SOURCE: Thomas, Sidney. “Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Love's Labour's Lost: ‘The Words of Mercury Are Harsh after the Songs of Apollo.’” In Shakespeare's Universe: Renaissance Ideas and Conventions, edited by John M. Mucciolo, Steven J. Doloff, and Edward A. Rauchut, pp. 243-50. Hants, England: Scolar Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Thomas examines the paradoxes found in Love's Labour's Lost.

Love's Labour's Lost inevitably invites discussion by paradox. It is Shakespeare's most light-hearted and sportive comedy, yet the merriment is interrupted and the scene begins to cloud with an announcement of death. It is a love comedy, yet at its close Jack hath not Jill. It is deliberately artificial in conception, structure, and language, yet it concludes with an attack on the artificial life. It reveals Shakespeare's debt to his predecessors and contemporaries more clearly than any other of his plays, yet it is one of his boldest and...