of presentation is essentially constant: sources of conflict are identified and allowed to develop, being accompanied by an increasingly disordered state. This bears directly on the central characters, who undergo trials which result in their growing in stature, and so being more qualified to deal with their troubled relationships. In the comic denouement, conflicts are resolved and order is re-established, giving a sense of contented fulfilment at the close of the play. This is not necessarily all-pervading, for there may be unresolved conflicts at the end, as seen in varying degrees in the four early comedies. In The Comedy of Errors reunion and reconciliation extend to all the major characters, and in the highly romantic The Two Gentlemen of Verona the only person not included in the happy resolution is the loutish Thurio, for whom conflict ceases to exist when he resigns his claim to Silvia. These two comedies with their complete resolution of conflict may be contrasted with the other two early comedies, in which certain issues remain unresolved at the close of the play. In The Taming of the Shrew only Katherina and Petruchio achieve true happiness, while the other two couples seem destined to a life of shrewish quarrelling; also, there is still a good deal of animosity in evidence between Bianca and Katherina at the end of the play. None of this mars the conclusion, however; it simply highlights the happiness of Katherina and Petruchio, thus underlining the importance of mutual reconciliation of differences in a marriage
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partnership if lasting harmony is to be achieved. In the early comedies the most dramatically satisfying conclusion is that of Love's Labour's Lost, in which the central conflicts of the play are resolved, but the establishing of an ordered, conflict-free state after the dramatic resolution is by no means guaranteed. In fact, the uncertainty implicit in the closing songs is a part of real life, something the lords have finally been forced to come to terms with. Shakespeare discovered here a fact he was to use increasingly in later comedies: that the perpetuation of conflicts implicit in a realistic conclusion is not totally out of keeping with the conventions of romantic comedy.
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- - - NOTES: CHAPTER TWO - - -
2.22 Edward Dowden, Shakespere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art, 10th ed. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1892), p.60. See also William Leigh Godshalk, 'Pattern in Love's Labour's Lost', Renaissance Papers, 1968, pp.41-48 (hereafter cited as Godshalk, 'Pattern'). return
2.23 S.C. Boorman, Human Conflict in Shakespeare (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), p.71. return
2.24 Catherine M. McLay gives an excellent outline of this conflict in 'The Dialogues of Spring and Winter: A Key to the Unity of Love's Labour's Lost', Shakespeare Quarterly, 18 (1967), 119-127; Joseph Westlund's view is similar in 'Fancy and Achievement in Love's Labour's Lost', Shakespeare Quarterly, 18 (1967), 37-46. return
2.25 Line numbers are taken from William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, ed. Richard W. David, 5th ed. (London: Methuen, 1980). return
2.26 Coleridge's Essays and Lectures on Shakspeare and Some Other Old Poets and Dramatists, ed. anon., Everyman's Library No.162 (London: Dent, n.d.), p.71 (hereafter cited as 'Coleridge'). return
2.27 Folio has 'seeeking' in line 77; F2 has 'seeking', but ruins the line with a further misprint: 'Light seeking light, doth light beguile'. return
2.28 O.E.D., VI, 684: 'goose ... 3. Winchester goose: a certain venereal disorder (sometimes simply a goose); also, a prostitute ... 1591'. Shakespeare twice uses the expression elsewhere: see 1 Henry VI I.iii.53 (quoted on p.30) and Troilus V.x.55. return
2.29 In III.i it means 'prostitute' at lines 98 and 119; see David p.50 n.; see also Anthony G. Petti, 'The Fox, the Ape, the Humble-Bee and the Goose', Neophilologus, 44 (1960), 211. return
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2.30 Q's 'Farborough' was an accepted word meaning 'thirdborough' (see David, p.11 n.); Folio's 'Tharborough' could, therefore, be a deliberate comic amalgamation of 'third-' and 'far-' in keeping with Dull's other confusions. return
2.31 Barton has made much of contempt within the play and suggests that it and other sources of conflict derive from Robert Wilson's comedy, The Cobler's Prophecy; see Anne Barton, 'A Source for Love's Labour's Lost', Times Literary Supplement, November 24, 1978, pp.1373-1374. return
2.32 Richard Proudfoot, 'Love's Labour's Lost: Sweet Understanding and the Five Worthies', Essays and Studies, 37 (1984), 22-23. return
2.33 This, of course, relates to her customary position in sexual intercourse; there may also be a link between 'understand' = 'know', and the Hebraic 'know': see O.E.D., VII, 512-513: 'know ... v. ... II. ... 7. trans. To have carnal acquaintance or sexual intercourse with. ... Chiefly a Hebraism ... c 1200'. See p.46 n.1.37. [return to n.1.37] return
2.34 O.E.D., XII, 456-458: 'prick ... v. ... II. ... 10. fig. a. To drive or urge as with a spur; to impel, instigate, incite, stimulate, provoke ... a 1225-1340 ... V. ... 25. To thrust ... into something ... c 1430 ... VI. ... 27. To raise or erect ... 1587', and on top of all this, XII, 454-456: 'prick ... sb. ... V. ... 17. a. The penis. coarse slang. 1592'. return
2.35 See David pp.27-28 n. return
2.36 A similar cowardly withdrawal is seen in Beaumont and Fletcher's A King and No King, where Bessus, reputed honourable but in fact a coward, has to defend his honour and so consults two courtly swordsmen who assure him his honour may remain intact without combat (IV.iii); the same happens again in V.i when Lygones beats him, and in V.iii the swordsmen themselves resort to the same equivocation in defence of their own honour. (The act and scene references are taken from Ernest Rhys, ed., Select Plays by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Everyman's Library No.506 (London: Dent, 1916).) return
2.37 That Jaquenetta is two months pregnant by the end of the play is not necessarily evidence that Costard is the father of the expected child; it could be merely an example of Shakespeare's time dilation. return
2.39 Austin K. Gray, 'The Secret of Love's Labour's Lost', Publications of the Modern Language Association, 39 (1924), 599 and 606. return
2.40 McLay, p.122; a fundamentally opposed interpretation has been given by Erickson, who sees the Princess' role of huntress as equivalent to the adoption of a cruel, Petrarchan lady's attitude to the men. This emphasises the sterile, unproductive nature of the relationship between the men and the women, but ignores the fact that the ladies' declaration of war on the men is also an attack on the sterility of their academe. See Peter B. Erickson, 'The Failure of Relationship between Men and Women in Love's Labour's Lost', Women's Studies, 9 (1981), 71. return
2.41 A point made by Professor Ferguson. return
2.42 For further explanation of the sexual quibbles, see Eric Partridge, Shakespeare's Bawdy: A Literary & Psychological Essay and a Comprehensive Glossary (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955), entries under 'get the upshoot' (p.120); 'hit it' (p.127); 'horn' (p.129); 'pin' (p.26, and not mentioned in the glossary); 'prick' (pp.171-172); and 'rubbing' (p.181). Also see O.E.D., III, 305: 'cleave ... v.2 ... 3. In wider sense: To cling or hold fast to; to attach oneself ... to ... c 1300'; and XI, 846-847: 'pin ... sb1 I. ... 1. ... c. A peg ... fixed in the centre of a target ... c 1450'. return
2.43 Alex Aronson, Psyche and Symbol in Shakespeare (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972), p.142. return
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2.44 Gates K. Agnew, 'Berowne and the Progress of Love's Labour's Lost', Shakespeare Studies, 4 (1968), 42. return
2.45 Godshalk, 'Pattern', p.45 return
2.48 The edition cited is J.P. Feather, ed., The Collected Works of Robert Armin, II vols (London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1972). return
2.50 R.S. White, Shakespeare and the Romance Ending (Newcastle upon Tyne: Tyneside Free Press, 1981), p.26. return
Proceed to Chapter Three