Love's Labour's Lost

Love's Labour's Lost is a witty comedy about four young noblemen who swear off women to devote themselves to study, only to fall in love the moment four ladies arrive.

Main characters

• Ferdinand, King of Navarre
• Berowne, Longaville and Dumaine, his lords
• The Princess of France
• Rosaline, Maria and Katherine, her ladies
• Don Adriano de Armado, a fantastical Spaniard
• Costard, a clown; Moth, a page; Holofernes, a schoolmaster

Plot summary

This summary gives away the ending.

The King of Navarre and three friends vow to spend three years in study, fasting and sleeping little, and to see no women. At once the Princess of France arrives on a diplomatic mission with three ladies. The men are forced to receive them in the park, and each falls secretly in love. In a famous scene, each lord reads out his love poem while believing himself alone, and is overheard by the others.

Unmasked as oath-breakers, the men woo the ladies in disguise as Russians, and the ladies, forewarned, outwit them. The play's comic underworld of the pompous Armado, the pedant Holofernes and the clown Costard stages a clumsy pageant of the Nine Worthies. Then a messenger brings news that the Princess's father has died. Instead of weddings, the ladies set the men a year's penance before they will consider their suits. 'Jack hath not Jill,' as Berowne says.

Themes

• Language, wit and its limits
• Vows and their breaking
• Learning against experience
• Mortality interrupting comedy

Famous lines

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

Moth, Act 5 Scene 1

Young blood doth not obey an old decree.

Berowne, Act 4 Scene 3

More in our collection of famous Shakespeare quotes.

Sources

No single source is known. The names of the lords echo real French nobles of the 1580s, and the play reflects the fashion for academies and elaborate wordplay at the Elizabethan court.

On stage and screen

It contains the longest word in Shakespeare, 'honorificabilitudinitatibus'. Contemporary lists mention a play called Love's Labour's Won, which is either lost or an alternative title for another comedy.

See where Love's Labour's Lost sits in Shakespeare's career on the timeline, or read about the playhouses it was written for.