SOURCE: “Navarre's World of Words,” in Comic Transformations in Shakespeare, Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1980, pp. 69-95.

In the essay below, Nevo contends that the transformative power of language is central to Love's Labour's Lost. She examines the significance of the play's ending, seeing the work as transitional among the comedies.

‘The distinctive human problem’, says Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death, ‘has been the need to spiritualize human life, to lift it onto a special immortal plane, beyond the cycles of life and death that characterize all other organisms.’¹ His words would have been heartily endorsed by Shakespeare's King of Navarre. But Navarre and his bookmen are not content with declarative statements of general import. ‘Our late edict shall strongly stand in force’, says the King. ‘Navarre shall be the wonder of the world; / Our court shall be a little academe, / Still and contemplative in living art’ (I...