ABSTRACT
E VEN if Love's Labour's Lost was not the first of the plays it must have been among the earliest, and it is concerned almost wholly with words. Unlike the later comedies and romances this brilliant and original piece has no story plot. The King of Navarre and his three companions take an oath to keep themselves apart for three years to study, and above all 'not to see a woman'. To them come the Princess of France and her ladies and, each in turn, the men break their oath. The whole is very prettily conceived, with a regularity in all the essential concerns of the unities, but with the real charm and beauty lying in an atmosphere of sophisticated society displayed through an elegant variety of verbal entertainments.
