Love's Labour's Lost (1598) stages four young aristocratic suitors courting

four French ladies in an improbable Arcadia. Anticipating on Joyce's language

games, this play cannot be seen as yet another festive comedy of love.

It is a laboratory piece which reverses our initial expectations, poised as it is

between comedy and tragedy, merriment and spleen, copia and nihilism.

Here, Shakespeare paves the way for some of the major themes he will

explore later on in his career, such as the value of knowledge, the problems

of inheritance, or female power. He also examines the arbitrary relationships

between verba and res in a dazzling series of puns and quibbles

that bring language, letters and ciphers to the fore. A virtuoso comedy,

Love's Labour's Lost keeps juggling with bawdy words as it puts dramatic

codes upside down, so that it somewhat perversely fails to reach the expected

happy ending.

Love's Labour's Lost: Shakespeare's Anatomy of Wit reassesses this exuberant

and extravagant piece through a close study of its political background, its

religious overtones and its transgressive wordplay while also enhancing the

play's multiple resonances in the world of today.