SOURCE: “Love's Labour's Lost and the Nature of Comedy,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. XIII, No. 1, Winter, 1962, pp. 31-40.

In the essay below, Hoy argues that Love's Labour's Lost reveals the function of comedy as a means of discerning human infirmity and incongruity.

Love's Labour's Lost, says M. C. Bradbrook, “is as near as Shakespeare ever came to writing satire”;¹ and what, in addition to fine manners, pedantry, and the disguises of love, is being satirized in it is, I would suggest, the infirmity of human purpose. Its fable, which turns on vows sworn and then forsworn under the pressure of circumstance and necessity working hand in hand, is the sufficient proof of this. The treatment of the fable is dry, elegant, and highly mannered, and this is as it should be. In the terms which the play sets up, an artificial style is the only appropriate means of...