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XXV. The Secret of Love's Labour's Lost

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Austin K. Gray
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Extract

[In the following paper, for reasons of brevity, a working hypothesis has been presented in narrative form: wherever a definite statement of historical fact has been made in support of a literary theory, the authority has been given in the footnotes. The article aims at elucidating certain problems in Love's Labour's Lost by correlating them with certain matters of historical fact which took place in and about the year 1591. The following points constitute problems in Love's Labour's Lost: (a) date of composition and first performance; (b) The unexpected dénoûment in the postponed marriages; (c) The choice of names for the leading male characters, Navarre, Berowne, etc.; (d) The curious emphasis laid upon the killing of the deer by the Princess; (e) The similarity of the Pageant scene at the close of the play to the Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe in The Midsummer Night's Dream; (f) The satire on Euphuism and Sonnets and other courtly affectations; (g) The unique observance by Shakespeare of the unities of time and place. The ensuing narrative has been evolved by applying to these problems the following matters of historical fact: (a) Burleigh's attempts, 1589–94, to force Southampton into marriage with his grand-daughter, Elizabeth de Vere, and Southampton's successful evasion of his betrothal; (b) Southampton's flight to France, 1591, to take part in the war in Normandy; (c) The Royal Progress, 1591, to Portsmouth and certain incidents in the entertainment of the Queen at Cowdray House.]

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 1924 , pp. 581 - 611
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1924

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References

1 C. C. Stopes, Third Earl of Southampton.

2 C. C. Stopes, of. cit.

3 C. C. Stopes, op. cit.

4 So Lady Bridget Manners described him and his friend and fellow-ward, the Earl of Bedford, in 1594, when it was proposed that she should marry either one or other of them. Mary Harding to the Countess of Bedford; Hist. MSS. Comm. Rep. XII.

5 C. C. Stopes, op. cit.

6 Salisbury Papers.

7 Cf. with this anecdote the story that Southampton gave Shakespeare 1000 for his poems. Obviously, Southampton had a reputation for lavish and eccentric generosity to poets.

8 “My Lord Southampton and Lord Rutland come not to the Court …they pass the time in London in merely going to plays everyday.” White, in Sidney Papers, Oct. 25, 1599.

9 Accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, as quoted in Third Earl of Southampton.

10 R. W. Bond, Works of John Lyly, Vol. 1.

11 Nichol's Royal Progresses.

12 Various town-records, as quoted by Tucker Murray in Elizabethan Stage Companies.

13 Murray's Elizabethan Stage Companies, sub Croydon.

14 Nichol's Royal Progresses.

15 Nichol's Royal Progresses.

16 The blackened faces of the Mummers were an old tradition inherited from the old Mumming Plays of the country-side.

17 In A Midsummer Night's Dream the Masque structure is less obvious. The Masquers proper are the Fairies, and the Grand Dance is performed in the “fairy roundel” round Titania's couch in Act II, Sc. 2. The Tragical Comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe with it. concluding Bergomask u, of course, the Antic-Masque. The closing Epithalamium song of the Fairies, in which the “device” of the Masque is explained, is the Going-Out Song. The song “Through the house give glimmering light,” however, shows that the Fairies here are torch-bearers, and, therefore, Mummers as well as Masquers in the final scene.

18 As Sidney's Lady of May had been performed in Wanstead Forest.

19 Burleigh was at Titchfield House in attendance on the Queen on Sept. 2nd, 1591, v. his letter dated on that day “from the Court at Titchfield,” Rymer's Foedera, Vol. XVI.

20 That she had done so is evidenced by the entry in the Royal Household accounts of payment for two “standings” in Titchfield Park, for Sept. 1591.

21 Stopes, Third Earl of Southampton.

22 Probably Berowne's gibe about “Jack not having Jill” is discreetly echoed by Puck in his “Jack shall have Jill, naught shall go ill” as he squeezes the fLöwer-juice in Lysander'b eye in Act III. Sc. 2.1. 460.

23 Stopes, op. cit.

[Note on the Elvetham Entertainment, Sept. 1591.—In Act IV of Love's Labour's Lost, Dumain sings a song, beginning

“Upon a day, alack the day

Love, whose month is ever May.“

This May-song was subsequently printed separately under Shakespeare's nam in the Sonnets Set to Sundry Notes of Music. In rhythm and metre and its May-time motif, (and probably in tune, therefore) it is similar to the Plowmen's or Three Men's. Song, commonly called Phyllis and Corydon and ascribed to Nicholas Le Breton, which so phased the Queen at the Elvetham Entertainment. The song begins

“In the merry month of May

In the morn by break of day“

and was set to “an old tune.” Probably the Children of the Chapel Royal brought this tune along with them as part of their répertoire for the Progress and had many May-songs set to it by different poets.

Mr. Arthur Acheson (Shakespeare's Lost Years), with some reason, traces back Obsron's speech about the maiden singing on the dolphins back while “certain stars shot madly from their spheres,” to the Water Pageant of Tritons and Nereids at Elvetham, which was accompanied by a firework display. To this may be added the Masque of Aureola, The Faerie Queen (also at Elvetham) in which that lady announces herself as the wife of Auberon, and the connection between the Elvetham Entertainment and Shakespeare's second court-play seems clear.

Finally, Shakespeare may have been present at Elvetham as a critic. Fal-Btaff's famous mock-euphuistic simile of the camomile actually occurs seriously in one of the Elvetham lyrics.]