Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This merry play is a delight for its language. It has more a situation than a plot. The King has sworn himself and three attendants to three years of fasting, abstinence from women, study, and little sleep. Immediately a princess arrives with her attendants that cause the men to regret their oaths. Letters are written, delivered incorrectly, and a huge final scene with disguises, masks, and a wonderfully strange presentation of some of the nine worthies. All of this provides a structure for a rich play of language that is full of wit and bawdy.
This edition has a lengthy introductory essay that helps understand the issues of the text, the historical context, and performance practice issues. The notes are wonderfully helpful in understanding the text and what choices the editors had to make in presenting it. After the play is an essay just on the text of the play, appendix 2 has additional lines that this edition leaves out of the play, appendix 3 discusses Moth's name.
The issue around Moth is that in Elizabethan times Moth would likely have been pronounced more like Mott than our soft th. And the word mote and moth were roughly interchangeable. The name of the insect and the word for a small particle meant roughly the same thing. It is a nice issue to be aware of and the essay is helpful.
Appendix 4 lists words that are rhymed in this play - often a revelation to the way words were pronounced 400 years ago. Appendix 5 lists the compound words, many of them minted in this play.
All in all, this edition is a happy experience of a very fun play.
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Love's Labour's Lost, the first work to bear Shakespeare's name on its title page, differs greatly from his other early plays both for its highly unorthodox ending and its extraordinary use of language. This new edition presents a highly readable, modernised text of the play, freshly edited from the first quarto published in 1598. A thorough but concise scholarly and critical commentary provides exciting new perspectives on Love's Labour's Lost, and a comprehensive introduction discusses the significant elements of the play and its place in theatrical history. New critical trends are reflected in the special attention paid to the play's performance history since 1950, including films and adaptations, with illustrations of several productions. Engaging and illuminating, this will be an invaluable guide for seasoned scholars as well as students approaching the play for the first time.
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