ABSTRACT
The controversy in print between Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey, especially Gabriel Harvey’s Pierce’s Supererogation, appears to have inspired several lines in Love’s Labour’s Lost (LLL). LLL was not the only production to refer to the French court of Navarre in the 1590s. Christopher Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris also exploited this location and might well have provided the inspiration. While the Comedy of Errors possesses a significant legal theme, LLL contains references to the revels proceedings. Robert White points out, without developing the observation, that “it has various elaborate edicts couched in the legal terms of ‘Items’ that we find in Love’s Labour’s Lost”. The accurate determination of limits for certain topical allusions in love’s labour’s lost has proved to be problematic. If Shakspere acquired it from the Inns of Court sometime after the revels then the facts can be made to conspire.
