In “Where is Love’s Labor’s Lost?” I tried to prepare for this discussion by pointing out some features of Love’s Labor’s Lost:

1. In the story the Princess of France, accompanied by Rosaline and two other ladies, calls on the King of Navarre and his three lords to settle their dispute about ownership of Aquitaine. Berowne cites the impending visit as a reason that the edict against speaking to women cannot be obeyed:

   BEROWNE (reads) “Item: If any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the court can possibly devise.” This article, my liege, yourself must break; For well you know here comes in embassy The French king’s daughter, with yourself to speak — A mild of grace and complete majesty — About surrender up of Aquitaine . . . (I.1.128-35)

2. The setting of the play is French Navarre, but the setting shares characteristics with the Garden of Eden. There are many references to apples. Holofernes mentions two apples in describing the shooting of a deer by the Princess:

   HOLOFERNES The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth. (IV.2.3-6)

   Crab is an apple we will hear of again in the song (“roasted crabs”) and pomewater is an obsolete word for an apple, according to the OED. Costard’s name means a kind of apple. Since Berowne has to be somewhere high up to spy on the other lords, why should he not be in a tree, and an apple tree at that? Now that we have an apple tree as part of the set, it becomes possible for Jaquenetta to pick an apple from this chimerical tree and give it to Armado in their only scene together, thereby reenacting that disastrous transaction in the Bible.

3. The time scheme of the play is impossible. For the Princess, the play takes up two days, but during the same time, Jaquenetta becomes two months pregnant. Presumably time meant nothing to us in Eden.

4. The lords woo the ladies by writing for them sonnets, three of which are obviously flawed. Berowne’s sonnet is in alexandrines, not iambic pentameter, and the last line can’t be made to scan, even in alexandrines (although a lot of ingenuity has been expended in attempts): “That sings heaven’s praise with such an earthly tongue” (IV.2.114)^[7]

   The King’s sonnet has not one but two concluding couplets:

   But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep My tears for glasses, and still make me weep. O queen of queens! how far dost thou excel No thought can think nor tongue of mortal tell. (IV.3.36-9)

   Dumain’s poem has nothing in common with a sonnet and might be described uncharitably as doggerel.

5. At the end of the play four men propose to four women for marriage and are refused. Each woman sends her suitor away for a year and imposes on him a task, and perhaps gives her lord a glove as a token. It is hard to imagine any other reason for Shakespeare to specify that Rosaline be wearing gloves in the last scene:

   BEROWNE I do forswear them; and I here protest, By this white glove — how white the hand, God knows! — (V.2.410-11)

   Likewise Katharine is probably wearing the fancy gloves that Dumain sent her, and from these two instances we may surmise that gloves are the dress code for the final scene, since it would look very strange for the Princess to be barehanded when two of her ladies are gloved. It follows from this desperately twisted reasoning that the Princess (by now the Queen of France) has to remove a glove so that she and he can touch barehanded when she swears her oath to the King:

   PRINCESS Then, at the expiration of the year, Come, challenge me, challenge me by these deserts, And, by this virgin palm — now kissing thine — 798 I will be thine; and, till that instant, shut My woeful self up in a mournful house, 800 Raining the tears of lamentation For the remembrance of my father’s death. If this thou do deny, let our hands part, Neither intitled in the other’s heart. KING If this, or more than this, I would deny, 805 To flatter up these powers of mine with rest, The sudden hand of death close up mine eye! Hence hermit then, my heart is in thy breast. (V.2.796-808)

6. At the end of the play the season changes abruptly from spring to winter, as the song describes, moving suddenly from the depiction of spring “When daisies pied” to the chill of winter, “When icicles hang by the wall.” The four unhappy couples are sent away by Armado, brandishing the sword that he wore as Hector.