In the following essay, Parker highlights the various class and gender relationships in Love's Labour's Lost.

In the following essay, Corum reviews the critical debate concerning the problematic ending of Love's Labour's Lost, reassessing the play as a whole and the ending in particular in terms of its relevance to Elizabethan cultural views on adolescence.

In the following essay, Hunt studies the ways in which the figure of Queen Elizabeth, as both a nurturing and threatening female, informs the characterization of the Princess of France in Love's Labour's Lost.

In the following essay, Hunt contends that through the character of the Princess of France, Shakespeare portrayed Renaissance England's ambivalent view of its aging Queen Elizabeth I.

In the essay below, Chaney reviews scholarly attempts at identifying the genre of Love's Labour's Lost and argues that in this play, Shakespeare purposely avoided a conventionally happy ending.

In the essay below, Breitenberg challenges the notion that the play's ending emphasizes the power the women hold over the men of Love's Labour's Lost. Rather, Breitenberg maintains, the men are empowered through their Petrarchan idealization of the women.

In the following essay, Burnett approaches the topicality of Love's Labour's Lost by exploring the play in terms of its critical discourse on Elizabethan cultural practices, especially that of gift exchange.

In the essay below, McFarland analyzes the comic spirit and form of Love's Labour's Lost, noting the artificiality and thematic significance of its paradisiacal setting.

In the essay below, Nevo contends that the transformative power of language is central to Love's Labour's Lost. She examines the significance of the play's ending, seeing the work as transitional among the comedies.

In the following essay, Asp demonstrates the way in which the women in the play invite the men to come to terms with human loss, and to temper this loss through both compassion and the “proper” use of language, that is, language focused on others rather than on the self.

In the following essay, Asp refutes the idea that the female characters spoil the play's ending by thwarting their male counterparts' desire, and instead credits the women with teaching the men how to replace defensive, repressed wittiness with open-hearted, compassionate humor.

In the following essay, Pendergast explores a number of prominent themes in Love's Labour's Lost related to language, love, marriage, nature, and artifice.

In the following essay, Gilbert attempts to show how Shakespeare's Elizabethan audiences would have experienced Love's Labour's Lost.

[Here, Bevington compares Love's Labour's Lost to Lyly 's Sappho and Phao, maintaining that the play's contradictory portrayal of women—as objects of lust Act V, scene ii. Princess, Boyet, and Ladies. Frontispiece to the Hanmer edition by Francis Hayman (¡744). and of worship—leads to the characters ' unfulfilled desires and the play's unresolved ending.]

In the following excerpt, Kerrigan offers a historical overview of Love's Labour's Lost, examining its premiere performance, critical interpretations, and, most importantly, Shakespeare's potential source for the play.

In the essay below, Beiner studies the disruption of comic form, and Shakespeare's refusal to provide a comic resolution, in Love's Labour's Lost.

In the following essay, Maus offer a feminist critique of Love's Labour's Lost in which she explores the connection between the play's language and its theme of sexual politics.

In the following excerpt, Phialas describes Love's Labour's Lost as a satire on romance, comparing it to other Shakespearean comedies and observing that its dual theme stresses the importance of an outlook which embraces both the realism of everyday and the idealism of romance.

In the essay below, Levin presents an overview of Love's Labour's Lost, studying the play's language, plot, and theme of scholarship versus courtship, while noting its playfulness and wit.

In the essay below, Dash examines the oaths made by male characters in Love's Labour's Lost, relating these to the representation of honesty and of women in the play.

In the following essay, Birenbaum analyzes the themes of will and desire in Love's Labour's Lost and illustrates how these themes are developed through the actions of the characters.

In the following essay, Goldstien asserts that Love's Labour's Lost is a satire on the Renaissance or Petrarchan view of love as spiritual or ideal, presenting love instead as sensual desire.

In the following essay, Smidt offers an analysis of the apparent inconsistencies in Shakespeare's characters in order to suggest that Love's Labour's Lost begins as a romance and ends as a satire.

In the essay below, Montrose considers the indeterminacy of the ending of Love's Labour's Lost and the thematic reconciliation of actuality and imagination in the play's closing songs.

In the essay below, originally published in 1971, Greene assesses Love's Labour's Lost in terms of its concern with society, noting that the play lacks both a locus of political authority and a reliable representative of the citizenry. Greene contends that while the play does not portray a “living society,” it comments on the appropriate conduct of the citizens, and on the roles of entertainment, love, wit, and civility within society.

In the essay below, Ornstein emphasizes the artificiality of Love's Labour's Lost as a comedy and a satire of abstruse intellectuality in conflict with love.

In the following excerpt, Calderwood asserts that in Love's Labour's Lost Shakespeare begins by focusing on language as an art form rather than as a source of meaning, but ends by preparing the way for his more accomplished and meaningful later comedies.

In the following essay, Roberts compares Love's Labour's Lost with Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure (1668), and highlights the innovative thematic approach taken by both comedies with respect to relations between women and men.

Below, Erickson examines the issues of love and power between men and women as they are presented in the play, arguing that the male characters 'foolishness and the female characters ' dominance prevent this comedy from ending conventionally in marriage.

In the essay below, Hoy argues that Love's Labour's Lost reveals the function of comedy as a means of discerning human infirmity and incongruity.

In the following essay, Westlund sees the conflict between imaginative fancy and achievement (paralleling a conflict between artifice and nature) as the central theme of Love's Labour's Lost.

In the following essay, Wray analyzes the mechanisms of nostalgia utilized in Kenneth Branagh's faux prewar era filmic interpretation of Love's Labour's Lost.

In the following excerpt, originally published in 1993, Skura contends that Shakespeare parodied the concepts of heroic honor and fame through his characterization of the pretentious figure of Don Armado and the clown Costard.

In the following essay, Alvis concentrates on Shakespeare's use of the main plot and subplots in Love's Labour's Lost to convey the theme of constancy destroyed by vanity.

In this essay, MacCary uses the character Berowne to examine Shakespeare's development of masculine love in the play from an idealized desire of women to a recognition of women as real and therefore unpredictable individuals.

In the essay below, Hamilton discusses the importance of language in Love's Labour's Lost, in relation to spectacle, demonstrating how the words in the play call attention to themselves and to Shakespeare.

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.

In the following essay, McLay maintains that the songs sung by Spring and Winter at the close of Love's Labour's Lost reflect and expand the play's major themes: the movement “from the artificial to the natural, from illusion to reality, from folly to wisdom.”

In the following essay, originally published in Japanese in 1982, Nakanori argues that Love's Labour's Lost shares strong structural affinities with Shakespeare's other “festive” comedies.

In the essay that follows, Tricomi dismisses efforts to correlate figures in the subplot of Love's Labour's Lost to historical personages, but admits some correspondences can be made between characters in the main plot to the names of historical individuals involved in the French Civil War. Since these characters are depicted in broad and general terms, Tricomi surmises that Shakespeare perhaps idealized these individuals—familiar to most Elizabethans—for the purposes of enterta...

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

In the following essay, Lennam contends that the principal figures in Love's Labour's Lost resemble characters found in traditional morality plays.

In the following essay, Kehler emphasizes the theme of deception in Love's Labour's Lost.

In the review that follows, Kauffman reviews Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost, criticizing the casting as “dull” in some cases and “dreadful” in others, and protesting that the excising of two-thirds of the play's dialogue was not compensated for by the musical numbers.

In the following review, Mikesell evaluates Sarah Megan Thomas's 2003 Thirteenth Night Theatre Company production of Love's Labour's Lost at the Tribeca Playhouse in New York.

In the following review of Kenneth Branagh's 2000 film adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost, Elley provides a generally positive assessment, noting only minor flaws, but also considers the downside of marketing the work to a mass audience.

In the review below, Maguin offers a favorable review of the production of Love's Labour's Lost directed by Terry Hands. Maguin is appreciative of the unflagging rhythm of the production and the abilities of the principal actors, who expressed the dialogue with “rare clarity.”

In the following review, Wells praises the Edwardian Oxford setting of the production of Love's Labour's Lost staged at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. According to the critic, the set's visual appeal camouflaged the intellectual obstacles posed by the play's language. However, Wells finds that while the actors’ studied approach to the language made the play more understandable, the pace and comic impact suffered.

In the following review, Bowman criticizes Kenneth Branagh's treatment of the scenes, context, and meaning of Shakespeare's text in his film adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost.

In the following review of Trevor Nunn's 2003 Royal National Theater staging of Love's Labour's Lost, Wolf contends that the production was a “partial success,” noting that it came alive only in the second half of the play.

In the following review, Scott characterizes Kenneth Branagh's film version of Love's Labour's Lost as entertaining but not particularly impressive.

In the following review, Duguid considers Kenneth Branagh's 2000 film adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost.

In the following review, Morse comments on a Parisian production of Love's Labour's Lost directed by Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, characterizing the production as a successful black comedy.

In the following review of Kenneth Branagh's film version of Love's Labour's Lost, Corliss accuses the director and star of amateurism and lists several weaknesses of the project.

In the following excerpted review, Morley lauds Trevor Nunn's 2003 National Theatre production of Love's Labour's Lost, particularly Joseph Fiennes's performance as Berowne.

In the following excerpted review, Simon finds nothing redeeming in Kenneth Branagh's cinematic Love's Labour's Lost, and critiques the individual performances of its cast.

In the following review, Kohn applauds Antoni Cimolino's 2003 Stratford Festival of Canada production of Love's Labour's Lost.

In the following excerpted review, Clapp praises Trevor Nunn's 2003 National Theatre production of Love's Labour's Lost.