PERSONS REPRESENTED.

FERDINAND, King of Navarre.

BIRON,

LONGAVILLE, Lords attending on the King.
DUMAIN,

BOYET,

MERCADE,} Lords attending on the Princess of France

DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO, a fantastical Spaniard.
Sir NATHANIEL, a Curate.

HOLOFERNES, a Schoolmaster.
DULL, a Constable.

COSTARD, a Clown.

MOTH, page to Armado.

JAQUENETTA, a country wench.

Officers and others, attendant on the King and Princess.

SCENE,-NAVARRE.

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INTRODUCTION TO

LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST.

HISTORICAL NOTICE.

IF Shakspere had been asked for the Plot of "Love's Labor Lost," he might have replied, anticipating Canning's "Knife Grinder,"

"Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, Sir."

Molière, in his "Précieuses Ridicules," has admirably hit off one affectation that had found its way into the private life of his own times. The ladies aspired to be wooed after the fashion of the Grand Cyrus. Madelon will be called Polixène, and Cathos Aminte. They dismiss their plain honest lovers, because marriage ought to be at the end of the romance, and not at the beginning. But in "Love's Labor Lost," Shakspere presents us almost every variety of affectation that is founded upon a misdirection of intellectual activity. We have here many of the forms in which cleverness is exhibited as opposed to wisdom, and false refinement as opposed to simplicity. The affected characters, even the most fantastical, are not fools; but, at the same time, the natural characters, who, in this play, are chiefly the women, have their intellectual foibles. All the modes of affectation are developed in one continued stream of fun i

and drollery ;-every one is laughing at the folly of the other; and the laugh grows louder and louder as the more natural characters, one by one, trip up the heels of the more affected. The most affected at last join in the laugh with the most natural; and the whole comes down to "plain kersey yea and nay,"-from the syntax of Holofernes, and the "fire-new words" of Armado, to "greasy Joan" and "wasted crabs."

The affectation of the King and his courtiers begins at the very beginning of the play. The mistake upon which they set out, in their desire to make their court "a little academe," is not an uncommon one. It is the attempt to separate the contemplative from the active life; to forego duties for abstractions; to sacrifice innocent pleasures for plans of mortification, difficult to be executed, and useless if carried through. Many a young student has been haunted by the same dream: and he only required to be living in an age when vows bound mankind to objects of pursuit that now present but the ludicrous side, to have had his dreams converted into very silly realities. The resistance of Biron to the vow of his fellows is singularly able,-his reasoning is deep and true, and ought to have turned them aside from their folly :

"" Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,

That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won,

Save base authority from others' books."

But the vow is ratified, and its abjuration will only be the result of its practical inconvenience. The "French king's daughter," the "admired princess," is coming to confer with the King and his court, who have resolved to talk with no woman for three years :

"So study evermore is overshot."

But the "child of fancy" appears-the "fantastic"-the "magnificent "-the "man of great spirit who grows melancholy"-he who is "ill at a reckoning, because it fitteth the spirit of a tapster"-he who confesses to be a "gentleman and a gamester," because "both are the varnish of a complete man." How capitally does Moth, his page, hit him off, when he intimates that only "the base vulgar" call deuceace three! And yet this indolent piece of refinement is

"A man in all the world's new fashions planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain; "

and he himself has no mean idea of his abilities -he is "for whole volumes in folio." Moth, who continually draws him out to laugh at him, is an embryo wag, whose common sense is constantly opposed to his master's affectations; and Costard is another cunning bit of nature, though cast in a coarser mould, whose heart runs over with joy at the tricks of his little friend, this "nit of mischief." The Princess and her train arrive at Navarre. We have already learnt to be like the King and his lords, and have seen their fine natures shining through the affectations by. which they are clouded. We scarcely require, therefore, to hear their eulogies delivered from the mouths of the Princess's ladies, who have appreciated their real worth. But with all this disposition to think highly of the nobles of the selfdenying court, the "mad wenches" of France are determined to use their "civil wits" on “Navarre and his bookmen," for their absurd Vows; and well do they keep their determination. Boyet is a capital courtier, always ready for a gibe at the ladies, and always ready to bear their gibes. Costard thinks he is a most simple clown;" but Biron more accurately describes him :

"Why, this is he

That kiss'd away his hand in courtesy:
This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice."

Before the end of Navarre's first interview with the Princess, Boyet has discovered that he is "infected." At the end of the next Act, we learn from Biron himself that he is in the same condition. Away then goes the vow with the King and Biron. In the fourth Act we find that the infection has spread to all the lords; but the love of the King and his courtiers is thoroughly characteristic. It may be sincere enough, but it is still love fantastical.—It hath taught Biron "to rhyme and to be melancholy." The King drops his paper of poesy; Longaville reads his sonnet, which makes flesh "a deity;" and Dumain, in his most beautiful anacreontic,-as sweet a piece of music as Shakspere ever penned -shows "how love can vary wit." The scene in which each lover is detected by the other, and all laughed at by Biron, till he is detected himself, is thoroughly dramatic; and there is perhaps nothing finer in the whole range of the Shaksperean comedy than the passage where Biron casts aside his disguises, and rises to the height of poetry and eloquence. The famous speech of Biron is perhaps unmatched as a display of poetical rhetoric, except by the speeches of Ulysses to Achilles in the third Act of "Troilus and Cressida." The rhetoric of Biron

produces its effect. "Now to plain dealing," says Longaville; but Biron, the merry man, whose love is still half fun, is for more circuitous modes than laying their hearts at the feet of their mistresses. He is of opinion that

"Revels, dances, masks, and merry hours,
Forerun fair Love;"