ABSTRACT
Burby’s quarto of 1598 speaks on its title-page of Love’s Labour’s Lost as “a Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” The description suits well. For among all the plays this is the one in which the poet, free as yet from all constraint of serious thinking on any grave problem, has given the widest range to his love of the fantastic element in life and speech. Those critics are, indeed, very foolish that can see nothing but conceits in the comedy, and those readers are very stupid who fail to find the conceits pleasant. But, along with much daintiness in portrayal of character and large wealth of poetic effects, there is throughout the drama a youthful debauch of the poet in word-plays. In fact there is not perhaps in literature any other work of a great poet that contains within so small a compass so vast a variety of tricks with words. Of the eighteen characters, sixteen may fairly be called punsters, and the dialogue at all stages of the action is sparkling and flashing from all sides with puns.
