CASE FILE 5

Hello and welcome back to Tracing Shakespearean Mysteries. Before launching into our next mystery investigation, let me briefly recap the evidence presented so far - evidence that, at least for the moment, defies explanation. In Case File 1, we explored the setting, the legend and the role of the Colonna family in The Tempest. In Case File 2, 3, and 4 we examined works most likely written between 1594 and 1596, uncovering not only the close geographical proximity of their settings -Verona, Milan, Sabbioneta, and Mantua - but also a wealth of local detail that strongly suggested first-hand knowledge of these places.

In this episode we are going to turn our attention to another early play, Love’s Labour’s Lost, most likely written around 1596-1597. It’s not one of the most frequently performed plays, despite its clever language - sometimes lyrical, often witty - and its amusing, playful storyline. Perhaps the problem lies in its rather abrupt and unresolved ending, which can leave audiences feeling dissatisfied. But might there be a reason for that? We know there was a sequel, now lost to us, whose very title promised a happy resolution: Love’s Labour’s Won. If we can identify the source story, we may be able to uncover clues about the contents of this missing play. And that is exactly what we’ll be investigating in this episode.

But let’s start with a summary of the plot of Love's Labour’s Lost. The play opens with King Ferdinand of Navarre deciding to establish an academy and swearing an oath with three of his lords - Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine - that for three years they will dedicate themselves to study, eat frugally, and avoid speaking to women. Their plans are immediately upset by the arrival of the Princess of France and her three ladies - Rosaline, Maria, and Katherine.

In keeping with his oath, Ferdinand refuses to accommodate the ladies in his palace, instead having tents erected for them in one of his fields. But it doesn’t take long for the men to realise that each has secretly fallen in love with one of the ladies - fortunately each with a different one. And each has even composed a love poem, a fact that soon comes to light, prompting the men to abandon their oath and pursue courtship.

In an attempt to impress the ladies, the men disguise themselves as Russians, but their ruse is quickly turned into a playful mockery - the ladies, forewarned by their witty gentleman Boyet, leave the men humiliated. Despite this, all the lovers are temporarily brought together by the Pageant of the Nine Worthies, a humorous play-within-a-play performed by local rustics.

Just as the four love stories seem poised for resolution, news arrives that the Princess’ father has died, and the ladies must depart. They agree to meet the men again in a year and a day, but only after the men complete a series of symbolic “labours” to prove their virtue. Thus Love’s Labour’s Lost ends, deliberately denying the audience a conventional happy ending. Yet the play closes with a pastoral song which suggests that patience in love will eventually bear fruit. In fact, we know that the play once had a sequel, Love’s Labour’s Won, which more than likely supplied the happy resolution that this story denies.

So, where does the inspiration for the story come from? We can certainly identify the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte in the play, that is to say, apart from the four sets of lovers, the Spanish captain is Don Armado, the scholar-doctor is Holofernes, the elderly and ridiculous Pantaloon is Sir Nathaniel, the clever servant Harlequin is seen in Mote and the simpleton Zanni is Dull. It should also be noted that the character of Holofernes, a man of comic, pedantic excess, bears a strong resemblance to Rombus in the play The Lady of May, written in 1578 by Philip Sidney, an author of particular significance to our investigation. We shall therefore be returning to his works in a later episode.

So, it would seem that Love’s Labour’s Lost is another one of those plays where the sources feel frustratingly elusive — a blend of many ideas rather than a single clear origin. That said, I would suggest that the basic narrative framework may owe something to a story by Matteo Bandello, as retold by William Painter in The Palace of Pleasure, a now familiar source book in our investigation.

Painter is usually quite brisk in his retellings, sticking closely to events and offering minimal emotional colouring. But in his version of the story of Dom Diego and Ginevra, which is divided into two parts, he expands significantly on Bandello’s original, adding love letters, songs and long rhetorical reflections on love, the latter element being especially prominent in Love’s Labour’s Lost. In his introduction to the first part of the tale, he sketches the storyline: “Dom Diego a Gentleman of Spayne fell in loue with fayre Gineura, and she with him.” However, another lady in the region had also set her sights on Dom Diego and presented him with a magnificent hawk. When Ginevra learned that he had accepted the gift, purely out of courtesy, she was outraged and broke off all contact with him. As a consequence, Dom Diego, “constant of mind fell into despayre, and abandoninge all his friends and living, repaired to the Pyrene Mountaynes, in a state of lovesick exile.”

Before we go any further, we should look at the location of this story which, we are told, is in northern Spain, near the Pyrenees, not long after the death of the victorious and noble prince Ferdinand, the son of Alphonsus, King of Aragon. This refers to Ferdinand I of Naples who died in 1494. Remember we have already encountered members of this family in The Tempest. Bearing in mind that in Love’s Labour’s Lost we find a Ferdinand as King of Navarre, let’s see if the historical context can offer us any relevant insights.

Around 1500, the political geography of “northern Spain” was somewhat fluid. The region bordered the three Basque territories which were part of the Crown of Castile, and alongside them stood the independent Kingdom of Navarre, which straddled the Pyrenees.

In 1512, most of southern Navarre was conquered by Ferdinand II of Aragon and incorporated into Spain, whereas Upper Navarre, north of the Pyrenees, remained independent and increasingly aligned with France. Although Navarre was not formally incorporated into France until 1620, a decisive change occurred in 1589, when Henry IV of France, then King of Navarre, became heir to the French throne.

Because France was Catholic and Henry was Protestant, his succession sparked further unrest during the French Wars of Religion. So, in 1593, he converted to Catholicism in order to secure his position, and in 1594 he was crowned King of France, bringing greater stability to the realm.

By the mid-1590s, when Love’s Labour’s Lost was written, Henry of Navarre was one of the most talked-about rulers in Europe and was probably the model for the King of Navarre in the play. As we have already noted, his name Ferdinand, may have come from Painter’s introduction to the story of Dom Diego and Ginevra.

So, our King Ferdinand rules over a court that is removed from all political reality, although the names of his companions - Berowne, Longaville, and Dumain - do recall real French noble families of the time, giving the setting a contemporary flavour while the atmosphere remains light and literary rather than political.

The Princess of France also seems to be modelled, at least in part, on Marguerite de Navarre, one of the most impressive intellectual figures of the French Renaissance. Queen of Navarre from 1527 to 1549 and sister to Francis I of France, she held real political influence while also making her mark as a writer, patron of the arts, and humanist thinker.

In the play, she appears to inform the character of the Princess of France, who is clever, articulate, and more than capable of matching the men in wit and strategy. This balance of intelligence is reflected in the language of Love's Labour's Lost, which is full of sharp wordplay, puns, and elaborate rhetorical flourishes. The lively verbal sparring recalls the witty and playful exchanges between knights and ladies in Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, where chivalric ideals are both celebrated and gently mocked. You may remember that this was the work we discussed as an inspiration for The Tempest.

So, here we can return to Painter’s story which, as I said earlier, is divided into two parts: the first, Dom Diego and Ginevra, which we have discussed, and the second, The Forester Lover. The ‘forester’ is a desperate Dom Diego, who after being rejected by Ginevra, repairs to the forests of the Pyrenees where, we are told, he led a savage life for certayne moneths, until, almost unrecognisable, he was discovered by a friend, who helped bring about a reconciliation with the stubborn lady, and soon after the couple were married.

Before we discuss the second part of the story, The Forester Lover, in more detail, I think it’s worth pointing out that in Act 4 of Love’s Labour’s Lost, a forester briefly appears in a hunting scene with the princess. And there are some other small details in the source story that we also find in the play that might be worth mentioning. Firstly, disguise. In Painter’s story we find a man trying to hide his identity by wearing a counterfeit black beard and large spectacles that cover most of his face, while in the play, the men dress up as Russians with masks over their faces. We also find the word ‘tent’, which in the source story is used metaphorically to compare the old poetic idea that Love - Cupid shoots his arrows in woods, forests, fields - places where lovers can pursue love freely, far from jealousy, gossip, envy, and suspicion which pitch their camp and raise their tents in cities. This military metaphor is picked up by our author when King Ferdinand decides that the men should conquer the women:

The King cries: Saint Cupid, then, and, soldiers, to the field!

Longaville asks: Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?

To which the king replies: And win them, too. Therefore let us devise

Some entertainment for them in their tents.                     (4.3.360-367)

Their plan, however, fails as the ladies see through their disguise and later mock them. At this point, the title Love’s Labour’s Lost might suggest that the men are, in a sense, losers - that their courtship has been too frivolous to mark them as sincere candidates for marriage. Yet they are granted a second chance. While the ladies observe a period of mourning, they set the men a series of ‘labours’ through which they must prove the sincerity of their love.

The play ends with Ferdinand knowing he must endure exile, like Dom Diego, in some forlorn and naked hermitage, Remote from all the pleasures of the world; the humorous Berowne must spend a year in a hospital making the sick laugh; Dumaine must grow a beard, a mark of maturity; and Longaville must cultivate patience to match his towering stature.

But Berowne, who may at this point represent the audience, protests that he does not like this ending:

Our wooing doth not end like an old play;

Jack hath not Jill: these ladies' courtesy

Might well have made our sport a comedy.   (5.2.947-948)

King Ferdinand tries to comfort him: ‘Come, sir, it wants a twelve-month and a day, And then 'twill end.’ But an unconvinced Berowne, now probably serving as the ironic mouthpiece of the author himself says, ‘That's too long for a play’. Perhaps suggesting that there is plenty more to tell, but in another comedy.

So, might the lost play Love’s Labour’s Won have been inspired by the second part of the source story, The Forester Lover, which begins with Dom Diego’s life as a forester hermit? Might Love’s Labour’s Won have followed the four men as they undertook their unusual labours over the course of a year? Such scenes would undoubtedly have offered rich comic potential. The men would then have returned to the palace, transformed by their labours, ready to present themselves to the ladies as worthy and virtuous husbands resulting in the long-awaited happy ending.

As I mentioned before, Painter’s story contains both song and poetry, something we also find in Love’s Labour’s Lost. While in the Dom Diego story the songs and poetry speak earnestly of love and devotion, the play adopts a more light-hearted approach, with gently self-mocking sonnets written by the king and his three companions, and a final pair of songs devoted to the seasons: the spring song, which suggests that love is not merely poetry and immediacy, and the winter song, which reminds us that love requires time, endurance, and maturity.

Finally, could Painter’s comment at the end of his story be a clue as to how the play got its name? Slightly modernised, it reads: “The perfection of a true lover lies not in sighs, cries, tears or childish complaints, but in experiencing passion, sorrow, grief and self-denial. Virtue should be the bond that unites the two separate bodies of a man and a woman, as Plato describes, inspiring a man to travail for its fulfillment through the true pursuit of chaste love. In which labour truly, fondly walked Dom Diego..”

So, to summarise, we have seen that there are several themes in the story of Dom Diego and Ginevra that correspond to those in the play: a similar geographic setting - Northern Spain and Navarre; a source story divided into two parts: Dom Diego and Ginevra and The Forester Lover, which might explain the division into two plays, Love’s Labour’s Lost and Love’s Labour’s Won; then there is the withdrawal of both Dom Diego and the King of Navarre into the wild as hermits; the inclusion of several songs and poems, though differing in tone; and a hint at a title for the plays in the final summary of the story.

So, all things considered, do you think there is enough evidence to suggest that Painter’s Dom Diego and Ginevra is the possible source story for both Love’s Labour’s Lost and the missing play, Love’s Labour’s Won? Any thoughts?

And there is another small detail worth pondering. Although the story is set in Navarre, the play’s Italian references should perhaps not be overlooked. In an effort to display his learning, the schoolmaster Holofernes first quotes a verse in Latin by the “good old Mantuan” - that is the poet Baptista Mantuanus - before citing a Venetian proverb claiming that like Mantuan, only those who have seen Venice can truly appreciate it. What’s that all about?

Maybe we will find a clue in the next Case File when we will actually be going to Venice to take a closer look at one of the locations in The Merchant of Venice which poses an intriguing question, as well as some interesting linguistic clues for us to consider.