SOURCE: "'Jack Hath Not Jill': Failed Courtship in Lyly and Shakespeare," in Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 42, 1996, pp. 1-13.

[Here, Bevington compares Love's Labour's Lost to Lyly 's Sappho and Phao, maintaining that the play's contradictory portrayal of women—as objects of lust

Act V, scene ii. Princess, Boyet, and Ladies. Frontispiece to the Hanmer edition by Francis Hayman (¡744).

I begin with two perceptions: first, the observation of Robert Y. Turner that English comedy did not really find a successful way to dramatize love in any psychological sense before Lyly began his career as a playwright, and second, that of Alfred Harbage and others that Love's Labour's Lost is the most Lylyan of Shakespeare's plays.¹ The Lyly play that immediately invites attention in this regard is Sappho and Phao, written in 1584, since, like Shakespeare's Love's...