Love's Labour's Lost

"Love's Labour's Lost", now recognized as one of the most stageworthy of Shakespeare's comedies, came into its own both on the stage and in critical esteem only during the 1930s and 1940s, after 300 years of neglect by the theatre and undervaluation by critics. The introduction to this new edition of the play pays particular attention to this process of rehabilitation. The text, based on the quarto of 1598 and taking full account of extensive scholarly study, rests on the hypothesis that the quarto goes back to an authorial manuscript representing the play in a state prior to "fair copy". If this is so, the quarto takes on a special significance because through it we can watch Shakespeare in the act of composition, improvising, changing his mind and revising as his play develops. The editor offers a number of new readings of difficult and disputed passages, together with some suggestions about the way in which the play's notorious "tangles" may have come about. A detailed commentary offers full guidance to the play's language.