ABSTRACT
Love’s Labour’s Lost has been compared to Comic Opera. Its lyrical character is one of its most noteworthy features. The experts place it first of the plays of the rhyming period. In the form in which we now have it, it contains twice as many rhymed lines as blank verse, and probably in its original state the proportion may have been greater. While this Play only provides us with two songs, it contains an immense amount of doggerel and alternate rhymes. Dr Johnson thinks that a song has apparently been lost from Act III, sc. 1, where the Author tells us there is singing. What a beautiful and comprehensive request is here made by Armado. “Warble, child”; (speaking to Moth) “make passionate my sense of hearing.” None of the fine arts can subsist or give rapture, without passion. Hence mediocrity in painting, sculpture, or music, is more intolerable than in any of the other Arts. Music, when not of the best in form and execution, and without any high fervour or passion, is apt to be monotonous as the tolling of a bell or the antics of a clown.
