Love's Labour's Lost

Love’s Labour’s Lost is a comedy, one of three main genres (the others being tragedy and history) performed in Elizabethan theatre. The comedy was typically constructed around a romantic plot. William Shakespeare ties Love’s Labour’s Lost into this genre, utilizing common features: the play within a play, mistaken identity, letters going astray, the neat symmetry of lovers. However, Shakespeare actively explores this form as well: He subverts the expected happy ending, which Berowne explicitly notes does not fit with the generic conventions.

Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is generally dated to around 1598-1599, and features some thematic similarities and shared plot devices with Love’s Labour’s Lost. For example, both use disguises to facilitate conversations at cross-purposes. Rosaline and Berowne and Beatrice and Benedict use argumentative sparring as a means of courtship. Benedict and Berowne are both initially reluctant lovers: Benedict becomes completely earnest once he believes Beatrice loves him; Berowne accepts his feelings throughout the course of the play. Both explore love through long soliloquies, using military language to present love as a dangerous competition and suggest that it changes men from a militaristic