SOURCE: Maus, Katharine Eisaman. “Transfer of Title in Love's Labor's Lost: Language, Individualism, Gender.” In Shakespeare Left and Right, edited by Ivo Kamps, pp. 205-23. New York: Routledge, 1991.

In the following essay, Maus offer a feminist critique of Love's Labour's Lost in which she explores the connection between the play's language and its theme of sexual politics.

Influential feminist critics of Shakespeare have rarely dealt with Shakespeare's early, linguistically extravagant work.¹ Most have confined themselves to discussing Kate's capitulation scene in The Taming of the Shrew, or to tracing in the first years of Shakespeare's career basic plot or image patterns that recur in what is often considered the “mature” oeuvre. Understandably, feminists have preferred to concentrate upon the later comedies, the histories, the tragedies, and some of the romances. Proponents of a new critical discourse can most efficiently demonstrate the power of their approach by influencing the...