SOURCE: “Love's Labour's Lost: The Grace of Society,” in The Vulnerable Text: Essays on Renaissance Literature, Columbia University Press, 1986, pp. 140-58.

In the essay below, originally published in 1971, Greene assesses Love's Labour's Lost in terms of its concern with society, noting that the play lacks both a locus of political authority and a reliable representative of the citizenry. Greene contends that while the play does not portray a “living society,” it comments on the appropriate conduct of the citizens, and on the roles of entertainment, love, wit, and civility within society.

The qualities of Love's Labour's Lost determine its limitations. The arabesques of wit, the elaborations of courtly artifice, the coolness of tone—these sources of its charm contribute to that brittleness and thinness and faded superficiality for which some critics of several generations have reproached it. For its admirers, a heavy stress upon these limitations is likely...