The Façades of Fancy

Love's Labour's Lost and the Wiles of Wishful Thinking

Jun 20, 2024

In Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, we see a dangerous human tendency play out in the field of love. This tendency is the inclination to take some abstract, platonic ideal and bend everything towards it, allowing our imaginations to run unchecked. Without a slap of real life, we can become drunk on ideals and expectations. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, there is such an extravagance of wit, wishful thinking, and decedent rhetoric, that the truth of things can only break through the facades of fancy by extreme measures. In the end, Love’s Labour’s Lost is a story about how death and the limits of life form us as mortal beings for loving more truly.

In most of Shakespeare’s plays, the realm of the edifice, of the constructs of order, and that of nature, or the “wilderness,” are interwoven and play against each other in entertaining contrast. And it is always the seemingly disordered realm of nature that cuts against the actual disorder of men’s machinations, leading the characters to realize that their fancy is but a farse. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, however, there seems to be a longer-than-usual suspension of the realm of nature unseen in most of his other plays. What this allows then is the unabashed extravaganza of rhetoric and wit that becomes garish and overindulgent.

The King of Navarre and his companions, some of the leading characters of the play, become lost in the first realm of edifice, in a world of their own overblown imaginations, losing themselves to frivolity and games. The Princess of France and her handmaids, along with several other side characters, also become lost in this world. But the realm of nature is unavoidable, as Shakespeare shows us, and everyone is soon disabused of their folly by the end of the play.

Love’s Labour’s Lost begins with an oath. Seeking immortality and fame through academic pursuit, the young King of Navarre has persuaded three of his companions, Lords Longaville, Dumaine, and Berowne, to swear to three years of intense study in his court, all while foregoing sensual pleasures—abstaining from lavish food, regular sleeping hours, and any relations with women, even socially. Navarre shall be the wonder of the world; / Our court shall be a little academe, / Still and contemplative in living art,” (I. I. 12-24)1 declares the King before inviting his friends to sign their names to the contracted oath. Longaville and Dumaine sign the oath with little protest, even committing themselves to the challenge with boastful acclaim.

Berowne hesitates, though, wary of the oath’s high demands: “these are barren tasks, too hard to keep, / Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep” (I. I. 48-49). But after much back and forth between him and the others about his reservations, he finally signs. Even then, a premonition about the success of this endeavor rises in the audience, for it is during this banter between the lords that Berowne reminds the King that the Princess of France, along with her retinue of fair handmaids, is on her way to the court of Navarre on behalf of the business of her father, who is frail and old. Exceptions to the oath—that they can’t see women—are then made by the King out of “necessity” (I. I. 151), and we sense the resolution of the men beginning to crack, if only slightly. Our skepticism at the daring oath only grows and, spoiler alert, is finally justified when later (Act 4, end of Scene 3) the King and his lords forswear their daring oath and decide to woo the “girls of France.”

The men then undertake a self-aggrandizing mission to win over the ladies through clever games, masquerades, and highfalutin wooing, which ultimately fails in the same way that the men failed to achieve fame through academic study—it is all idealistic, self-glorying fancy, and therefore fails the test of earnest pursuit. The men are working in a realm of fanciful imagination disconnected from reality. The critic Joseph Westlund adds to this:

“The King's conceit of setting up an academy foreshadows his attitude toward wooing the Princess: his wooing, like his device to achieve fame, is an extravagant fancy. Neither bears much relation to the natural world, and for this reason neither is very fruitful. The lords woo with the same abandon that they showed in embarking upon their immortalizing themselves through study.”2

Just as the men sought to glorify themselves through study, so they sought to glorify themselves through the wooing of women. The literary critic C.L. Barber even points out that Berowne's speech on love (IV. iii. 320-365) is more about the lover himself, it is egotistical, and less about a relationship between two people.3 In his speech, Berowne states that “A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind. / A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound,” and he continues to expound upon all the ways that a lover is empowered by love, as well as the way that it makes one feel. It is not that such feelings are illegitimate—love is empowering—but they are incomplete, and the men are on track to learn this the hard way.

The ladies, aware of the men’s game, outmaneuver the churlish advances of the King and his companions at every turn. The King and lords are rebuffed humor for humor. “They do it but in mockery merriment,” says the Princess, “And mock for mock is only my intent” (V. II. 146-147). The ladies misunderstand the men’s true intentions, and for good reason since the men never speak truly or plainly about how they feel for fear of being rejected. It is this fear mixed with infatuation that leads the men to disguise themselves both literally—they dress up as Russians at one point—and linguistically, by dressing up their feelings with decadent rhetoric.

It should also be noted that while the ladies don’t lose themselves to wanton fancy to the same extent that the men do, they still descend into the world of the men’s games and lose sight of their purpose there—the business of the King of France. Even if the ladies don’t succumb to fancy to the same degree that the men do, they still begin to close the door on the realm of nature (the men have already closed the windows too at this point, metaphorically speaking). What is very different, however, is how the ladies, as opposed to the men, respond to nature barging its way back through the door.

How, then, does the realm of nature reintroduce itself? As one reaches the end of the play, after several acts and scenes of melodramatic flair, the games (and also a play within a play) are ended by sudden news that the Princess’ father, the King of France, has died. It is death that reintroduces the realm of nature back into the unrestrained realm of fanciful imagination. Death is the limitation that breaks the seemingly limitless world of unrestrained ideals in which the men have put themselves.

All frivolity is laid bare in this moment, and the men are forced to speak more plainly. “Madam, not so. I do beseech you stay,” (V. II. 803) says the King, but even then this sentiment comes across as immature, for why would the Princess stay now that her father has died? A true filial love calls her to depart in mourning for the funeral. When the King reverts to fanciful language again, the Princess in her grief responds, “I understand you not. My griefs are double.” (V. II. 827), to which Berowne states:

“Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief,
And by these badges understand the King:
For your fair sakes have we neglected time,
Played foul play with our oaths. Your beauty, ladies,
Hath much deformed us, fashioning our humors
Even to the opposèd end of our intents.” (V. II. 828)

Death and grief remind us of time, then, and the intention that must follow. The King and company are then forced to come clean, and despite their games of folly they each profess love for their respective woman (the King to the Princess, Berowne to Rosaline, Longaville to Maria, and Dumaine to Katherine). But the women are not yet convinced. To each respective wooer, the woman challenges the man to hold off one year and a day, while also fasting and doing works of mercy (e.g., in the case of Berowne, visiting the sick and telling them jokes with his gift for humor). If the men’s proposals of love, “made in heat of blood,” survive the “frosts and fasts, hard lodging, and thin weeds” (V. II. 877-878) of their penance, that is, if their love can survive the realm of nature—the women promise that they shall return their affections to the men, knowing that their intentions are true, and not simply passing fancy.

What the year-long penance forces the men to consider is whether each respective woman is one for whom each man would suffer. These penances, furthermore, will not only test whether the men’s love is true, but they will also form their imperfect love to become truer. When the reality if time reasserts itself through death, it is the ladies who have the wherewithal to guide the men’s imperfect love to some sort of perfecting process. My friend Peter Cermak also noted that, funnily enough, the penances are also the men’s preparation to become the kind of men who could marry the ladies. The King and his men, then, do ultimately begin to undertake the great tasks they had laid out for themselves in the beginning of the play, but this time not by way of their own prideful making. Thus, the irony.

In their haughty aims, the men had at first sought to obtain knowledge for knowledge’s sake, not to obtain some particular form of knowledge, such as studying political philosophy so as to better rule the kingdom. Similarly, they had then sought to obtain love for love’s sake, seizing upon love for how it made them feel instead of pursuing each woman as a unique person. At one point during the play, each man unknowingly woos the wrong woman, being so caught up in their silly games of romantic pursuit that they cannot see beneath each woman’s mask. Love’s Labour’s Lost is a journey from the egotistical world of abstract ideals, where fanciful expectations disconnected from reality are easily constructed, to the self-sacrificing realm of particular realism where each of us must come to terms with being a limited, albeit unique, human person.

The Façades of Fancy

Love's Labour's Lost and the Wiles of Wishful Thinking

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