The Complete Love's Labors Lost: An Annotated Edition of the Shakespeare Play

Love’s Labors Lost is “widely considered Shakespeare’s most intellectually challenging comedy” (Bate, back cover). From its extensive wordplay to the plot machinations, a reader (viewer) is continuously challenged. The recurrent bawdy is another factor that forces one to pay close attention. Thus, the play can be quite satisfying. However, it can become tiresome too, especially considering the high-flown rhetoric of Holofernes. Finally, the discrepancy between the men’s view of the women and the women’s view of the men should stimulate one to examine whether there is depth to the comedy or whether it is all for fun.