Shakespeare 'S Comic Topicality in Love's Labour's Lost: Linda Shenk

LINDA SHENK
Shakespeare’s Comic Topicality in Love’s Labour’s Lost
I n the mid-1590s, William Shakespeare fashioned his insistently topical

Love’s Labour’s Lost out of rather unlikely material, turbulence in con-
temporary France. Riven by sectarian division, France had become a battle-
ground. The military forces of its Protestant King Henri IV (formerly King
of Navarre) fought against the Catholic League whose religio-political power
held such sway that large sections of France including key cities Rouen
and Paris, refused to accept Henri as king. England watched in tense fas-
cination as news pamphlets poured out of the presses recounting slaughter,
famine, and poverty in France, and detailing Henri’s victories and setbacks
as he fought to secure his crown and stem the bloodshed.1 By 1593, how-
ever, the French King proved unable to obtain enough Catholic support to
disarm the League, so, in July of that year, he converted to Catholicism.
Nothing about France’s political situation would seem to lend itself to
lighthearted amusement, especially for a Protestant England, and yet within
a few years of Henri’s conversion (technically, re-conversion), Shakespeare
produced a romantic comedy that had these events hovering just under its
surface. To invoke the contemporary situation in France quite pointedly,
Shakespeare named his four male romantic leads—the lovestruck King of
Navarre and his equally smitten companions Longaville, Berowne, and Du-
maine—after the apostate French King and key military figures central to,
and often on opposing sides of, France’s political unrest. All four characters
contrast emphatically with the facts surrounding their historical counterparts.
The witty and dashing Berowne conjures up the famous Biron family, pri-
marily the nearly 70-year-old father Armand de Gontant, Maréchal Biron,
who had been Henri’s most successful and loyal military general until his
1. Paul J. Voss has located over 60 extant quartos of these ephemeral texts, and he calculates
that, because an average print run was typically 750 copies, approximately 45,000 copies of news
quartos would have been in circulation during this period. Voss, Elizabethan News Pamphlets: Shake-
speare, Spenser, Marlowe & the Birth of Journalism (Pittsburgh, 2001), pp. 1–33.
193
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194 English Literary Renaissance
death in 1592, as well as his son Charles, who continued in his father’s foot-
steps (at least in the 1590s). The willing Longaville alludes to Henri d’Or-
léans, Duc de Longueville, who occasionally waivered in his military sup-
port for Henri before remaining a loyalist after the King converted. And
the slow-witted, idealistic Dumaine is based on Charles de Lorraine, Duc
de Mayenne, the military leader of the Catholic League who was Henri’s
most violent arch-opponent until late 1595 when De Mayenne announced
he would reconcile with the King.
Such substantial gaps between Shakespeare’s courtly men and the facts
surrounding their historical counterparts have long puzzled scholars. What
could Shakespeare have been thinking by writing a comedy that puts cur-
rently famous military figures in its leading roles? As Gillian Woods ex-
plains, “The play’s onomastic structure thus bristles with an irony that flick-
ers between the contemporary and the comic; its representational structure
repeatedly jokes about the disjunction between the character and the role
played.”2 Such disconnection between topicality and comedy rests at the
center of scholarly discussions of Love’s Labour’s Lost in ways that often
place these two as competing, rather than complementary, elements. When
examining this dynamic, scholars have compared the historical facts re-
garding French politics and its key political figures with Shakespeare’s lit-
erary representations and have reached conclusions that largely fall into
three categories: (1) Shakespeare’s references are counter-topical or escap-
ist; (2) the play must have been produced before 1593 in order to be funny
(yet scholarly consensus dates the play to 1595–1596); (3) the play’s trajec-
tory is more disturbing than comic.3
All of these studies address significant cruces in, and contexts related to,
the play. Scholars such as Hugh M. Richmond, Albert H. Tricomi, and
2. Gillian Woods, Shakespeare’s Unreformed Fictions (Oxford, 2013), p. 67.

3. See, e.g., Clare Asquith, “Oxford University and Love’s Labour’s Lost,”Shakespeare and the Cul-
ture of Christianity in Early Modern England, ed. Dennis Taylor and David Beauregard (New York,
2003), pp. 80–102; David Bevington, “‘Jack Hath not Jill’: Failed Courtship in Lyly and Shake-
speare,” Shakespeare Survey 42 (1990), 1–14; Felicia Hardison Londré, “Elizabethan Views of the
‘Other’: French, Spanish, and Russians in Love’s Labour’s Lost,” in Love’s Labour’s Lost: Critical Essays,
ed. Felicia Hardison Londré (New York, 1997), pp. 325–41; John S. Pendergast, Love’s Labour’s Lost:
A Guide to the Play (Westport, 2002); Hugh M. Richmond, Puritans and Libertines: Anglo-French Lit-
erary Relations in the Reformation (Berkeley, 1981); Albert H. Tricomi, “The Witty Idealization of the
French Court in Love’s Labor’s Lost,” Shakespeare Studies 12 (1979), 25–33; Voss, see esp. pp. 124–42;
and Richard Wilson, “‘Worthies away’: The Scene Begins to Cloud in Shakespeare’s Navarre,” in
Representing France and the French in Early Modern English Drama, ed. Jean-Christophe Mayer (Newark,
DE 2008), pp. 93–109.

Linda Shenk 195
Paul J. Voss have worked to match Shakespeare’s courtly men to their his-
torical counterparts. Tricomi rightly notes that the “merry lords” are por-
trayed “as uniformly admirable, graceful, young, attractive, and eligible for
marriage,” yet such harmony and youthful vivacity do not correspond to
the historical facts, at least in the early 1590s when Tricomi believes Shake-
speare wrote the play (p. 27). Richmond carefully matches historical spe-
cifics with Shakespeare’s fairytale world, and, like Tricomi, dates the play
to before Henri’s conversion and associates its plot of romance and idyllic
setting with Henri’s 1578 marriage negotiations in Nérac (p. 301). Voss’s
methodology and work on the news from France in the early 1590s is
crucial to my own. It, too, indicates that the play must have been written
before Henri’s conversion because, “By the summer of 1593, Navarre an-
nounced his intention to reconvert to Catholicism, thus ending the flow
of reports lionizing the French king and providing a clear terminus ad quem
for this analysis. English readers could support and fight for a Protestant
French king; they could not support or read about a Catholic French king”
(p. 22–23). Building on Voss’s depiction of a dramatic shift in England’s
view of Henri after the conversion, Woods situates the play within its now
standard 1595/1596 context and places Henri’s conversion at the center of
her interpretation. Her brilliant study brings together humor and history,
and she examines how England’s anxiety regarding Henri’s conversion
brings out the instability and linguistic slippage that make this play so en-
tertaining, yet simultaneously unsettling. Woods explores how such “se-
mantic mutability” ultimately “intensifies the need for resolution even as
it makes it more difficult” (p. 89). She emphasizes the men’s perpetual in-
constancy and the play’s sectarian context as positions that, despite the ear-
lier comedy, ultimately tune the final scene of Love’s Labour’s Lost in a mi-
nor, melancholic key.
The repeated fractures that occur in the last scene defer comic resolu-
tion; however, the play may retain a greater comic spirit in its conclusion
and throughout once we re-examine its topicality by showing how con-
temporary sources portrayed Henri IV and the situation in France, specif-
ically in the years 1593–1595. Scholars who have offered topical readings
of the main plot in Love’s Labour’s Lost have provided deft literary analyses
of the representations of Shakespeare’s fictional characters but have exam-
ined the historical context more as a set of stable facts than a set of repre-
sentations that require equally sensitive rhetorical readings. In methodol-
ogy, we need to adopt an approach that resembles Mary Ellen Lamb’s
suggestion to treat the historical sources for the play the same way we

do the literary ones.4 In this vein, if we examine Love’s Labour’s Lost along-
side the representations of Henri, the Catholic League, and France’s situation
that were coming out of the English presses between 1593 and 1595, the
seeming gap between history and the choices Shakespeare made in this ro-
mantic comedy dramatically narrows, and—quite importantly—the play
becomes funnier.
In many ways Shakespeare’s topical echoes in Love’s Labour’s Lost resem-
ble our own age’s fascination with such political comedy shows as The
Daily Show and political skits on Saturday Night Live. These modern polit-
ical fictions are rooted in the news, and they create their spoofs by taking
the facts and exaggerating or altering the contexts of those facts to create
clever humor. Shakespeare similarly riffs on elements in his own era’s jour-
nalism. Sometimes playwrights did take their political satire a bit too far
and found themselves in trouble, but early modernists could have fun with
their politics, too. Love’s Labour’s Lost is a brilliant political spoof.
The play remains critical and wary of Henri in ways similar to Edmund
Spenser’s contemporary and thinly disguised representation of Henri in The
Faerie Queene (1596),5 but, unlike Spenser’s more serious Burbon, Shake-
speare’s Navarre allows English spectators to laugh with, rather than at, a
weak but unified France. Shakespeare has his spectators shaking their heads
in bemused dismay at the men’s failure to live up to the Neostoic image
that made the historical Henri strong. The fictional men’s series of incon-
stancies and failures ultimately showcases the play’s plucky female charac-
ters and, in turn, justifies the women’s powerful deferral of marriage in the
final scene. Once we examine the play and the representations of Henri
and France in this period, these connections suggest a particular shift in
focus in the final scene that allows the play to end in a truly comic vein,
and comic particularly because Shakespeare does not resolve the marriage
issue. Shakespeare’s Navarre and courtiers remain in the throes of a more
powerful princess who, as many scholars have noted, seems quite similar to
Queen Elizabeth I.6 Shakespeare uses the redemptive impulses of comedy
to create space for tolerating Henri as a Catholic who is successfully uni-
fying his country as long as he stays under Elizabeth’s auspices. Shake-
4. Mary Ellen Lamb, “The Nature of Topicality in ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost,’” Shakespeare Sur-
vey 38 (1986), 54.
5. For a deft analysis of Spenser’s Burbon in light of contemporary Anglo-French politics, see
Anne Lake Prescott, “Foreign Policy in Fairyland: Henri IV and Spenser’s Burbon,” Spenser Studies 14
(2000), 189–214.
6. See, esp., ch. 4 in Maurice A. Hunt, Shakespeare’s Speculative Art (New York, 2011), pp. 127–50.

Linda Shenk 197
speare’s clever re-workings of topical connections are all geared to be
funny—specifically for a Protestant, English audience.
II
Underlying a topical discussion of the main plot in Love’s Labour’s Lost

is the way in which Shakespeare’s King of Navarre relates to Henri’s con-
version to Catholicism. Could an English audience find humor in a play
that invokes this apostate king? My answer is “yes.” In 1589, Protestant En-
gland heaved a sigh of relief when Henri became King of France. Henri
was a Protestant, a brilliant military tactician, and a political moderate. En-
glish readers followed his successes and military victories in the news quar-
tos. Voss states that this stream of publications dried up considerably after
Henri’s conversion (p. 7). And, it did slow dramatically; however, Henri’s
conversion did not put a moratorium in England on news from France or
a cessation of relatively positive representations of Henri. Catholic or not,
the French king was England’s crucial ally against Spain as well as France’s
lawful king. Both of these conditions motivated England to retain its sup-
port for France regardless of Henri’s religious affiliation. These same mo-
tivations also underscored the reason Henri was not as vilified in published
texts between 1593 and 1595 as scholars have assumed. The representation
of Henri clarifies how the context of this precise period afforded the pos-
sibility for comedy.
Each year from 1593 through 1595, London publishers produced several
lengthy texts about Henri and his situation in France. These texts por-
trayed Henri in a positive light in his struggle against the Catholic League,
its villainous De Mayenne, and other League “rebells.” A few indicative
titles with this focus include: Remonstrances, to the Dvke de Mayne: Lieu-
tenaunt generall of the Estate and Crowne of Fraunce (1593); A Proposition of
the Princes, Prelats, Officers of the Crowne, & others of his Maiesties Councell, pro-
pounded to the Duke of Mayenne, and other his adherents assembled in the Cittie
of Paris. With the kings declaration against the sayd assembly and rebells (1593);
A Pleasant Satyre or Poesie: Wherein is discouered the Catholicon of Spayne, and
the chiefe leaders of the League. Finelie fetcht ouer, and laide open in their colours
(1595); and The Divels Legend. or: A Learned Cachephochysme containing the
Confession of the Leaguers Fayth : Wherein Doctour Pantaloun, and Zanie his
Pupill, doo teach that all hope ought to be grounded on the Puissant King Phillip
of Spaine, and vpon all the happie Apostles of the holy League, and that they ought
not to doo as the Brytans, English-men, and Protestants doo; which beleeue in

God onely, harkening rather to the voyce of Iesus Christ, than vnto their holy Fa-
ther the Pope (1595).7 These texts often included no prefatory material,
sometimes provided the text in the original French at the end of the pub-
lication, and in the case of the latter two titles, actually used humor to
mock the League while simultaneously praising Henri as France’s lawful
monarch. Significantly, many of the texts published in these years were
written in the voices of the King himself or moderate Catholic politiques
who emphasized their obedience to Henri.
All of these texts, and most importantly those written in the voices of
the politiques, participated in a larger trend in this three-year window that
charted Henri’s progress in pacifying his nation. For example, English
readers had access to the translated account of Henri’s obviously Catholic
coronation ceremony at Chartres in 1594, as well as his crucial victory at
Paris that same year.8 These texts depicted Henri gaining ground in the
dire circumstances that prompted his conversion. England’s reading pub-
lic already knew that the situation in France was so bad that the King might
need to convert. In 1593, the anti-League text Remonstrances, to the Dvke
de Mayne indicates that “the King had made thys protestation to become
7. Anthony Chute, Remonstrances, to the Dvke de Mayne: Lieu-tenaunt generall of the Estate and
Crowne of Fraunce. Wherein, by way of information, are discouered diuers priueties, concerning the proceedings
and affayres of that Duke, and his Associates. Trulie translated out of the French coppie, printed at Paris, by Ant:
Ch. (1593) / A Proposition of the Princes, Prelats, Officers of the Crowne, & others of his Maiesties Councell,
propounded to the Duke of Mayenne, and other his adherents assembled in the Cittie of Paris. With the kings
declaration against the sayd assembly and rebells, published at Caen in the parliament the three and twentieth of
Februarie last. Both which, were printed in Caen by the kings printer in French (1593) / T. W., A Pleasant
Satyre or Poesie: Wherein is discouered the Catholicon of Spayne, and the chiefe leaders of the League. Finelie
fetcht ouer, and laide open in their colours. Newly turned out of French into English (1595) / Juvenall Borget,
The Divels Legend. or: A Learned Cachephochysme containing the Confession of the Leaguers Fayth : Wherein
Doctour Pantaloun, and Zanie his Pupill, doo teach that all hope ought to be grounded on the Puissant
King Phillip of Spaine, and vpon all the happie Apostles of the holy League, and that they ought not to doo as
the Brytans, English-men, and Protestants doo; which beleeue in God onely, harkening rather to the voyce
of Iesus Christ, than vnto their holy Father the Pope. Composed in Rome by the reuerend Father Iuuenall Borget,
and sent vnto the gentlemen of England by Charles Cyprian. Translated according to the French coppie (1595).
8. Edward Aggas, The Order of Ceremonies obserued in the annointing and Coronation of the most Chris-
tian King of France & Nauarre, Henry the IIII. of that name, celebrated in our Lady Church, in the Cittie of
Chartres vppon Sonday the 27. of February 1594. Faithfully translated out of the French coppy printed at Roan,
by commaundement of the said Lord (1594) and Henri IV, The French kings Edict vpon the reducing of the citie
of Paris vnder his obedience Published the 28. of March 1594. VVhereto is adioyned The said Kinges Letters
Patents for the reestablishment of the Court of Parliament at Paris. Also a Decree of the saide Court of Parliament
of the 30. of March, concerning a reuocation of whatsoeuer hath bene committed in preiudice of the kinges
authoritie, and the lawes of the land. All faithfully translated out of the French copies printed at Paris by Frederick
Morell, by E.A. (1594).

Linda Shenk 199
Catholique” and then emphasizes this promise again on the next page “so
that hee receiues the instructions of our Church.”9 Also in 1593, readers
could have heard Henri declare in his own voice that he was “ready to
yeeld to any good instruction, and to receiue that, that God shall coun-
sell vs to bee to our good and welfare.”10 This declaration appears in A
Proposition, a text that, like Remonstrances, was published by John Wolfe,
London’s official city publisher. The possibility of Henri’s conversion was
so expected that, even in 1592, a serio-comic disputation invoked the sub-
ject when Elizabeth visited the University of Oxford with the French del-
egation as her guests.11
Such notes of comedy color the opening moments of Love’s Labour’s
Lost. Shakespeare’s Navarre begins the play with a speech full of the mil-
itary bravado that invokes Henri as the great military commander, as the
last French king to fight alongside his army on the battlefield. Navarre
rallies his companions thus:
Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,

Live registered upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant devouring time,
Th’endeavour of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge,
And make us heirs of all eternity.
Therefore, brave conquerors—for so you are,
That war [. . .]12
Readers in England would have recognized such war-hero language from

the news quartos that had celebrated Henri’s military victories, at least up
to the conversion.13 Navarre next encourages his men to:
war against your own affections

And the huge army of the world’s desires—
Our late edict shall strongly stand in force.
9. Remonstrances, sigs. B2 and B2v, respectively.

10. A Proposition, sig. B3. In the last half of the book, both texts are provided in their original
French; the equivalent passage in French is found on sig. D3v.
11. Linda Shenk, Learned Queen: The Image of Elizabeth I in Politics and Poetry (New York, 2010).
12. William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, ed. H. R. Woudhuysen (London, 1998) 1.1.1–9.
Subsequent citations appear in the text.
13. See Voss, p. 3.

Navarre shall be the wonder of the world,
Our court shall be a little academe,
Still and contemplative in living art. (9–14)
Navarre’s shift from macho war to feelings and books seems—and is—
quite silly, and the specific nature of the reversal punctuates both the hu-
mor and the topicality. Navarre refers to studying “living art,” which
evokes the Stoic ideal of the ars vivendi (art of living). Editors of the play
have often noted this allusion to Stoicism in Navarre’s “living art” but have
not noticed two additional components: the shift from battle to austere
study involves a witty use of contemporary Stoic metaphor (denying the
passions was often likened to military skirmishes)14 and, even more impor-
tantly, this reference initiates a long string of Stoic echoes in the play.
Shakespeare’s allusions to Stoicism reveal a crucial element in the top-
ical comedy. In the latter decades of the sixteenth century, French civic
philosophers such as Guillaume du Vair, Michel de Montaigne, and Phi-
lippe Duplessis-Mornay used the Stoic emphases on calm moderation and
submission to forces beyond an individual’s control as arguments designed
to rally France in support of and in submission to Henri’s authority. These
thinkers adapted this strategy from a widespread political movement
across Europe (rooted especially in the Netherlands) in which political
moderates sought to bring stability and peace to nations splintered by
strife. They developed a “Neo”-Stoic rhetoric that prescribed calm and
submission-to-order as ways to heal wounds of profound confessional di-
vision and violence. As historians such as Denis Crouzet and Corrado
Vivanti have noted, French writers took this tradition and used Neostoic
language to present Henri as a Stoic King of Reason, a strong Gallic Her-
cules whose individual sacrifice of self and passions could both heal a torn
nation and make him worthy of his subjects’ unquestioning obedience.15
14. Contemporary Neostoic writers such as Justus Lipsius and Guillaume du Vair often used mil-
itary tropes to describe the need for an individual, as Lipsius discusses, to “erect fortes and bulwarks
wherwith thou mightest be able to withstand and repulse the furious assaules of lustes.” Lipsius, Two
Bookes of Constancie. Trans. John Stradling (1595), p. 7, see also examples on p. 22 and 38. Gerhard
Oestreich examines the presence of military imagery in early modern Neostoicism. Although he
overstates these connections, his work remains the most influential on the subject. Gerhard Oestreich,
Neostoicism and the Early Modern State. ed. Brigitta Oestreich and H. G. Koenigsberger, trans. David
McLintock, (Cambridge, Eng., 1982).
15. Vivanti, p. 185. Denis Crouzet’s and Corrado Vivanti’s work on Henri and Neostoicism have
been especially influential to my own. Crouzet, “Henri IV, King of Reason?” Tr. Judith K. Proud.
From Valois to Bourbon: Dynasty, State and Society in Early Modern France, ed. Keith Cameron (Exeter,

Linda Shenk 201
Shakespeare’s audience encountered these images repeatedly in the news
from France even as famous Neostoic texts such as Justus Lipsius’ De Con-
stantia Libri Duo (1584) appeared in English ( John Stradling’s translation,
Two Bookes of Constancie, 1595). In historical fact, Henri was no Stoic (he
was a notorious skirt-chaser), but his contemporary Neostoic roles as the
strong Hercules and the constant King of Reason helped to combine his
fame as a brilliant military commander, his political and religious modera-
tion, and his capacity to heal a war-torn France.
When Shakespeare’s Navarre calls for his court to become a “little aca-
deme” with a Stoic curriculum, his proposal invokes this unifying contem-
porary rhetoric. The ensuing exchange between Navarre and his three com-
panions also portrays successful cohesion. Directly after Navarre discusses
studying the Stoic ars vivendi, Longaville, Dumaine, and Berowne imme-
diately emphasize their supportive and positive relationship with him.
Longaville follows the King’s speech with the instant acquiescence, “I
am resolved” (1.1.24); Dumaine begins his lines with “My loving lord”
(28); and Berowne calls him “dear liege” (34). What makes these articula-
tions so important is that the historical generals whose names these char-
acters carry were at the center of sectarian division that the Neostoic rhet-
oric was employed to harmonize. Literary scholars have long noted this
wide range of military and religious affiliations behind Longaville’s, Be-
rowne’s, and Dumaine’s historical parallels but have used these differences
as part of their argument that Shakespeare was creating an anti-topical
or even escapist play.16 On the contrary, once we put this group’s unity
within its Neostoic frame, a different picture emerges. Shakespeare is, in-
stead, acknowledging the political rhetoric used to create harmony, a choice
that underscores the courtly men’s camaraderie.17
Navarre and his three companions are the play’s most cohesive group.
They plan to study together; they finish each other’s rhymes; they are on-
stage together for nearly the entire play. In fact, Love’s Labour’s Lost as a
1989), pp. 73–106. Vivanti, “Henry IV, The Gallic Hercules,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 30 (1967), 176–97. Also, it should be noted that Henri IV was not the first French king
to be presented as a Gallic Hercules. Robert E. Hallowell examines the use of this myth (which bol-
sters French national pride) in relation to previous French kings in his “Ronsard and the Gallic Her-
cules Myth,” Studies in the Renaissance 9 (1962), 242–55.
16. See, most notably, Tricomi.
17. For an exceptional work on Shakespeare’s use of Stoicism with especial attention to Stoic
constancy in his Roman plays, see Geoffrey Miles, Shakespeare and the Constant Romans (Oxford,
1996).

play overall is extremely ensemble-driven. Its limited cast (9 men, 6 boys)
would have required little or no doubling; cohesion and group dynamics
are central to this particular play and to the men especially. Navarre’s plan
to turn the court into a comical Neostoic Academy demonstrates the syn-
ergy between topicality and the comedy of the play.18
Of course Shakespeare’s men are not completely unified in their excite-
ment to enter study, and they all fail miserably in upholding Stoicism’s
emphases on denying the passions and remaining constant no matter the
circumstances. Shakespeare does not let his audience forget that such co-
hesion has come at the price of one’s integrity. He fills Love’s Labour’s Lost
with more instances of “forswear,” “forsworn,” and “oath” than in any
other of his plays even as such emphasis on vows in the opening scene is
connected to the official oath-taking at matriculation in the universities.19
Because these men are characters in a romantic comedy, however, they
are doomed to break their vow, which is made even funnier through the
allusion to their Neostoic curriculum. They fail in upholding the Stoics’
key virtue of constancy—the principle at the center of all traditions of
Stoicism. One must keep the passions in check because these destructive
inner forces threaten to overpower, and cause one to stray from, one’s core
values.20
Berowne reminds Navarre that “Necessity will make us all forsworn”
(1.1.147). The younger Biron had changed his religion several times to suit
18. As a further subtext to the topicality of unity in the King’s academic enterprise, Henri’s im-
age as a bookman with confessional tolerance had already been portrayed on the Elizabethan public
stage. In Christopher Marlowe’s wildly popular The Massacre at Paris, Marlowe has Henri (still as
King of Navarre) enter surrounded by his tutors less than 15 lines after the Duke of Guise murders
the Protestant intellectual Peter Ramus in scene 9. As John Guillory and Hayley Coble have noted,
this scene with Ramus gives a fleeting glimpse into an intellectual world of philosophy where in-
dividuals from across the Protestant-Catholic divide work in partnership. Whereas Marlowe’s play
(first performed most likely in 1592) gives this brief glimpse into the possibility of sectarian peace
already associated with the moderate historical Henri, Marlowe overall focuses on France wracked
by the sectarian violence. Coble, “The Massacre at Paris and the Rhetoric of Anglo-French Politics
in the 1590s” (master’s thesis, Iowa State University, 2012), esp. pp. 102–03 and 128–30. John
Guillory, “Marlowe, Ramus, and The Reformation of Philosophy,” ELH 81(2014), 693–732.
19. John Kerrigan, Shakespeare’s Binding Language (Oxford, 2016), pp. 69–71. For the frequency of
oath-breaking language, see also Voss, p. 137; Irene G. Dash, “Oath-Taking,” in Love’s Labour’s Lost:
Critical Essays, ed. Felicia Hardison Londré (New York, 1997), pp. 257–75; Woods, Shakespeare’s Un-
reformed Fictions, p. 72; and Woods, “Catholicism and Conversion in Love’s Labour’s Lost,” in How To Do
Things With Shakespeare: New Approaches, New Essays, ed. Laurie Maguire (Malden, 2008), pp. 101–30.
20. For an exceptional work on Shakespeare’s use of Stoicism with especial attention to Stoic
constancy in his Roman plays, see Geoffrey Miles, Shakespeare and the Constant Romans (Oxford,
1996).

Linda Shenk 203
the occasion. His father remained Catholic, but had consistently framed his
advice to Henri to suit the political situation—even advocating in 1591
that the time did not yet require that Henri convert.21 Berowne may be
the character that expresses the greatest resistance to studying the Stoic
curriculum from the outset, but the historical Biron family had no need
to learn the lessons of Neostoicism’s unifying rhetoric. They already and
consistently supported Henri, and the news quartos published in London
were full of descriptions of the elder Biron’s military partnership with the
French king. Likewise, his son Charles remained Henri’s staunch supporter
(through the 1590s) and was personally well-known to many in Elizabeth’s
court, particularly those in the Essex circle. To have Berowne as the figure
least enthusiastic about the Stoic curriculum and most interested in follow-
ing the ladies is appropriate and humorous.
The wittiest work relates to Dumaine, the figure associated with the Duc
de Mayenne, military leader of the Catholic League and Henri’s greatest
opponent until the Duke offered his submission in late 1595. Of the three
companions in the play, no one expresses more loyalty to Navarre or en-
dorses his plan of study more emphatically than he, and Shakespeare wants
to make sure we know that it is Dumaine who is pledging fidelity. Dumaine
is the only one of the three companions to identify himself by name, and
he does so in his opening lines. He responds to the King’s request to enter
the study of living art with these words full of Neostoic allusions:
My loving lord, Dumaine is mortified.

The grosser manner of these world’s delights
He throws upon the gross world’s baser slaves.
To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die,
With all these living in philosophy. (1.1.28–32)
Not only do his first lines emphasize a loving relationship with Navarre,
but they also reiterate the Neostoic priority of rejecting earthly pleasures
and temporal ambitions; echo the idea of living art with the idea of “liv-
ing in philosophy”; and even, in the first line, put a twist on the ars vivendi
by using the term “mortified” to express his submission. This term registers
the submission of dying to worldly pleasures because it plays on the French
word “mort” (death) to allude to the concept of ars moriendi (the art of dy-
ing)—an idea Dumaine underscores further with the image of pining and
21. Vincent J. Pitts, Henri IV of France: His Reign and Age (Baltimore, 2009), p. 159.

“dying.” Classical authorities such as Seneca sanctioned the ars moriendi as
a skill required when one admirably chooses to remain constant to one’s
beliefs in a world of corruption, violence, and bloodshed.
Dumaine’s melodramatic exclamation (with its funny double entrendre
in “die” as the petit mort) punctuates his complete willingness to ascribe to
his King’s plan, and the nod to ars moriendi emphasizes the eager Dumaine
while also conjuring up the infamous brutality of the historical De Ma-
yenne. Printing houses churned out numerous books that portrayed him
as a villain—a widespread image that Marlowe dramatized in The Mas-
sacre at Paris, anglicizing De Mayenne’s name (as Shakespeare will do) as
“Dumaine.” Marlowe’s ruthless, bloodthirsty Dumaine clearly mirrors De
Mayenne’s political persona in the 1580s and early 1590s. Readers in En-
gland had ample access to texts portraying De Mayenne and his family as
the archenemies not only of Protestantism and Henri but also of lawful
monarchic authority itself. Texts such as Remonstrances, to the Duke de Mayne
(1593) emphasized that the Duke and his Catholic League “rebells” were
using religious fervor as a front to mask political ambition. Also and of par-
ticular note in relation to Love’s Labour’s Lost is An Answere to the Last Tempest
and Villanie of the League, vpon the slanders which were imprinted by the same,
against the French king (1593)—a text published by Cuthbert Burby, the pub-
lisher also of the first extant quarto of Love’s Labour’s Lost.22 Burby’s connec-
tion to Shakespeare’s play and to the publication of news from France in
general has not received critical attention, despite the fact that Burby spent
his apprenticeship studying under William Wright, who published a signif-
icant percentage of the news from France in the early 1590s.
Burby’s publication of An Answere presented Londoners with a French
king who had needed to “defende himselfe against the forces of Guyse his
enemie,” for he has “playd the part of an Angell, whilest that they playd
with him the part of a Deuill.” These devilish figures had no right to rise
up against their angelic king, for “kinges, being soueraigne Magistrates,
haue preheminence, dominion, and lordship generally ouer all men of their
kingdomes, of what condition soeuer they be, as appeareth by this gener-
all commaundement of the Apostles.”23 Henri himself levels similar criti-
cism in A Proposition of the Princes, Prelats, Officers of the Crowne, & others of
22. Anon, An Answere to the Last Tempest and Villanie of the League, vpon the slanders which were
imprinted by the same, against the French king. Intituled: A declaration of the crimes whereinto the Catholikes
do fall, in taking the king of Nauarre his part.Translated out of French into English by T.H. (1593).
23. An Answere, pp. 13 and 19, respectively.

Linda Shenk 205
his Maiesties Councell, propounded to the Duke of Mayenne, and other his adher-
ents assembled in the Cittie of Paris (1593). He declares that Leaguers “haue
sufficiently declared that their conspiracy tended against the royall author-
ity, by their beginning of it against the late deceased king our soueraigne
and louinge brother, for whose sake, the showe and pretext of religion
wherewith they glose their actions, can take no place, in that he was a good
Catholicke.” Like his supporters, Henri makes De Mayenne’s and the
League’s resistance not about religion but about fidelity to king and coun-
try: good Catholics support Henri—they are “true French.”24 De Ma-
yenne was presented as creating not simply a crisis of religious division
but also a direct threat to rightful monarchical authority.25
De Mayenne’s subversion, however, ceased in late 1595. After he lost
Burgundy to Henri’s forces, he announced his decision to submit to Henri’s
authority—an act he made official in January 1596. Scholars have not ap-
plied this context to Shakespeare’s submissive and acquiescent Dumaine,
quite possibly because the official submission may have occurred too soon
before, or too contemporaneously with, the composition of the play. Even
if Love’s Labour’s Lost was produced earlier than the historical De Ma-
yenne’s announcement in fall 1595, this context is still possible: his recon-
ciliation was already talked about, requested, even predicted in several texts
published in 1594. For example, at the end of The Present state of Spaine
(1594), the writer claims that “the said Duke of Maine will reknowledge
his Maiestie for his King, and will repose more confidence in him than
in any other prince liuing.” The text ends shortly thereafter, encouraging
De Mayenne to offer his submission now that Henri is Catholic: “Let him
not then let slip this good occasion, whilest the time is that he may come in
and yeeld himself to his king with honor, making shew of the common
pretext of religion.”26 English readers could have heard this call for De
24. A Proposition, sigs. A4v and B4v, respectively. The equivalent passages in French are found
on sigs. D1v and D4v.
25. Henri as rightful monarch is repeated over and over in texts in this period, such as in The
Order of Ceremonies obserued in the annointing and Coronation of the most Christian King of France &
Nauarre, Henry the IIII. The text praises Henri as a Christian king in the title and then, in the first
sentence, as a monarch whom God had “miraculously guided and aduanced the king to the lawfull
succession of this Monarchy” and whose coronation was “still quarrelled at, and challenged by
certaine rebelles, supported by the capitall and auncient ennemies of France, &c. He was entreated
desired and aduised by the Princes of his bloud, the Officers of his Crowne, the Lordes of Counsel,
and the most notable personages of his Courts of Parliament to frame himselfe to his anointing”
(Aggas, sig. A2v).
26. Richard Serger, The Present state of Spaine. Translated out of French (1594), sig. 2E2, sig. 2E2v.

Mayenne’s submission another time in 1594, right after Paris submitted
to Henri’s authority. In this text, The French kings Edict vpon the reducing
of the citie of Paris vnder his obedience, Henri calls for the Duke “to yeeld vnto
the kinge seruice, obedience and fidelitie.”27 Henri was emboldened to
make such a demand because his entry into Paris, the League’s stronghold,
marked a huge defeat for De Mayenne, as did De Mayenne’s loss of key
towns in Burgundy during the first half of 1595. By mid-1595, the writing
was on the wall, and English readers had access to these events and the im-
age of Henri as making substantial headway.
III
De Mayenne was crucial for Henri’s pacification of France, and the

Duke’s submission made it clear that the tides had turned in Henri’s favor.
English support did not emerge from some sense of international compas-
sion. Rather, as Lisa Ferraro Parmelee has examined in-depth, the English
government was keenly interested in these events, as England was facing
the succession crisis.
In this period, John Wolfe had been working with such prominent po-
litical figures as Lord Burghley and Archbishop Bancroft because France’s
political stability was more important to England than shared Protestant
identity between the two nations as long as Henri maintained his alle-
giance to England rather than to Rome or Spain. To this end, figures such
as Burghley actually encouraged the publication of English translations of
these texts about Henri written by moderate, royalist Catholics ( politiques).
These texts consistently vilified the League, promoted anti-Spain senti-
ments, and argued for support of monarchical authority no matter what
religion the monarch espoused. As Parmelee notes, the Neostoic rhetoric
used in France underscored absolutist authority by making submission to a
lawful monarch unconditional.28 Such unquestioning obedience cannot
be overemphasized in its importance to the English government in the
mid-1590s, as it faced increasing religious unrest at home. There were
plenty of royalist Catholic voices in England who expressed support for
Elizabeth, but typically these individuals, as Michael C. Questier observes,
27. Henri IV, The French kings Edict, p. 24.

28. Lisa Ferraro Parmelee, Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Eliz-
abethan England (Rochester, 1996), esp. pp. 27–51. Parmelee’s entire book has been crucial to my
work.

Linda Shenk 207
included conditions for their support.29 Therefore, it makes perfect sense
that England and even its Protestant government would want its citizens
to root for a France unified behind Henri. Against this backdrop, Shake-
speare’s eager Dumaine, who unquestioningly submits to his King’s plan,
would have participated in the political rhetoric Elizabethan officials had
been endorsing. Shakespeare’s image would have presented either the
hoped-for situation or actual reality.
Despite this topical connection, however, Shakespeare’s comic repre-
sentation of Dumaine as the most slow-witted and naïve of the four courtly
men may still seem to be quite a stretch. In the famous sonnet scene in act
four, Dumaine is given the weakest position as the one who enters last. All
three men get to listen to his poetry, and he has to be most oblivious be-
cause he somehow does not see the three others onstage (at least two be-
low on the main floor with him). In productions, directors usually save the
most outrageous acts of not-seeing for Dumaine, allowing the comic tra-
jectory of the scene to build. What is more, Dumaine as a speaker and poet
is not as bright as the others. His verses are more poetically limited; he can
muster only sing-song couplets packed with words of no more than two
syllables, trite images, and awkward rhymes. Each line of his poem begins
with a stressed syllable, thus giving the verse a jerky, heavy-footed sound.
Dumaine is also the swiftest of the four to get trounced when the women
mock them. Even his love, Katherine, implies that he lacks awareness when
she describes him as “Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill, / For
he hath wit to make an ill shape good, / And shape to win grace, though
he had no wit” (2.1.58–60). Here, Dumaine’s naïvete in some ways makes
him dangerous because he can make bad things sound good without un-
derstanding the harm he is doing.
Surprisingly, the seeds for this comic portrayal of Dumaine are present
in the contemporary documents. In mid-1590s texts, De Mayenne is re-
peatedly described as deceived and in over his head in his dealings with
Spain. The anonymous writer of The Present state of Spaine claims that “The
Duke de Maine acknowledgeth alreadie that he hath bene deceiued and
abused by them [the Spanish]. All the world knoweth it.”30 In the “Satyre
29. Questier has written extensively on Catholics in England, devoting particular attention to the
Montague family and its circle. He focuses on Elizabeth and Catholics in “Elizabeth and the Cath-
olics,” in Catholics and the ‘Protestant Nation,’ ed. Ethan Shagan (Manchester, 2005), pp. 69–94. See, for
example, p. 76.
30. The Present state of Spaine, sig. 2E2.

Menippized” A Pleasant Satyre or Poesie: Wherein is discouered the Catholicon
of Spayne, and the chiefe leaders of the League. Finelie fetcht ouer, and laide open in
their colours (1595), De Mayenne is given the particular indignity of having
hiccups, for which he daily takes a drug, the Catholicon of Spayne, “in a
posset of asse milke, to heale the most disloyall and wicked hickcock [hic-
cup] of the world.”31 Likewise, in Remonstrances, the politique speaker warns
De Mayenne several times about the King of Spain: “He aydes you, vnder
a sure purpose which he hath to impatronise himselfe of our Realme, and
to play you such a tricke.”32 Portraying the League’s leaders as duped was
not new. De Mayenne’s fellow Guises were frequently portrayed as de-
ceived, abused, tricked, and blinded by ambition. They, like Shakespeare’s
Dumaine could become the butt of humor.
These mid-1590s humorous texts also mocked the Catholic League.
Most notably, the 1595 satire The Divels Legend poked much fun at De
Mayenne as well as at the Catholic League overall. The text begins with
a mock catechism (called a Cachephochysme) about the Catholic League,
in which a student-figure Zanie first shares with his teacher Pantaloun his
spiritual dedication to the League: “earlie in the morning after I haue re-
ligiouslie cald vpon the great Creator of good cheere, and with infinite
Aues saluted the crimson virgin of the darke celler, and with the helpe
of their two dieties, filled the emptinesse of my seldome satisfied belly:
I then repose all my faith, build the groundworke of my hope, and plant
the mightie mountaine of my charitie in the holy (O lie) league, conioyned
with her happie Apostle, scorning to imitate the king-counterfaiting Hu-
gonites, which beleeue onely in God and none other” (sig. A2v). Then
Zanie rehearses the new religious instruction he has received—instruction
that includes a spoof of the Apostles Creed. In one of its tenets, he ex-
presses his worship of De Mayenne: “I beleeue in the great, grosse, gray,
and goodly head of the Duke De Mains which stands in more need of
philosophy, than beggars of almes” (sig. A3v). Zanie comments on the
Duke’s well-known corpulence, which was even part of the humor on
the day of his official submission to Henri. The King marched him around
the palace gardens so vigorously that the Duke became quite out of breath,
and Henri gave him the jesting title, le gros duc.33 Shakespeare, too, gives a
nod to De Mayenne’s infamous girth. In Dumaine’s opening lines of the
31. T. W., A Pleasant Satyre or Poesie, p. 13.

32. Chute, Remonstrances, sig. D3.
33. Pitts, p. 196.

Linda Shenk 209
play, Shakespeare has him use the rhetorical figure polyptoton to emphasize
the words “gross” and “grosser,” having Dumaine riff on the French word
gros (fat). On a deeper level, both Shakespeare and Zanie connect De
Mayenne with a need for philosophy. The Divels Legend is not necessarily
a source for Shakespeare’s image, but this royalist text suggests that, in
some instances, the need for a resistant De Mayenne to have access to phi-
losophy may invoke the Neostoic philosophy that the civic philosophers
were employing to nurture French national unity.
Recognizing the presence of Neostoicism in the beginning of the play
suggests how Shakespeare maintains the philosophical tradition through-
out, using the men’s position as failed Stoics to drive the humor. As the
generic inverse of Stoicism, romantic comedy allows these men to be uni-
fied, yet also bumbling—a combination that was politically expedient for
Shakespeare to convey in the mid-1590s.
IV
As Andrew M. Kirk explains, “France appears as a historical topos of in-

stability and disorder, a place presided over by kings too weak, too incon-
stant, and, therefore, by the essentialist gender conventions of the time,
too effeminate to control fortune and bring stability to their state. . . . Fur-
ther, royal weakness not only allows fortune to reign, it delineates a void
of human power and causation at the center of these plays and of the
view of history they portray.”34 When Shakespeare has his King of Na-
varre and companions fail as Stoics, he creates a power vacuum that the
women will fill, even as he rewrites the historical Henri’s strong image as
a Gallic Hercules. The image of a vulnerable France and a weak French
king is appropriate to England’s needs in the 1590s. A unified France pre-
sents England with a double-edged sword. As France becomes unified, it
gains strength behind its Gallic Hercules, and with this stability comes the
possibility that France will become sufficiently powerful that it will rely
less on England for assistance. Now that Henri is Catholic, he might ally
with Rome—or worse—with Spain.
In late 1595, Henri threatened to do just that, prompting Queen Eliz-
abeth to send the diplomat Sir Henry Unton to France in an attempt to
patch relations. So it makes sense for Shakespeare to depict Navarre as
34. Andrew M. Kirk, The Mirror of Confusion: The Representation of French History in English Re-
naissance Drama (New York, 1996), p. 8.

united with figures representing the sectarian conflict, even as he makes
the French king and his companions weak to neutralize the threat that an
independent France would present. Shakespeare creates such weakness
not only by making the men subservient to the women, but also by mak-
ing the Princess a superior stoic.
Shakespeare makes Navarre (and the historical France) needy in ways
that portray it as forever dependent on England and its clever Queen. The
failure of the men in Love’s Labour’s Lost is even more striking once we
examine how Stoic references connect seemingly unrelated scenes. Sto-
icism helps underscore the cohesive structure of Love’s Labour’s Lost in ways
that echo Thomas Rist’s contention that the play is structured through as-
ceticism; however, the ascetic discourse has a Stoic cast.35 Navarre’s open-
ing plan to make the court into an “academe, / Still and contemplative in
living art” is misguided Stoicism: the proper context for the ars vivendi is
the active, not the contemplative, life.36 The Stoic references intensify dur-
ing the final act of the play, confirming the men’s weakness and ultimately
justifying the women’s powerful position. The masque of the Muscovites,
the Pageant of the Nine Worthies, and Marcadé’s announcement of the
Princess’ father’s death are linked by Stoicism.
The men’s decision to dress as Russians when wooing the women at
the beginning of act five exudes failed Stoicism. Although they initially
plan to court the women in their own persons, by act five they change
their minds and come dressed in disguise. On a most basic level, they fail
to follow the Stoic value of remaining constant to one’s own identity. In
Julius Caesar, Shakespeare refers to this principle directly when Lucillius
praises Brutus’ constancy of self while taking a verbal jab at the duplici-
tous but victorious Antony. Lucillius tells Antony that whether he finds
Brutus “alive or dead, / He will be found like Brutus, like himself.”37
35. Thomas Rist, “Topical Comedy: On the Unity of Love’s Labour’s Lost,” Ben Jonson Journal
7 (2000), 65–87.
36. Louis Adrian Montrose gives particular attention to this opening speech and the ways in
which the King’s approach jumbles both the goals of a humanist education and Stoic ideals. Louis
Adrian Montrose, “Curious-Knotted Garden”: The Form, Themes, and Contexts of Shakespeare’s Love’s
Labour’s Lost, Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies Ser. 56 (Salzburg, 1977), pp. 28–29. Darryll Grantley
also adds that the King’s enthusiasm for entering serious study in seclusion runs counter to the early
modern approach to aristocratic education overall: Wit’s Pilgrimage: Drama and the Social Impact of Ed-
ucation in Early Modern England (Aldershot, 2000), p. 193. Grantley also mentions early that Love’s La-
bour’s Lost was “probably written for first performance in a private and elite context” (p. 188).
37. I am indebted to Geoffrey Miles for this idea of appearing always “like oneself ” as well his
attention to this relevant passage (5.4.24–25) from Julius Caesar (Miles, pp. 144–48). William Shake-
speare, Julius Caesar, ed. T. S. Dorsch (1955. London, 1979).

Linda Shenk 211
Shakespeare’s courtiers in Love’s Labour’s Lost cannot woo in their own
identities, and such fickleness is already inherent in the English stereo-
types for the French. As Deanne Williams and Jean-Christophe Mayer
maintain, the English represented the French as figures of excess, masquer-
ade, and changeability.38
Shakespeare underscores this failure even further by having these cour-
tiers choose to come dressed as Russians. As John Michael Archer and
Daryl W. Palmer note, early modern English texts depicted Russian men
as passionate, fiery, and tyrannical39—characteristics antithetical to Stoic
calm and moderation. Navarre and his companions exhibit these stereo-
types, wooing in ridiculous hyperbole, using the protocols of dancing to
demand kisses, and using such ungentlemanly comments as the King’s
line to Rosaline that “your legs should do it” (5.2.217). In performance,
directors often emphasize this pushy impropriety and its sexual under-
tones by having the men repeatedly invade the women’s personal space.
Such concrete and bungled Stoicism prepares for the women’s postpone-
ment of marriage in the end. Within the play’s own set of ideas, the women
are wholly justified in rejecting the men outright in the Muscovite scene
and then requiring a year-long test at the end of the play.
The courtiers’ inadequate Stoicism surfaces again during their very next
sub-scene with the women: the Pageant of the Nine Worthies. Through-
out this entertainment, the men repeatedly interrupt and demean Holo-
fernes, Armado, and Costard. Shakespeare introduces a Stoic perspective
during the only speech the courtly men do not interrupt. This speech is
for young Hercules, a figure closely tied both to the Stoic tradition and to
France’s Neostoic representation of Henri. The Boy, representing Hercu-
les and Holofernes says:
Great Hercules is presented by this imp,

Whose club killed Cerebus, that three-headed canus,
And when he was a babe, a child, a shrimp,
Thus did he strangle serpents in his manus. (5.2.582–85)
38. Deanne Williams, The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Cambridge, Eng., 2004),
p. 13. Jean-Christophe Mayer, Introduction, ed. Jean-Christophe Mayer, Representing France and
the French in Early Modern English Drama (Newark, DE 2008), pp. 21–46. See esp., pp. 26–27.
39. John Michael Archer, Old Words: Egypt, Southwest Asia, India, and Russia in Early Modern
English Writing (Stanford, 2001); Daryl W. Palmer, Writing Russia in the Age of Shakespeare (Burling-
ton, 2004).

Here is a successful Hercules whose labors are not lost because, as the Sto-
ics appreciated, Hercules was often able to control his passions (though
famously not always) and was willing to suffer unselfishly. In turn, Shake-
speare’s depiction of this favorite figure of the Stoics resonates with con-
temporary political images used to celebrate Henri’s ability to subdue his
factious and unruly nation. The representation of Henri as a Gallic Her-
cules appeared repeatedly, not only in written texts but also on medals and
in the pageantry welcoming him into various cities. For example, in 1595,
Lyons depicted him as Hercules subduing the Hydra and the many-headed
canus Cerebus, and when he had gained entry into Paris, he was also de-
picted strangling the Hydra.40 Although the mythical Hercules subdued
many foes, Shakespeare chooses two that were particularly associated with
Henri as a successful pacifier of his nation. The Stoic resonances continue
to echo, perhaps even in the choice to describe the Boy, Moth, as an “imp,”
which is literally a young shoot of a plant or tree; a sapling. Such an image
surfaces in the Neostoic tradition of portraying a Neostoic neophyte as a
young plant. John Stradling uses this image in his preface to Lipsius’s Two
Bookes of Constancie when he shares his hope that “by reading & meditat-
ing vpon this little treatise, it will please him to worke in thy mind such a
firme impression of CONSTANCIE, as neither the violent flouds of com-
mon calamities may be able to wash away, nor the firie flame of priuate
afflictions to consume the same: But that as a plant set in good ground,
watred with the fruitfull streames flowing in (a) goulden and siluer cesterns
from the sweete fountaine of Lipsius, and conueighed to thee through these
clayie conduite-pipes of my tempering, thou maist take deepe roote, and
stand immoueable against all the blastes of fortune.”41 With this image of
the young plant, Stradling emphasizes the centrality of constancy to Sto-
icism even as he uses an image of a young plant that grows and deepens its
root system to allow it to remain immoveable in the turmoil of adversity.
When the courtiers do not interrupt this one speech in the Pageant of
the Nine Worthies, the audience gets to hear this example more than
the others, and it clarifies how far these courtly men miss the Stoic mark.
V
Throughout the play, the Princess proves to be an adept Stoic. In the fi-

nal scene, the Pageant of the Nine Worthies gets interrupted by Marcadé
40. See, e.g., Vivanti, p. 184.
41. Two Bookes of Constancie, sig. A4.

Linda Shenk 213
when he announces that the Princess’s father is dead—the most shocking
volte-face in this play already full of reversals.42 In the Stoic tradition, the
death of a loved one is often invoked as the scenario that most tests one’s
constancy and inner stability. With impressive composure, the Princess
spares Marcadé the actual articulation of the news when she inserts “Dead,
for my life!” (5.2.715). She immediately moves into taking care of busi-
ness: she prepares to leave, she thanks Navarre for his generosity even as
she quietly acknowledges her grief, speaking “Out of a new-sad soul”
(725). She mourns and yet remains collected, even gracious.
The Princess’ Stoicism in facing misfortune with serenity shows up
Navarre’s inability to fulfill his own Stoic role. The news of death pro-
vides a rhetorical space for two individuals to demonstrate Stoic constancy.
Typically, it is the bereaved person who cannot maintain Stoic constancy
and needs wise consolation. Even here, Shakespeare’s King botches the
job. As Benjamin Boyce notes, the tradition of consolatio was well-known
in Shakespeare’s day.43 The King’s response to the Princess demonstrates
his inability to use tropes appropriately. A person offering consolation must
not cause the mourner greater grief. Navarre’s response to the Princess’s
news is an awkwardly-phrased request for her favor—so murky in mean-
ing that the Princess responds “I understand you not. My griefs are dou-
ble” (746). Not only does the King increase her grief, but he also uses the
wrong strategy: he tries to distract the Princess by reminding her of a love
she can have for someone living. This strategy of substitution is designed,
according to tradition, to be used with an individual who is weak (why
Hamlet accuses Gertrude of weakness when he claims she allowed Clau-
dius to replace his father).44 Navarre’s ineptitude at consoling the Princess
reveals her superior Stoic constancy and wisdom. Such gendered power
dynamics support the connections between the Princess and the specter
of Queen Elizabeth I that hovers in this play.45 Previous studies have ex-
amined the Queen’s political presence through the similarities between
the queen’s and the play’s courtly love tropes and such individual moments
as the moon imagery in the Muscovite scene.
42. Patricia Parker’s work emphasizes this play as structured through a series of reversals. Parker,
“Preposterous Reversals: Love’s Labor’s Lost,” Modern Language Quarterly 54 (1993), 435–82.
43. Benjamin Boyce, “The Stoic Consolatio and Shakespeare,” PMLA 64 (1949), 771–80.
44. Boyce outlines these strategies and uses the example of Gertrude, pp. 775–77.
45. See Hunt as well as Mark Breitenberg, “The Anatomy of Masculine Desire in Love’s Labor’s
Lost,” Shakespeare Quarterly 43 (1992), 430–49 and also Glynne Wickham, “Love’s Labor’s Lost and
The Four Foster Children of Desire, 1581,” Shakespeare Quarterly 36 (1985), 49–55.

VI
The Princess does not equate to Elizabeth; rather, her relationship with
Navarre enacts an approach to France that participates in the Queen’s
and England’s current diplomatic situation. Shakespeare creates a rela-
tionship between the Princess and Navarre that resembles the one that
Elizabeth and England wanted from Henri in 1595–1596. The diplomatic
and courtly rhetoric in this period, especially that connected with the Es-
sex circle, drew upon language that portrays the Princess’ final relation-
ship with Navarre as one in which she has his affection but does not ac-
tually commit herself in return. Essex and his circle repeatedly encouraged
Elizabeth to support Henri by using this rhetoric of love and self-love, al-
ways with the notion that Elizabeth will remain independent while ac-
cepting the fidelity and gratitude of the French King.46 The play’s disrup-
tion of comic convention would have been a truly comic, even preferred,
ending for its late-Elizabethan audience. Politically, a Protestant England
would have found this conclusion more gratifying.
Appreciation for this ending would have been even stronger in courtly
circles, especially if Shakespeare wrote the play in late 1595 or early 1596.
Not only did the play’s deferred commitment in the final moments
match the type of courtly rhetoric used to encourage Elizabeth to sup-
port France, but also court figures watching the play were currently im-
mersed in current Anglo-French affairs at this precise time. In December
1595, for example, Sir Henry Unton’s mission to France was the issue of
the hour.47 In fact, Shakespeare’s company’s patron (the Lord Chamber-
lain, Lord Hunsdon) had a son who would go with Unton.48 That mis-
46. Linda Shenk, “Essex’s International Agenda in 1595 and His Device of the Indian Prince,”
in Essex: The Life and Times of an Elizabethan Courtier, ed. Annaliese Connolly and Lisa Hopkins
(Manchester, 2013), pp. 81–97, see esp. pp. 87–89.
47. Unton’s mission was no secret, and preparations for it so dominated the attention at court
in late 1595 that Roland Whyte, Robert Sidney’s representative at court, describes that the Privy
Council was devoting hours to Anglo-French relations and Unton’s mission: “The Lords came of
Purpose from the Court vnto hym [Burghley], and satt in Cownsell this after Noone, about French
Busines, which indeed troubles them very much.” These plans so consumed the Council’s atten-
tion that Whyte is unable to act on Sidney’s request to return to England for the birth of his child.
Whyte explains that Sidney’s friends “answer me, that now they are busy about Sir Hen. Vmptons
Dispatch into Fraunce, that ended, they hope to fynd the Queen at better Leisure to be spoken
vnto.” Letters and Memorials of State, vol. I, ed. Arthur Collins (1746. New York, 1973), pp. 375
and 376.
48. Unton’s diary of the mission lists Carey as a member of the entourage. Sir Henry Unton,
Papers of Sir Henry Unton. Mss 2141. University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

Linda Shenk 215
sion was at the center of England’s work to improve its relations with
France—relations that were tottering, especially after France’s diplomat
Antoine de Loménie had arrived in October 1595 and had sparked the
ire of queen and court with his brusque demeanor. England emphatically
needed to repair its relations with France and quickly.
Elizabeth sent Unton to Henri because England suspected (and was
right in suspecting) that the French King was negotiating with Spain,
which was preparing another Armada, while Jesuit-backed individuals
were publishing texts suggesting a Spanish successor to Elizabeth. Having
France as an ally and using the politique language of unconditional support
for a monarch were useful enough to England to work across the reli-
gious divide—both internationally and at home—to ensure its own na-
tional security.49 These contexts of international warfare and the succes-
sion crisis at home made it crucial for England to work cooperatively with
even a Catholic France.
Love’s Labour’s Lost participates in this larger diplomatic agenda. Con-
sistently, Shakespeare’s choices diminish and redirect the threats of sectar-
ian and military conflict; this strategy also informs his representation of the
character Armado—a topic that warrants a separate essay. As part of this
redirection, Shakespeare lightly layers in undercurrents of religious plural-
ity. For example, some of the Princess’ most overtly Protestant lines ap-
pear when she banters with the Forester in the hunting scene that opens
act 4. She jests to the Forester, “See, see, my beauty will be saved by merit! /
O heresy in fair, fit for these days!” (4.1.21–22). Although she describes
the Catholic notion of good deeds being needed for salvation as “heresy”
(rather than the Protestant notion of faith alone), this reference arises in
jesting and within a sub-scene that potentially invokes Queen Elizabeth’s
49. Significantly, the image of France unified behind its lawful king was consistently linked in
published texts to the idea of France resisting Spanish take-over and the Spain-supporting wiles of
the Jesuits. In The French kings Edict vpon the reducing of the citie of Paris vnder his obedience (1594), Henri
himself expresses how “our good towne of Paris, hauing bene occupied by our ennemies and man-
ifestly endaungered to the intollerable yoake and shamefull dominion of the Spanyard, hath per-
petrated many thinges contrary to the obedience due to their lawfull king” (sig. C3v). Another
text, The fleur de luce (1593), describes Catholic League-dominated Paris as a place where people
“plunged themselues headlong in the horrible goulfe of Spanish bondage”: Pierre Forget, [The fleur
de luce.] (1593), sig. A2. In 1594, the periodic title of another text (by Antoine Arnauld) makes clear
the connections between the threat of Spain and the Jesuits on France: The Arrainment of the Whole
Society of Iesvits in France, holden in the honourable Court of Parliament in Paris, the 12. and 13. of Iuly.
1594. Wherein is laied open to the world, that, howsoeuer this new Sect pretendeth matter of Religion, yet their
whole trauailes, endeuours, and bent, is but to set vp the kingdome of Spaine, and to make him the onely
Monarch of all the West / Translated, out of the French copie imprinted at Paris by the Kings Printer (1594).

visit to Cowdray in 1591.50 This visit, well-known through its several
published accounts, included a particular effort to fulfill Elizabeth’s love
of hunting. Significantly, it also involved a religiously polyvalent situation,
for Cowdray’s owner and host, Viscount Anthony Montague, was a well-
known Catholic who devoted much of his political career to advocating
tolerance of Catholics and emphasizing English Catholics’ loyalty.
Such religiously polyvalent allusions hover in other moments, too, such
as early in act two when Berowne and Rosaline ask each other, “Did not
I dance with you in Brabant once?” (2.1.114–15). As Woods observes,
“Brabant was a core province in the Low Countries that, although offi-
cially converted to the Dutch Reformed Church, in large part aposta-
tized to Catholicism in the 1580s and 1590s” (p. 112). Religious plurality
exists even in the publication history of the texts coming out about France
in the 1590s. For example, The Divels Legend was printed in England for
Thomas Gosson, who was a Church of England clergyman. This text,
published in 1595, demonstrates how even a Protestant cleric in England
could support a Catholic Henri. And Gosson was not alone. Texts sup-
portive of Henri were published by more than one press and in a range
that suggests a variety of motives. Of particular prominence in these texts
published about Henri (even post conversion) is the high number pub-
lished by John Wolfe. Since the early 1580s, Wolfe had consistently cho-
sen to print texts associated with religious toleration, as Clifford Chalmers
Huffman has demonstrated.51 Such an interest in toleration with a focus
on political stability also prompted such texts as William Covell’s Poliman-
teia, or, The meanes lawfull and vnlawfull, to Ivdge of the Fall of a Common-wealth
Against the friuolous and foolish coniectures of this age (1595), which has the
following text appended: “A letter from England to her three daughters, Cam-
bridge, Oxford, Innes of Court, and to all the rest of her inhabitants: per-
swading them to a constant vnitie of what religion soever they are, for the
defense of our dread soveraigne, and natiue country: most requisite for this
time wherein wee now live.”52 Texts coming out about England have
50. H. C. Hart first suggested this possible connection in his Arden edition of Love’s Labour’s
Lost (London, 1906), pp. xlviii–l.
51. Clifford Chalmers Huffman, Elizabethan Impressions: John Wolfe and His Press (New York,
1988). Huffman examines Wolfe’s consistent interest in religious toleration, even pluralism,
throughout the book, but particularly on pp. ix, 27, and 72.
52. William Covell, Polimanteia, or, The meanes lawfull and vnlawfull, to Ivdge of the Fall of a Common-
wealth Against the friuolous and foolish coniectures of this age. Whereunto is added, “A letter from En-
gland to her three daughters, Cambridge, Oxford, Innes of Court, and to all the rest of her inhabitants:

Linda Shenk 217
taken a few pages from the French playbook, expressing the needs both
to minimize religious strife and to support the monarch for the greater
good of national strength. The stage for the expansive potential of hu-
mor was set.
In 1595–1596 as England faced possible civil unrest due to its own se-
rious succession issues (and a series of bad harvests) as well as the threat of
foreign invasion, maybe now was a time to engage in comedy that en-
couraged a more tolerant view of France and its apostate King. And
the final scene of Shakespeare’s play does have strains of unresolved dis-
cord that match the unresolved but stabilizing situation in France. Within
the thwarted comic ending, though, Shakespeare gives his female sover-
eign the greatest power—with a touch of religious expansiveness when
the Princess defers marriage in the play’s final moments. As scholars such
as David Beauregard and Gillian Woods have noted, the Princess and all
her women assign their suitors a year-long trial that invokes Catholic pen-
ance. Beauregard examines the way in which Shakespeare inserts lan-
guage that makes the situation analogous to the sacrament of penance:
the men “Full of dear guiltiness” must “change” and be “purified” and
“purg’d” in order for them to win the ladies’ favor.53 Woods, in turn,
takes this presence of Catholic penance to suggest: “The text at once fore-
grounds a Navarre in need of correction at the same time as it looks hope-
fully to a future that does not deny his Catholicism as an act of temporiz-
ing” (p. 124). Wood places the conversion within the context of England’s
pragmatic need to retain relations with France. The present essay suggests
that Love’s Labour’s Lost occurs within a constellation of texts that provide
an even more sympathetic view of France and thus creates a stronger pos-
sibility for late-Elizabethan audiences to see this play as more of a true
comedy.
IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
perswading them to a constant vnitie of what religion soever they are, for the defense of our dread
soveraigne, and natiue country: most requisite for this time wherein wee now live” (1595).
53. David Beauregard, Catholic Theology in Shakespeare’s Plays (Newark, 2008), pp. 33–35. Jo-
seph Sterrett provides other choices in the play that link the men with Catholic practices in his The
Unheard Prayer: Religious Toleration in Shakespeare’s Drama: Studies in Religion and the Arts (Boston,
2012), pp. 34–58. See esp. pp. 48–51.


Shakespeare 'S Comic Topicality in Love's Labour's Lost: Linda Shenk

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Shakespeare 'S Comic Topicality in Love's Labour's Lost: Linda Shenk

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LINDA SHENK

Shakespeare’s Comic Topicality in Love’s Labour’s Lost

I n the mid-1590s, William Shakespeare fashioned his insistently topical

English Literary Renaissance, volume 47, number 2.

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2. Gillian Woods, Shakespeare’s Unreformed Fictions (Oxford, 2013), p. 67.

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Underlying a topical discussion of the main plot in Love’s Labour’s Lost

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Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,

Readers in England would have recognized such war-hero language from

war against your own affections

9. Remonstrances, sigs. B2 and B2v, respectively.

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My loving lord, Dumaine is mortiﬁed.

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De Mayenne was crucial for Henri’s paciﬁcation of France, and the

27. Henri IV, The French kings Edict, p. 24.

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31. T. W., A Pleasant Satyre or Poesie, p. 13.

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As Andrew M. Kirk explains, “France appears as a historical topos of in-

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Great Hercules is presented by this imp,

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Throughout the play, the Princess proves to be an adept Stoic. In the ﬁ-

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