Shakespeare heavily leans on the motifs of eyes and sight to explore the themes of love and knowledge throughout Love’s Labor’s Lost. When Boyet suspects Ferdinand has fallen in love with the princess, he says that all of Ferdinand’s senses were “in his eye” when he saw her.
Likewise, Berowne says that the eyes of the French women have “infected” him and the other men with love. Berowne also references eyes when discussing study, saying that too much reading “blinds the eyesight” of the student and leaves him less learned than before. The motif of eyes and vision helps Shakespeare offer love and emotional attachment as an alternate, powerful form of knowledge, equal to book learning.
One important mention of eyes comes during Berowne’s speech in defense of love in Act 4, Scene 3:
But love, first learnèd in a lady’s eyes,
Lives not alone immurrèd in the brain,
But with the motion of all elements
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye.
A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.
Love, Berowne says, is first learned by gazing into a woman’s eyes. But it does not remain in the mind of the onlooker only. Love, he says, moves through all faculties of the lover and improves their function. Love gives the lover supernaturally good eyesight, superior even to an eagle’s. Berowne goes on to list a number of other senses or skills that are enhanced by love (hearing, writing, speech, etc.).
Eyes are presented as both the means and material of learning when it comes to love. Shakespeare plays with the tropes of love at first sight and love reflected or expressed through the eyes. Either idea could be behind Berowne’s meaning in the first line.
The knowledge imparted through the lover’s gaze, whether it is the discovery of a new love or confirmation of an existing one, is instant and potent. It affects every part of the lover and drives him to new feats of observation (improvements in sight and hearing) and creation (speech giving, poetry composition). All of these claims work to support Shakespeare’s portrayal of love as an intuitive, immediate form of knowledge and understanding with significant implications for the lives of those caught in it.
A number of promises are made and broken throughout Love’s Labor’s Lost. There is the initial vow made by Ferdinand and his courtiers to abstain from women for three years; the men make individual vows to wait for each of their fiancées for a year at the play’s end. Armado promises his fidelity to Jacquenetta, and each of the noblemen in disguise promise their love to the wrong women. Oaths and promises are a motif that Shakespeare uses to explore the ambiguity of language throughout the play.
After they disguise themselves as Russians, Ferdinand and his men each promise their love to the woman they believe is their beloved. However, the women are themselves disguised, so that the men cannot tell who is who. Later, the men come to declare their love again as themselves. The princess reveals that the women each pretended to be someone else, and that Ferdinand accidentally promised his love to Rosaline:
PRINCESS
[...] —Rosaline,
What did the Russian whisper in your ear?
ROSALINE
Madam, he swore that he did hold me dear
As precious eyesight, and did value me
Above this world, adding thereto moreover
That he would wed me, or die my lover.
PRINCESS
God give thee joy of him! The noble lord
Most honorably doth uphold his word.
At the princess’s prompting, Rosaline reveals that the prince swore that he loved her more than anything else in the world, and he promised to marry her or else die as her lover. The princess replies jokingly that the king must have forgotten his promise (since he has come to declare himself to the princess).
These oaths, not unlike the love letters at the beginning of the play, are delivered to the wrong women. Language that is meant to be a direct explanation of love and a frank promise of commitment can still be misunderstood and misinterpreted. Anytime a character tries to make any kind of oath or any serious expression of love in language, confusion and ambiguity ensue, raising questions about whether language ever is sufficient to express commitment or emotion.
