SOURCE: Alvis, John. “Derivative Loves are Labor Lost.” Renascence 48 (summer 1996): 247-58.

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.

Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost has attracted critics' attention to its subtleties of language, its shrewd psychological observations, and its topical allusiveness but not to its plot, which on first acquaintance appears indeed minimal, if not perfunctory.¹ Although spare, the action of Love's Labour's Lost is well-adapted to conveying the theme of the play, a theme I take to be the expense of constancy in a waste of ostentation. To demonstrate the connection between action and subject, I propose to focus on the four chief features of Shakespeare's comic plot: 1) the initial plan of Navarre and his courtiers to set up a hermitage for philosophic study; 2) the paired scenes of...