With regard to the onslaught of reality, we are left in no doubt at the end of the play that the young men are about to enter into a different form of education, based on real experience in the wider world. Whether or not love penetrates their artificially constructed refuge from life is a debatable matter, but set designs for Love’s Labour’s Lost often reflect the idea of romantic love. In 1984 a statue of Eros, the Greek god of love and sexual desire, dominated the set of Barry Kyle’s production—a visually stunning design, suggestive of French Impressionist paintings, but which also pointed toward the battle between the sexes:
We are in turn-of-the-century France, and against a distant prospect of silhouetted lovers strolling along a leafy lake-side, Bob Crowley has mounted dozens of parapluies on telescopic stems, thus cleverly creating an impression of mock battle-standards under which the lovers wage their struggle.29
In 1990 Timothy O’Brien’s set took the theme of French Impressionism further with “a pointillist agglomeration of autumnal leaves—yellow, red, gold and brown—glinting in the dense greenery of a private idyllic forest.”30 The production opened with a deliberate reference to one of the most controversial paintings from the early Impressionist movement. Critic Peter Holland described how
French impressionism turned three-dimensional, its trees and hedges vivid splashes of colour. The lords sat for the first scene picnicking, reading and sketching, in a tableau carefully arranged to remind the audience of Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe, though here with Manet’s naked women conspicuous by their absence. By 2.1 the garden had been cordoned off with a sign “Interdit aux femmes.”31
The idea of male education in isolation, combined with verbal exhibitionism and the immaturity of young men in the ways of love, prompted Ian Judge to put two and two together and set the play in an Oxford college. Peter Holland again:
The loss of the court setting, as in Hands’ production in 1991, was here more than offset by the immediately recognisable world of “academe” in which young men, in single-sex colleges, had to balance their commitment “to live and study here three years” (1.1.35) against such temptations as “to see a woman in that term” (37). Nathaniel became a college chaplain, Holofernes a “Professor of Latin” (according to the programme, Moth … a well-scrubbed student chorister and Costard a local delivery boy).32
Critic Stanley Wells elaborated further:
The lodge in the royal park is a porter’s lodge, and Don Adriano de Armado is not the only don on the horizon. John Gunter’s charming basic set of stone walls and mullioned windows festooned with greenery adapts easily and wittily to suggest a variety of locations: a high-backed settle trundles on, and we are in a buttery bar … puffs of smoke plus a few sound effects and it is clear that the Princess and her companions have arrived by train; Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel converse in deck chairs, while watching and applauding a cricket match that takes place somewhere in the auditorium; an awning descends to show that the entertainments of the last act are not unconnected with a May Ball.33
The Edwardian setting also offered an opportunity for a poignant reading, reminding the audience that the play is as much about loss as it is about love. Wells continues:
It is only with the ladies’ rejection of their suitors’ offers of love that the full point of the Edwardian setting becomes clear. We may have idly noticed that the sun has never ceased to shine: this has been a long hot summer. And as the ladies depart, leaving Berowne to lament that the delay of twelve months before their courtship can have a happy ending is “too long for a play,” the backdrop changes from the spires of Oxford to Flanders fields; we hear the noise of gunfire and of shells, and know that the idyll is over. The lights fade, the actors take a call, the audience applauds.
It may seem a portentous and forced ending, an unnecessary deflection from the shock that Shakespeare has already provided with the news of the King of France’s death, but it makes an effective concluding coup de théâtre. At least it would have done if Ian Judge had had the courage to stop there, cutting what remains of the play. But no. The actors halt our applause, the dialogue resumes, and the evening ends with a trivializing setting of the songs for the owl and the cuckoo. With the final waltz number for the entire company, the actors waving to the audience as they depart, we are in the world of showbiz, of Edwardian musical comedy, in an evasion of the challenges of Shakespeare’s own, highly original ending to one of his most brilliantly experimental plays.34
6. Edwardian Oxbridge: the Worthies plan their pageant in a cricket pavilion (directed by Ian Judge, 1993, RSC).
Words, Words, Words …
As comedy, Love’s Labour’s Lost displays a fascination with language as the tool of wit, learning, and persuasion at all social levels.
According to John Pendergast, John Barton’s 1978 interpretation suggested that
the linguistic acrobatics of the lower-class characters such as Moth and Costard were similar in spirit to those of the more sophisticated characters such as Berowne and Armado; although the upper-class characters may be more “correct” when they speak archaically, they are experimenting with the possibilities of language in a manner similar to the lower-class characters and all the communication in the play is an attempt at sounding sophisticated.… The language comes to serve the characters’ personalities, rather than the reverse.… For example, rhyming is used by the young men as part of their wooing yet it also suggests wit and immaturity. Armado and Holofernes are not nearly as witty as they think they are, and their speech habits reflect their pretentiousness and Old World ways.35
Despite all the lovers’ overblown rhetoric, Costard is the character that cuts to the chase when he tells us “Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.” Robert Speaight remarked of John Barton’s 1965 production:
Mr Tim Wylton was quite rightly mounted on a farm-cart for this stupendous utterance, although his own authority was quite enough to articulate the wisdom of babes and sucklings. This Costard was much more than an endearing lout; he … communicated a kind of heroic happiness which suffused the whole play. Just as Feste acts as a go-between in Twelfth Night, counterpointing comedy with cynicism, and retiring at the end into solitude from which he emerged at the beginning, so Costard is a go-between in Love’s Labour’s Lost. But Costard is too wise for the intelligence of cynicism, and when the stage has emptied one sees him retiring with the other Worthies, perhaps for a drink at the Vicarage, perhaps for a drink at the schoolmaster’s house, or perhaps for a drink at the pub. But wherever he is, he will not be alone, and we should like to be in his company, because he has said in one line what Berowne has said in twenty.36
Christopher Luscombe, who played Moth in 1993, thought that “our Oxbridge setting … helped to take the curse off some of this elaborate wit. In academia such conversational cut-and-thrust seemed entirely natural. Friendships are forged in the delighted discovery of new vocabulary.”37
Kenneth Branagh played Navarre in the RSC’s 1984–85 production and in 2000 was to direct a film version, again with an Oxbridge setting. He observed the dilemma for directors in tackling such a wordy play:
The play is full of rhymed line endings. Verbally, or musically, it is a “great feast of language.” This presents some difficulties for actors and producers. They have to decide whether to play the language to the hilt knowing that, because it is so dense, the audience isn’t necessarily going to pick up everything, or whether to slow it down a bit in order to try to give away as much of the meaning as possible. This may be a reason why the play has been neglected since Shakespeare’s day really until this century.38
Ian Judge’s 1993 production utilized the musicality of the language, turning it into one of the production’s assets, something that Branagh also did with his film, when he shot the play as a 1930s musical:
A musical comedy without music is how one critic described Love’s Labour’s Lost.… This Brideshead-style academia has pretty ballads, a turkey trot by [composer] Nig
el Hess and a set of French misses in Poiret frocks.39
In 1984 the ridiculous song about the fox, the ape, and the humble-bee was turned into “a first-class music-hall routine.”40 However, many critics felt that the final song was given a too sophisticated staging, overelaborated by redundant stage business:
This is rendered by an operatic singer who has already appeared between some of the scenes as one of a band of picturesque (and languorous) peasants, vocalising what sound like bits of the Chants de l’Auvergne. For the concluding lyrics the singer is accompanied by the rest of the cast, who provide such literal-minded illustrations as a sneezing peasant girl (Marian’s nose is red and raw). The operatic voice is confident and accomplished, so that any sense of tentativeness is lost, and the music’s sophistication makes it less credible than usual that the parson and the schoolmaster might have been responsible for the song.41
In 1965 and again in 1978, as Roger Warren notes in Shakespeare Survey, John Barton, emphasizing the language and its imagery, made the innovation of having the final songs spoken,
thereby throwing greater emphasis onto their vivid images of country life; but he extended the idea so that all the villagers echoed the “Cuckoo” and “Tu-whit, tu-who,” and, even more important, the court led by the King and Princess joined in too, so that the stage became filled with harmonious echoes of country sounds—exquisitely capped by the hooting of a real owl above their heads, magically reinforcing Shakespeare’s own final emphasis upon the ordinary realities of country life. Such an extraordinarily complex scene, which takes the breath away with its combination of gaiety and sadness, its blending of affairs of state, of the heart, of the countryside, is Mr. Barton’s special territory as a director.42
One of the major strengths of Barton’s 1978 production was the revelation that the extravagant language used by the characters is a form of verbal mask, an artificial front to their true feelings. The characters spoke in “elegant, precious and self-conscious language not because Shakespeare is writing such language but because they are showing off, or defending themselves against feeling, or trying to communicate but tying themselves in knots while doing so.”43
This is especially true of the character Berowne, who gets the larger share of the play’s poetry and wit. In David Jones’s 1975 production Ian Richardson’s central performance captured the essence of the play. He later revealed that it was his favorite part in the canon, believing that Berowne, the excellent wordsmith, was no other than Shakespeare himself. The part, he said, “stands out above all the Shakespeare roles I’ve ever played, as being the one I love the most. Curiously enough it does seem to be the role that Shakespeare might have written for himself.… Here is Shakespeare talking, here is the man himself with all his verbal quips.”44
Critic Michael Billington, in praise of Richardson, reported that “you realise this is really a play about the process of growing-up; and that under its formality, artifice and endless topical allusions, it is a work that captures the very rhythm of life itself”:
This transition from artifice, to true feeling is nowhere better illustrated than by Ian Richardson’s masterly performance as Berowne. Whether breaking out in sighs that seem to hail from his bootstraps or tearing up the letter that reveals the breaking of his vows of study, he is frantic, word-drunk and possessed by the spirit of love. Yet in his great hymn to Cupid he drops all vocal artifice and when he declares to Rosalind, “I am yours and all that I possess” you feel he has learnt the virtues of true sentiment and direct speech.45
Men in Love?
The lack of seriousness with which the young men take their oaths, the hapless bandying of the language and manners of courtly love, their genuine unkindness toward the participants of the pageant, might give a girl cause for concern. As director John Barton put it in his 1965 program, “ridiculous and impracticable” as the oath may be, “it is an oath all the same, and a serious one. So when the King and the rest break it at the first sight of a woman’s eyes, the girls are justified in questioning their oaths of love.”46
In his 1978 production Barton offered a “new and most fruitful shift of emphasis”47 by having the Princess of France and King of Navarre take a more prominent role, of equal importance to Rosaline and Berowne. He also deliberately cast against type with Richard Griffiths and Carmen Du Sautoy as an inelegant pair, instantly drawn to each other. These factors imbued the play with a warmhearted basis that has not been surpassed by later productions:
[Carmen] Du Sautoy’s Princess and Griffiths’s King are obviously meant for each other, and they fall in love almost at first sight. When she says “suddenly resolve me in my suit,” she holds out the letter and there is a long pause. He fumbles for words—“Madam, I will if suddenly I may”—and her answer, completely without sarcasm … sounds as if she is struggling to put words together.… Characteristically, as the King reaches out for the letter from her father, she accidentally drops it; both she and the King bend over to pick up the letter, the Princess gets it and hands it over to him, but both are embarrassed by the small mishap.… He turns away to read the letter while she turns away—and takes off her glasses. The immediate falling in love of these two slightly clumsy and unromantic-looking people becomes very touching and creates a gentle tone for their relationship … so different from the elegant and usually self-assured rulers found in other productions.48
In their appearance and manner one was aware of the genuine emotion that was blooming between them. These were not people beguiled by the artifice of appearance but were soulmates, insecure in themselves and their positions, able to understand each other and the difficulties of matching up to royal status.
The relationship between Rosaline and Berowne complemented that of the king and princess, further emphasizing the real passion burning beneath the words. As Warren notes in Shakespeare Survey, Michael Pennington’s performance had “an intense, almost erotic lyricism for the great defense of Love, which rightly became the climax of the first half. This scene typified the production’s quality, building superbly from one humorous peak to another, without loss of humanity: the lords’ poems were not guyed, but rather became the rapid, passionate release of pent-up desire.”49
In 1984 and 1990 there was a marked discrepancy between the maturity of the men and that of the women—the women appeared far more sophisticated and in control than the men, who were portrayed as relatively immature. This left the audience with a large question mark over the issue of whether or not genuine feelings of love lay behind their declarations. In Barry Kyle’s production (1984), Kenneth Branagh played Navarre as
a boyish, amiable monarch whose attempts to be strict with himself and his courtiers were doomed from the beginning. His shyness is soon overcome by his enthusiasm for the pursuit of the ladies.… Against Emily Richard’s Princess—older than Navarre and much more mature in her emotions—he seems like someone making the transition from adolescence to early manhood. In the last Stratford production (by John Barton) it was suggested that the Princess was about the same age as Navarre, if not a little younger.… the Princess’s self-confidence and maturity were in as critical a stage of development as Navarre’s.… Berowne (Roger Rees) obviously takes the prize for experience and self-knowledge, but his counterpart, Rosaline, is moody, withdrawn and something of an outsider amongst the women. Josette Simon plays her with an abrasive and uncompromising quality that goes so far as to imply absence of any warm feeling toward Berowne. As the only black woman in the court, she wears her hair in a severe, close-cropped style and is no less severe in her attitude to the men.50
The critic for The Observer aso highlighted the isolation of Josette Simon’s Rosaline: “What she thinks of him we never find out, for … Simon plays her elegant and reserved, cold indeed, often at the edge of groups and sizing Berowne up with a wariness that argues an experience of pain unknown to the rest.”51
Similarly, in Terry Hands’ 1990 production, Carol Royle as the princess came across as defensive
against love. Her costuming with military overtones hinted at readiness for battle with the opposite sex. She was
cool and assured, wearing a gorgeous mauve dress with a huge hoop skirt, the bodice of the dress trimmed with military-looking stripes. Her parasol and her hoop always created space around her, making her virtually untouchable.… Only at the end did she seem both composed and gentle in her treatment of the King, but since the composure had always been present, there was no noticeable change when she heard about her father’s death.52
The very contrasting personality of Simon Russell Beale’s king left a credibility gap which again hampered the audience’s belief in the possibility of genuine emotion: “if a production wants … to suggest at last that there may be some hope in these relationships, its presenting of the king as a more or less unmitigated chump and the princess as an astute operator, coolly aware of the power of her femininity, left one wondering what she saw in him.”53 “Gender confrontation was followed through to the end of the evening where the women were clearly embarrassed and ashamed of the men’s vicious cynicism at the Pageant of the Nine Worthies, Simon Russell Beale’s King sharing the women’s distress.”54
In this production the artifice of the wooing rituals indicated that these immature men were in love with love rather than with the women as individuals. This interpretation was best demonstrated when the men went a-wooing in disguise but could not tell to which woman they were speaking:
The four lords court the four ladies first as Muscovites, in which guise they are mockingly dismissed, and later in their own persons. Their emotional immaturity and the fact that they are essentially still acting parts are communicated by the ridiculous comic disguise. In Hands’s production one was in a bear costume; in 1993 the men appeared as dancing Cossacks. They return to the game of courtship as themselves where Berowne is chastened into plain speech:
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