ABSTRACT
In Love's Labour's Lost, the oath signed on paper in the first scene of the play is almost immediately broken and constitutes the starting-point of the plot. In Measure for Measure, Angelo urges Isabella to forswear her vow of chastity while he himself deliberately forgets about his promise of pardon, as he also chose to forget his promise to marry Mariana. Frederick Kiefer has noted the importance of written materials, more especially poems, as stage-properties, in Love's Labour's Lost. While in Love's Labour's Lost the play starts on the active prescription of a set of rules, in Measure for Measure Angelo's action is prompted by what is seen by some as a neglect of the law and a passive attitude of both state and subjects. The instability of the written word in the text of Love's Labour's Lost is seen in the numerous instances of the word 'forswear'.
