SOURCE: “Love's Labour's Lost: Language and the Deferral of Desire,” in Literature and Psychology, Vol. 35, No. 3, 1989, pp. 1-21.

In the following essay, Asp demonstrates the way in which the women in the play invite the men to come to terms with human loss, and to temper this loss through both compassion and the “proper” use of language, that is, language focused on others rather than on the self.

Love's Labour Lost is unique among Shakespeare's comedies in that its conclusion falls short of the conventional comic ending: marriage. Even Berowne, the hero, comments on its oddity: “Our wooing doth not end like an old play; / Jack hath not Jill” (V.ii.864-65), locating the play's generic defect in deferral of desire.¹ Since he blames the ladies for a lack of “courtesy” which “might well have made our sport a comedy” (V.ii.874), he is the first of many...