SOURCE: “Endgame in Love's Labour's Lost,” in Anglia, Vol. 103, No. 1/2, 1985, pp. 48-70.

In the essay below, Beiner studies the disruption of comic form, and Shakespeare's refusal to provide a comic resolution, in Love's Labour's Lost.

“Not because I was ignorant of the precepts” 

Lope de Vega

Isn't that your mission […] to give life to fantastic characters on the stage?” 

Six Characters in Search of an Author

I

It is a characteristic feature of Shakespearean comedy to foreground artifice: to emphasize the use and creative expansion of literary material, conventions, and devices. However alive the characters may seem to be, however vital the issues which are clarified to the audience through release in the play, however creative and innovative a comedy may be, there is always ample and deliberate emphasis upon the artefact. This is not a mark of apprentice work. There are differences in the relative achievement of...