A less important element in the formation of the plot is the allusion to current French politics which the situation of the characters of the Play suggests.

A King of Navarre and a Princess of France conferring in treaty over a disputed province and a claim of allowance for services rendered is an incident constituting a reference to a state of things in France then closely concerning England.  The succession to the throne of France of Henry of Navarre, the champion of the Huguenots of France, was long contested.  England was friendly to Navarre, the object of her foreign policy being to counterpoise the power of Spain and the Catholics of France, with whom Queen Elizabeth’s most formidable rival, Mary Stuart, was allied in interest.

No king of Navarre was ever named Ferdinand.  Yet by making an entirely fictitious hero a king of Navarre and the suitor of a princess of France, the relationship of Henry of Navarre to dominance in France was suggested in an unobjectionable and amusing way.  And the death of the King of France introduced at the close of the Play, involving the prospect as a probability that the hero might then succeed to the throne of France, could scarcely fail to remind Shakespeare’s audience of the actual struggle of the King of Navarre for the French crown, and also of the fact that on the death of the French King in August, 1589, Navarre then became heir presumptive, and after the battle of Ivry in 1590 Spain delayed but could not long obstruct his complete success.

In 1593 the most important cities of the Kingdom yielded him allegiance and in the Spring of 1594 Paris herself opened her gates to him.  These dates 1589-1594 indicate the time, also, when “Love’s Labour’s Lost” is likely to have been timely in these references, and yield a clew to its date of composition.

The effect of these allusions to French political affairs, made more piquant by the downfall of Spain in her political opposition both to England and the party of Henry of Navarre, was intensified in Shakespeare’s Play by the names given to Navarre’s lords. Berowne, as the name appears in the Folio, is an English spelling of the French name Biron, to which it is changed in modernized editions of Shakespeare. Longavill is an English equivalent of Longueville, and Dumaine or Dumane of De Mayenne, names which also are changed in the modernized editions, although not consistently.  All these names are associated with Navarre’s struggles in France.  The Marechal de Biron and the Duc de Longueville fought prominently on Navarre’s side.  The Duc de Mayenne, brother of Henry of Guise, fought on the opposite side.  The Duc d’Alencon long a suitor for the hand of Queen Elizabeth, is mentioned as the father of Rosaline.

Another veiled reference to a Russian suitor of the Queen’s seems to be made in the incident introduced in the last Act.  This scene of the wooing of the King and his lords when disguised as Russians makes fun, perhaps, of an actual embassy of Russians to the Court of Elizabeth, in 1583, when the Queen had arranged to put upon Lady Mary Hastings the suit which the Czar Ivan had originally hoped to proffer to the Queen herself. (For information upon these and other incidents of the period that may be used in the plot see Sources, pp. 106-116 also Notes in the “First Folio Edition” of this Play).