Love's Labour's Won - Theories and Evidence

Theories and Evidence

The first mention of the play occurs in Francis Meres Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598) in which he lists a dozen Shakespeare plays. His list of Shakespearean comedies reads:

"for Comedy, witnes his Getleme of Verona, his Errors, his Love's labors lost, his Love's labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, & his Merchant of Venice".

Shakespeare scholars have several theories about the play. The first is 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, Longaville, and Dumain, whose marriages were delayed at the end of Love's Labour's Lost. In the final moments of Love's Labour's Lost the weddings that customarily close Shakespeare's comedies are unexpectedly deferred for a year without any obvious purpose for the plot, which would allow for the events of a sequel.

Another longtime theory held that Love's Labour's Won was an alternative name for The Taming of the Shrew, which had been written several years earlier and is noticeably missing from Meres' list. However, in 1953, one Solomon Pottesman, a London based antiquarian book dealer and collector, discovered the August 1603 book list of the stationer Christopher Hunt, which lists as printed in quarto:

"marchant of vennis, taming of a shrew, ... loves labor lost, loves labor won."

The find provided evidence that the play might be a unique work that had been published but lost and not an early title of The Taming of the Shrew.

Yet another possibility is that the name 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. For example, Henry Woudhuysen's Arden edition (Third Series) of Love's Labour's Lost lists a number of striking similarities between the two plays. However, Much Ado about Nothing is also listed under another alternative title, Bendick and Beatrice, in several book seller's catalogues, and it is unlikely that it would have been known by two alternative titles.

Leslie Hotson speculated that Love's Labour's Won was the former title of Troilus and Cressida, pointing out that Troilus and Cressida did not appear in Palladis Tamia, a view that has been criticised by Kenneth Palmer for requiring a "forced interpretation of the play". In addition, the play is generally considered to have been written c. 1602.