Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

In this final part of the volume, then, the plays that remain will be placed in the order in which (it is thought) Shakespeare wrote them.

And of these Love's Labor's Lost is possibly the earliest. Along with The Comedy of Errors it has sometimes been dated as early as 1588, though dates as late as 1593 are possible.

The play doesn't seem to have been intended for wide public popularity, and may have been written for private performance. One possibility is that it was intended for a celebration at the home of the Earl of Southampton (see page I-3). If so, the play must have been an astounding success, for Southampton then became Shakespeare's generous patron.

If Love's Labor's Lost were indeed written primarily for the entertainment of a coterie of men interested in art, that would explain the over-elaboration of much of the style. The play was a satire on pedantry, and its complicated verbiage and intrusive Latinity would appeal to the sense of humor of the educated. Both the elaborateness and the Latinity have tended to diminish the popularity of the play considerably in later times.

The play opens with a King and his three companions on stage. The King is announcing his decision to retire for three years (along with his companions) to a sober and austere study of philosophy. He is very optimistic about the effect this will have, for he says:

—Act I, scene i, lines 12-13

The speaker is, according to the cast of characters, Ferdinand, King of Navarre.

Navarre does not exist as an independent kingdom on our maps today (or on the maps of Shakespeare's time, for that matter), and most people would be at a loss to point out where it might ever have existed. It is not a mythical land, however; it is no Ruritania. It once did exist indeed, and in medieval times it constituted a sizable region about the western end of the Pyrenees. Mostly, it lay to the south and west of that range in what is now north-central Spain, but some of its territory lay to the north in what is now southwestern France.

Through the Middle Ages, it maintained an increasingly precarious independence between France on the north and the growing strength of the other Christian kingdoms of the Spanish peninsula. In 1474 Aragon and Castile (the two most important of those kingdoms) were bound together when Ferdinand, Crown Prince of Aragon, married Isabella, Queen of Castile. In 1479 Ferdinand succeeded to the crown of Aragon, and under the united rule of himself and Isabella, modern Spain was formed. (The two monarchs were the parents of Catherine, the ill-fated first wife of Henry VIII, see page II-754.)

Navarre could not stand against the union of the kingdoms. The portion of Navarre south of the Pyrenees was occupied by Ferdinand in 1512 and made an integral part of the Spanish crown in 1515.

The part of the kingdom north of the Pyrenees was under the rule of Catherine de Foix, who married Jean d'Albret (a descendant of the Constable of France, who had died at the Battle of Agincourt, see page II-475). Jean d'Albret called himself King of Navarre and his son succeeded to the title, as Henry II of Navarre, in 1517, when his mother died.

Naturally, Ferdinand of Spam claimed the rule of all Navarre, but in order to establish that claim he would have had to fight France, which held the actual control of northern Navarre. This Ferdinand never tried to do, and Henry II remained titular King of Navarre. That is, he had the title but no more; in actual fact, he was merely a French nobleman and had none of the power of an independent monarch.

Henry II married Margaret (or Marguerite, in the French spelling), who was sister to King Francis I (see page II-747). She is consequently known in history books as Margaret of Navarre, and it was she who, before this marriage, had been thought of by Wolsey as a possible second wife for Henry VIII (see page II-69).

Henry had a daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, who was Queen of Navarre from 1562 to 1572. Her son was another Henry, who in 1572 became Henry III of Navarre, but is known to history simply as Henry of Navarre because, first, he was by far the most important ruler Navarre ever had, and second, because in his time the King of France was also Henry III and to use the same Roman numeral for both would lead to confusion.

Through his father, Henry of Navarre was a member of the family of Bourbon, which, through a solid line of male ancestors, was descended from a younger son of King Louis IX (see page II-457) who had died in 1270. Now, three centuries later, only one male descendant remained of the older lines and he was Henry III of France, who became king in 1574. If Henry III died without surviving sons (and he was a homosexual who never had children), Henry IV (who was thoroughly and spectacularly heterosexual) was the next in line to the throne.

This would not ordinarily have made much of a stir except that France had been involved in a religious civil war for a dozen years, one in which a sizable and militant Protestant minority was stanchly withstanding the Catholic majority. As it happened, Henry of Navarre was a Protestant and, in view of his position as prospective heir to the throne, the leader of the Protestant faction. There were many Frenchmen, on the other hand, determined that no Protestant should ever be King of France, regardless of his descent.

This standoff was the situation when Love's Labor's Lost was written. England, as it happened, had just defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, and had heroically foiled a vast Spanish-Catholic attempt to subvert the Protestant character of the island kingdom. England was consequently all on fire with the picture of itself as the Protestant David hacking down the great Catholic Goliath of Spain. Since Spain was the chief support of the French Catholics against the possible succession of Henry of Navarre, there was much warmth and admiration for Henry in England.

It would be natural, then, for Shakespeare to write a play in which the King of Navarre was a hero and in which he was presented in the most favorable light. In order to make the situation not too pointed and topical, it was inadvisable to use the name "Henry," so he used "Ferdinand" instead. This was a favorite name during the Italian Renaissance and might have been inspired by the fact that Ferdinand II of Spain had taken over southern Navarre.

In early 1589 Henry III of France was assassinated by a fanatic monk who felt the King wasn't Catholic enough, and Henry of Navarre succeeded to the throne as Henry IV of France. Unfortunately for the new king, the title he gained was not accepted by the Catholic party and he remained king only over his own minority. The Catholics controlled much of France, including the all-important city of Paris, and the civil war grew fiercer. Henry IV was a good general and won important victories, but against the sheer weight of Catholic intransigence he could not prevail.

In 1591 the Earl of Essex, the great friend of Southampton and Shakespeare, even led an army in support of Henry of Navarre, but Essex was a poor soldier and failed in this, as in all his military efforts (see page II-508).

Finally, in 1593, Henry of Navarre, with a sigh and a shrug, agreed to turn Catholic. Then, and only then, did Paris accept him. Henry entered the capital, was hailed as king, was eventually crowned, and became Henry IV in truth. ("Paris is worth a mass," said Henry.)

Of course, this made him a traitor to the Protestant cause and Englishmen must have reflected sardonically over the proverbial (to them) faithlessness of the French nature. It is doubtful if Love's Labor's Lost could possibly have been written in its present form after 1593, for that reason.