Love’s Labour’s Lost
The Stratford Festival
The National Post

Not only is Love's Labour's Lost the first great romantic comedy in the English language, it is also the first great anti-romantic comedy. Four young men vow to dedicate themselves to three years of celibate study and, of course, are immediately derailed by the appearance of four young women. Then when, after the customary ration of advances and rebuffs, all seems set fair for a quadruple wedding, Death steps in and checkmates the revels.

At the height of the play's mirth, the Princess of France, who is on an embassy to the King of Navarre, receives news that her father has died. Courtship is put on hold. The Princess and her three ladies tell the King and his three lords that, if they wish, they may resume their suits in a year and a day, the interim to be spent on reflection and good works. It doesn't seem that long, but it is, as Berowne, the joker in the king's pack and the comedy's central character, pointedly remarks, "too long for a play." This, one of Shakespeare's earliest Elizabethan dramas, is only just beginning, and already it's deconstructing itself.

The end of this play is moving, in a unique fashion. Obviously we shed no personal tears for the late King of France; we have never met him, barely heard of him. What hits us so hard is the fact of mortality and, especially, its intrusion in a comic context. It casts doubt -- sober, uncynical doubt -- on all happy endings, including those in Shakespeare's other comedies. When the messenger arrives, Navarre's local inhabitants have been presenting a farcical pageant of the Nine Worthies. "Worthies, away," says Berowne, virtually cueing the lights, "the scene begins to cloud." It's magnificently self-conscious writing, absolutely sure of its effect.

Love's Labour's Lost is a pastoral, a form in which little happens but in which behaviour and language stand out in the sharpest relief in what the poet Marvell called "a green shade." The setting is soothing, the mood astringent. Much of the dialogue is wordplay: characters scoring off one another, misunderstanding one another. This poeticizing and logic-chopping are among the bad habits of which the women hope to cure the men by imposing their 12 months' penance. Shakespeare is satirizing his more self-indulgent contemporaries, but is also having a grand time beating them at their own game. In theory, the play is full of hopelessly obscure jokes; in practice, they are beautifully built up and always relate to the people making them. I don't think I have ever seen a bad production of Love's Labour's, and I don't remember hearing or reading of many. The play is magic.

Antoni Cimolino's Stratford production, if not among the greats, offers a good measure of delight. Santo Loquasto has set it (discreetly) and costumed it (richly) in the French modes of the late 18th century; the women's white dresses in the last scene knock your eyes out. Graham Abbey, perhaps influenced by the director's idea that the men lack "social graces," makes a surprisingly surly Berowne; his great speech of self- discovery ("and I, forsooth, in love") is played for anger, rather than for the overflowing joyousness of being carried away against one's will. It's a matter of opinion, but I know which interpretation I prefer. Still, he has no trouble controlling either the play or his fellow students, especially in the great scene in which each in turn is unveiled as an apostate. Shane Carty takes the now conventional gauche view of the King, and successfully runs, or shambles, with it. Dana Green's Princess forces her merriment but is charming when serious; Michelle Giroux is suitably metallic as Rosaline, Berowne's dark lady; and the minor lords (Stephen Gartner, Caleb Marshall) and ladies (Sarah McVie, Deborah Hay) get more definition than usual. There are useful contributions from James Blendick in the major role of the Princess's chamberlain and Les Carlson in the very minor one of her forester.

The courtiers' compulsive chattering is echoed in their rustic dependents. Brian Bedford gives a lovely account of Don Armado, lost in dusty dreams of grandeur, peering with mystified gentleness at everything that pertains to the real world and especially at the country wench, Jaquenetta, Dulcinea to his Quixote. His page Moth (Jacob James) is both too tall and too old for his role, but so quick and responsive that we can let it pass. This central comic trio is wonderfully completed by Jonathan Goad, an entrancingly light-handed and full-blooded Costard. The pedants (Brian Tree and Barry MacGregor) are adequate, which is another way of saying disappointing. “The Worthies show” falls flat, partly for this reason. It's character comedy, and it can't work unless all the characters have been established. It's played here for slapstick, as if it were “Pyramus and Thisbe”. These amateur actors trip themselves up; the production doesn't have to do it to them. This faltering in the comedy robs the last-minute tragedy of its full impact. But this is still my favourite play, and it's here in much of its glory.