Love's Labour's Lost Restudied

Until very recently, Love’s Labour’s Lost has not received the critical attention to which its position in Shakespeare’s dramatic work entitles it. It is probably his first comedy and often thought to be the first play that he wrote without collaboration. A thorough study of this drama might, therefore, be expected to reveal what Croce would call Shakespeare’s “comic presuppositions.” It might have discovered the bases of his entire comic technique. Such a genetic study might have simplified the history of Shakespeare’s development as a writer of comedy and given it a coherence now lacking. It might even have thrown light upon his puzzling beginnings as a playwright.