Barton, Anne. Introduction to Love's Labor's Lost, by William Shakespeare. In The Riverside Shakespeare, edited G. Blakemore Evans, 174-78. Chicago: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.

Barton explains the history of the play's composition and critical reception, calling the play "relentlessly Elizabethan" in its word games and topical allusions. She examines why it is that the play's comic resolution cannot occur within the confines of its plot.

Breitenberg, Mark. "The Anatomy of Masculine Desire in Love's Labour's Lost." Shakespeare Quarterly 43, no. 4 (1992): 430-49.

Breitenberg argues that sexuality and violence are linked in Love's Labor's Lost: "even such a lighthearted and playful comedy" participates in the darker side of masculine desires.

Carroll, William C. The Great Feast of Language in Love's Labour's Lost. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.

Carroll argues that the play has been oversimplified as an argument for "Life" over "Art," and that instead the play is a rejection of bad...