SOURCE: “The Double Figure of Elizabeth in Love's Labor's Lost,” in Essays in Literature, Vol. 19, No. 2, Fall, 1992, pp. 173-92.

In the following essay, Hunt studies the ways in which the figure of Queen Elizabeth, as both a nurturing and threatening female, informs the characterization of the Princess of France in Love's Labour's Lost.

The shadow of Queen Elizabeth has long haunted the woodland park setting of Love's Labor's Lost. In the words of F. P. Wilson, “much of the action [of the play] is based on entertainments which Elizabeth was offered while on progress: pageants; hunting the deer—the Queen observing the hunt from a stand specially built for her; dramatic shows sometimes performed seriously by country people and organized by the local schoolmaster, sometimes a burlesquing of rural life and character and presented to the Queen out of doors in the park adjoining her host's house or...