Love’s Labor’s Lost is a comedy, and contains many of Shakespeare’s signature comic techniques. On the formal level, Love’s Labor’s Lost embraces sharp wordplay, puns, and bawdy humor, all of which can be found across Shakespeare’s comic oeuvre. Here, as in other plays, Shakespearean tropes like disguises, one (or several) love stories, mistaken identities, and clever servants help shape and propel the plot.
However, the events of Love’s Labor’s Lost sit in tension with conventions of its genre. Shakespeare’s comedies usually follow the development of a love story that begins within the play. The characters meet, fall in love, have several misadventures, and marry at the end. Love’s Labor’s Lost is an exception to this rule. The play does not end with a marriage, but with a funeral. In a sudden shift of mood, the King of France dies offstage, and the Princess and her ladies must return. The Princess decides to take a year to mourn, and she makes Ferdinand promise to spend a year in a hermitage if he wishes to pursue her further. Ferdinand agrees, and all the other women extract similar promises from their respective suitors.
The subversion of genre expectation in Love's Labor's Lost reflects the personal journeys of the men and women in the play. Ferdinand, Dumaine, Longaville, and Berowne begin with certain expectations of love and women. Love is a waste of time, and women are easily led into and out of it. However, as each man falls in love, he discovers these preconceptions are unfair and untrue. The prince and his lords are overcome by their emotions, and they find value in love as they experience it. They are also outmaneuvered by the objects of their love, the French women.
For their part, the princess and her ladies similarly trivialize love, treating it as a game to be won. They also buy into certain stereotypes about men, and write off Ferdinand and his men as posturing or insincere. The play’s sudden ending forces these preconceptions especially to the fore, as the princess and her ladies must immediately leave the country. In the little time they have left with them, the men sincerely pledge their love to the women. This, in turn, forces the princess and her ladies to reconsider their contempt for the Spanish courtiers.
