Love's Labour's Won
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Love's Labour's Won, alternatively written Love's labour's wonne, is the name of a play written by William Shakespeare before 1598. However, it is not known if this play has been lost, or if the title is an alternate name for a known play.
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[edit] Evidence
In Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598), he lists several of Shakespeare's plays. His list of comedies reads as follows:
- "for Comedy, witnes his Gẽtlemẽ of Verona, his Errors, his Love labours lost, his Love labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, & his Merchant of Venice
This tells us that Love's Labour's Won was a comedy and that it was not one of the other plays listed.
For many years, it was assumed that Love's Labour's Won was an alternative name for The Taming of the Shrew. However, in 1953, Pottesman discovered the August 1603 booklist of the stationer Christopher Hunt, which lists as printed in quarto:
- "Marchant Of Vennis[sic], Taming Of A Shrew, Loves Labor Lost, Loves Labor Won."
[edit] Theories
Many scholars now believe that Love's Labour's Won may have been a lost sequel to Love's Labour's Lost, depicting the further adventures of The King of Navarre, Berowne, Longville, and Dumaine, whose marriages were delayed at the end of Love's Labour's Lost.
The alternative is that it is an alternative title for another Shakespearean comedy not listed by Meres or Hunt. Much Ado About Nothing, commonly believed to be written around 1598, is often suggested. All's Well That Ends Well has also been suggested; Henry Woodhuysen's Arden edition of Love's Labour's Lost points out a number of striking similarities between the two plays. However, All's Well is normally dated after 1600, and hence after Meres wrote his list.
[edit] Modern version
- In Fall 2005, a play by Dorothy Louise titled Love's Labour's Wonne debuted at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. It is based on the following premise:
- "At the end of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, news of the death of the Princess's father halts four couples on the road to matrimony. Everything stops, including the entertainment prepared for the festivities, as the Princess prepares to return home. The couples agree to meet again in a year and a day and disperse to a song of spring and winter. The play implies a sequel, and apparently there was one, of which only the title, Love's Labour's Wonne, has survived — at least, so far." [1]
- There is also a play of the title Love Labours Won by Ryan J-W Smith. It premiered at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and transferred to London's West End shortly after. However, it is not related in any way to Love's Labour's Lost.
[edit] Popular culture
The play is featured in "The Shakespeare Code", an episode of the sci-fi drama Doctor Who first broadcast on 7 April 2007. This version is shown to have been lost because hidden inside it was a code that would free an army of alien war-mongers from their prison if recited under certain conditions. However, the episode is historically inaccurate, as it is set in 1599, after Love's Labour's Won should already have been completed.
[edit] References
- Baldwin, T.W. Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Won: New Evidence from the Account Books of an Elizabethan Bookseller. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1957.
