LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST
Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)
Stratford-on-Avon
Director Christopher Luscombe
Until March 14, 2015
The RSC’s new season at Stratford includes two Shakespeare plays with a World War I setting.
Love’s Labours Lost (LLL) is set in Edwardian Warwickshire just before the outbreak of war. The costumes, scenery and music do Shakespeare full justice. Those who consider LLL to be from one of the bard’s bad writing days will change their mind if they see this production. It is an enchanting and thought-provoking theatrical experience.
Love’s Labours Lost is unusual because of the unresolved nature of its ending. It concerns a group of high-born young men who decide to devote themselves to study. They set themselves an academic timetable like no other, which includes long hours in their books, periods of fasting, and absolutely no contact with women. It is a silly adolescent vow and it doesn’t take them long to regret making it once they have set eyes on the four young women who form an inconveniently timed official delegation from France. The comedy lies in them each trying to get out of the vow and each trying to hide his infatuation from his three compatriots. The fact is that men cannot live without women and some exquisite poetry, as only Shakespeare can do, celebrates this fact in the play.
The men wriggle out of their vow and commence their courtships, initially under subterfuge. Since they previously were so rude as not even to receive the women into the house, this courtship is not taken seriously by the women. A parallel storyline with local yokels involves a similar muddle.
The problem for the women is that a man who has broken his vow once may break it again, so although each lad gets his lass, the women set a probation period of one year for the men to prove their constancy.
Darker turn
It is at this point that the play takes a darker turn. The princess of France receives news of the death of her father. Death casts its shadow over our brightest moments There are declarations of faithfulness but the women leave and during that absence war is declared. Again human love and the most sincere declarations of faithfulness are seen as limited. This is what brings the loss to all of love’s labours. A profound silence enveloped the theatre as after the songs of avowed fidelity the four young men appear in WWI officers’ dress and then march off. Who knows whether they will return?
There is only one love that is stronger than death.
