"Love’s Labors Lost": The Meaning of The Title

A 425-year-old Shakespearean puzzle—solved?

Argument

At the height of the action of Love's Labors Lost, Shakespeare’s most popular comedy in his own lifetime, King Navarre and his courtiers embark on a Cupid-led mission to conquer the French princess and her ladies. But the women fight back—and trounce the men. Thus, “Love”’s labor is “lost” as opposed to won.

First published in The Epoch Times.

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In this battle of the sexes, it’s the men who are made to lie down.

What’s the meaning of the title, Love’s Labors Lost (1598), the first work to bear Shakespeare’s name on its title page and a work published 425 years ago as of 2023?

To date, no one’s been sure. As the editor of the Arden critical edition says, “The form of the title and its meaning are uncertain.” Similarly, the Oxford editor says, “It is far from certain what Shakespeare intended his play to be called.”

Turns out, the answer has been right there in the text all along.

At the beginning, King Navarre and three courtiers, Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine, commit themselves to a three-year period of abstinence from worldly pleasures. Calling themselves “brave conquerors” who “war against [their] own affections,” they plan to devote all their time to study.

The lords sign a schedule delineating their self-imposed decrees, only to recall that a French princess and her ladies are scheduled to arrive imminently at their court.

And whether or not you’ve read the play, you know what happens next.

Rather than avoiding romantic endeavors, the men proceed to devote all their time to such endeavors. Rather than warring against their affections, the men go to war on behalf of “Affection” personified, Cupid. Rather than conquering themselves, the men set out to conquer the women.

Armed conflict ensues. The title conveys its outcome.

The key passage is found at the height of the action, in Act 4, Scene 3. At the very moment the men determine to fight on behalf of Love himself, Cupid, they announce their intention to “win” the women.

“Saint Cupid, then, and, soldiers, to the field!” the king exhorts his men. Longaville asks, “Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?” The king affirms, “And win them, too.” With Love himself as their general, the lords expect to prevail over the ladies.

They also say what this “win” will look like. In response to the king’s battle-cry, “Saint Cupid,” Berowne enjoins his fellows:

Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;

Pell-mell, down with them! but be first advised,

In conflict that you get the sun of them.

This is love-as-warfare, in which the men are soldiers entering a battlefield, ready to engage in “conflict.” “Pell-mell” suggests close, hand-to-hand combat. By “get the sun of them,” Berowne means attack them with the sun in their eyes, so they’re unable to ready a defense. The king’s “down with them” indicates the men intend to subdue the women. They will raise “standards” or military flags as symbols of their conquest.

But things don’t quite go according to plan. Having overheard the men’s stratagem, the Princess’s attendant Boyet goes and warns the ladies of the impending assault. “Prepare, madam, prepare!” he cries,

Arm, wenches, arm! Encounters mounted are

Against your peace. Love doth approach disguised,

Armed in arguments. You’ll be surprised.

Muster your wits, stand in your own defense,

Or hide your heads like cowards, and fly hence.

And arm themselves they do, with figurative swords, muskets, and bows-and-arrows. But the women don’t just stay and resist their assailants. They launch a counterattack, quickly overwhelming the men.

As the scholars-turned-soldiers arrive, a trumpet sounds, announcing the start of the battle. Berowne engages with the Princess, the king with Rosaline, Dumaine with Maria, and Longaville with Katharine. As the women deliver barb after barb, Boyet remarks,

The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen

As is the razor’s edge invisible,

Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen;

Above the sense of sense, so sensible

Seemeth their conference. Their conceits have wings

Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.

Blades, bullets, arrows—it turns out the men are the ones under attack. After a hundred lines of jeers and taunts, Berowne asks aloud:

Can any face of brass hold longer out?

Here stand I, lady; dart thy skill at me.

Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout,

Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance,

Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit.

Quite simply, the men are being pummeled. In asking, “Can any face of brass hold longer out?” Berowne suggests at once that the men have been brazen-faced in their conduct and that their glossy shields are proving inadequate against the women’s onslaught.

After Rosaline instructs her ladies to “break off,” the prince and his allies see how they’ve been outsmarted. “By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff!” exclaims Berowne. As the men retreat, the Princess wonders whether they will ever show their faces in public or not go commit suicide. “Will they not, think you, hang themselves tonight?” she asks, victoriously.

Clearly, this is the “loss” referred to in the title. Laboring under Love himself, the men had expected a decisive victory in the arena of romance. But the attempted conquest fails. Unexpectedly, the women fight back, vanquishing the men. Therefore, the title refers to the men’s unsuccessful pseudo-military endeavors in the name of Cupid.

With this in mind, the proper form of the title reveals itself. While “Labors” can be either singular or plural, apostrophized or not, “Love” needs to be in the possessive. Evidently the traditional form of the title, “Love’s Labors Lost,” is correct. Now, we have a better sense of why, the play dramatizing one of the all-powerful boy-god’s rare defeats.

Having repulsed the men’s warlike assault, the play concludes with the women assigning the men year-long trials to be completed before they can approach them again.

Rosaline tasks Berowne with visiting the sick and dying at a hospital, where he is to use his cleverness to bring mirth to the sufferers. “To win me,” she tells her suitor,

You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day

Visit the speechless sick, and still converse

With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,

With all the fierce endeavor of your wit,

To enforce the painèd impotent to smile.

Here we have the true “endeavor” by which this lady’s love can be “won,” in lines that effectively respond to and repudiate those voiced earlier by the Cupid-driven men.

No, Rosaline tells Berowne, you won’t conquer and subdue me. You won’t take me as some battle prize. But you can captivate my heart by showing that you can put the needs of others before your own and follow through on a commitment, that you can share a vow and stick to it.

Earlier on, Berowne himself had defined love as “charity.” In fact, he’d called love and charity inseparable. Thus, the man’s prospective wife isn’t imposing her own definition of love on him.

True love, Rosaline reminds Berowne, isn’t about the immediate gratification of your desires. It isn’t about promenading under the pennant of a nude, blind, wayward, bow-wielding baby boy, intent on triumph and occupation.

Fundamentally, it isn’t about your needs at all.

[First published in The Epoch Times]