SOURCE: “Oath-Taking: Love's Labour's Lost,” in Wooing, Wedding, and Power: Women in Shakespeare's Plays, Columbia University Press, 1981, pp. 9-30.

In the essay below, Dash examines the oaths made by male characters in Love's Labour's Lost, relating these to the representation of honesty and of women in the play.

“A time methinks too short To make a world-without-end bargain in.” 

(V.ii.788-89)

In Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare employs oaths to reveal how men and women characters perceive the meaning of truth and honesty. During the play, oaths increase in seriousness, progressing from the extravagantly humorous pledge of Act I when the King of Navarre and his men swear not to see women for three years; to the more moderate vow of Act IV, when the gallants plan to woo and win “these girls of France”; to the proposals of marriage of the last scene. Women constitute the subject...