The tone of the play is witty and ironic. The dialogue is quick and witty, with a number of scenes devoted to battles of wits between friends, enemies, and lovers. Mote and Armado argue jokingly about love. Rosaline and Katherine tease one another relentlessly. Dumaine, Longaville, and Ferdinand mock Berowne’s crush on Rosaline, and so on.
The play also satirizes ideals of love, manhood, and academia. The nobles write overblown, florid love letters; Holofernes and Nathaniel debate the nuances of spelling; and the pageant of “great men” at the play’s end devolves into a fist fight. The majority of lines are given to characters like Berowne, Rosaline, and the French princess, all of whom dominate others with their sense of humor and mastery of language.
The play’s lighthearted mood, combined with Shakespeare’s use of situational, verbal, and dramatic irony, construct a clever, amusing tone throughout. Irony demonstrates how men and women do not live up to the expectations set by gender norms and how love confounds easy categorization. The clearest example of this comes in the “Russian ambassador” scene, in which the noblemen expect the women to be fooled by their ruse and charmed by their attentions. In reality, the women guess the truth easily and undercut their plan by concealing their identities. The French women display more intelligence and humor than the men anticipate, and this creates a comedic effect.
The very title of the play carries irony within it. As has been previously mentioned, the title Love’s Labor’s Lost comes from a line in the linguist John Florio’s writing (“It is labor lost to speak of love”). Taken in this context, the title carries with it the implication that the play itself is “lost labor,” useless work, as love itself eludes description.
However, the existence of the play suggests that though the task of talking about love may be difficult or impossible, it is not futile. Love’s Labor’s Lost doesn’t take itself too seriously. Its quick-witted, lively spirit suggests that though the questions it tackles may be unanswerable or impossible, the people living those questions can at least approach them with humor and honesty.
