SOURCE: “War, Wit, and Closure in Love's Labour's Lost,” in Anxious Pleasures: Shakespearean Comedy and the Nation-State, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995, pp. 87-97.

In the essay below, Hall describes the pursuit by the male characters of witty, erotic discourse as irresponsible, and contends that the patriarchal order is threatened through their actions, but ironically defended by the female characters.

As this chapter introduces a new section and a shift in emphasis that will pertain for the rest of the book, it is useful to consider briefly its relationship to the arguments that have been made so far. I started my readings of the plays with a consideration of the merchant comedies, where the relationship between mercantilism and state power is relatively unproblematic in the sense that it enters into the theatrical representation itself. But in the other comedies, from Love's Labour's Lost and The Two Gentlemen of Verona...