SOURCE: Kerrigan, John, ed. Introduction to William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, by William Shakespeare, pp. 7-36. New York: Penguin Books, 1982.

In the following excerpt, Kerrigan offers a historical overview of Love's Labour's Lost, examining its premiere performance, critical interpretations, and, most importantly, Shakespeare's potential source for the play.

Love's Labour's Lost has finally come into its own. After more than three centuries of neglect, it stands today among those Shakespeare plays which can be guaranteed to fill houses, thrill audiences, and—most difficult of all—please actors. Ironically, the play is now popular for precisely those qualities which previously kept it from favour. It has no towering central role, no Hamlet or Falstaff, and in the days of Garrick and the Victorian actor-managers, when audiences demanded star actors playing star parts, this made it theatrically unattractive. Now audiences are prepared to respect the play's sociability, its breadth, its...