Plot
The King of Navarre has vowed to avoid romantic entanglements in order to spend three years in study and contemplation. His chief courtiers agree to follow him in this vow, though one (Berowne) argues that they will not be able to fulfil this plan.
Berowne's claim is proven correct almost instantly. The Princess of France comes to Navarre to discuss the status of the province of Aquitaine. Though the King does not grant them access to his palace (they are forced to camp outside), each of the courtiers falls in love with one of her handmaidens, and the King falls in love with the Princess herself.
The men attempt to hide their own loves and expose those of their fellows. At the end, after a masked ball in which the pairs of lovers are comically mismatched, all the amours are revealed. However, before the expected nuptial consummation, the women demand that the men prove they are serious by waiting for them.
The comic underplot, in which Costard and others attempt to stage a play (rather like that of the rude mechanicals in A Midsummer Night's Dream, though with more pretensions to learning) is severely curtailed, as is the boasting of the Spaniard, Don Armado.
Read more about this topic: Love's Labour's Lost (2000 film)
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
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—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)