The San Francisco call., 1899-10-19

his courtiers, in the disguise of Musco-
vites, visit the Princess and her ladies the
Princess and her ladies also disguise
themselves. The result is that every one
Of the four gentlemen makes love to the
wrong lady.
When subsequently the gentlemen visit
the ladies in their proper guise and again
declare their loves the ladies mercilessIy
laugh at them for their former blunders
In the end, however, the lovers are all
accepted, but only on condition of each
doing years penance, as, for example,
retreating
To some folorn and naked hermitage
this not only because of the broken oaths
but also to show that their love is lasting.
sS9s HtRsad bidb the play before reading any Of the
tions, as published in The Call on Monday.
A Neglected Comedy.
Loves Labor's Lost is perhaps the
least read of Shakespeare's comedies; and
for this neglect it is easy to assign
reason The play, probably Shakespeares s
first attempt in independent dramatic
composition, IS, on the surface at least,
of quite different character from his
other comedies. While these deal with
the lasting attributes of human nature
and find their humor in the perennially
ridiculous aspects Of mems character
Loves Labor's Lost" is a satiric fling at
contemporary follies and provokes laugh
ter by its caricatures of figures and
fashions we'll known to its first hearers,
but as forgotten to the average reader of
to-day as the heroes who lived before
Agamemnon. Just as Patience" some
years back swept over England and
America in a peal of merry mockfng
laughter, but has already passed away
into the dark backward and abysm of
time, SO this play of Shakespeares, which
once set the pit of the Blackfriars theater
roaring and sweetly commended itself to
the fancy of good Queen Bess and the
learning of wise King James, is now to
all intents dead past hope of resurrection
from the shelves of the library to the
boards of the stage. The allusions to the
fantastic Monarcho, to the dancing horse,
to the last fashionable ucentious poem,
all ring hollow to-day, and when Shakes
peare's merry gentlemen belabor the long
forgotten fashion Of pedantic and affected
speech the reader is inclined to cry with
Armada: 1.-The sweet war man is dead
and rotten; sweet chuckS, beat not the
bones of the dead.
And yet for the student of Shakespeare
Loves Labor's Lost" has peculiar in
terest. 1t was the special favorite of the
young Goethe and his circle of Shakes
peare worshipers at Strasburg. Schlegel
the great champion of the romantic
school in Germany, spoke of it as model
comedy of the finest wit and the most
delightful mirth. Nor has 1t been without
honor in his own country. Coleridge says:
IF this Juvenile drama had been the only
one extant of our Shakespeare, and we
possessed the tradition only of his ripper
works, how many of Shakespeare's char
acteristic features might we not still have
discovered, though as in portrait of him
taken in his boyhood.' Charles Lamb
loved it as the comedy of leisure, most
nonsense, best sense; and Pater has de-
voted to it one of the most charming or
his charming appreciations.
History of the Play.
All critics agree that Loves Labors
Lost is one of the earliest of Shakes
peare's plays, and some of the highest
authorities rank it as his first independ-
ent work General consent puts the date
of its composition somewhere between 1889
and 1892 We need not trouble ourselves
about the exact year. When we know
that we have in Loves Labor's Lost
one of the earliest if not the very first of
Shakespeare's creations in the field of
poetic comedy we know enough.
The statement that it is one of his
earliest creations applies, however, only
to the first draft of Loves Labor's Lost"
and not to the drama as 1t lies before US
to-day. On the title page of the first
edition, quarto, published in 1885, we
read: -
Conceited Comedie
Called
Loves labors lost.
AS It was presented before her Hghnes
this last Christmas.
Newly corrected and augmented
by w. Shakespeare"
"Newly corrected and augmented"-for
when her gracious majesty deigned to
cast the radiant beams of her favor upon
the young dramatist, whose wit, pathos
and sentiment were packing the play
houses in the suburbs, and commanded
a performance of his popular dramatic
satire. for the entertainment of her court
on Christmas day, it was not for him to
present it in its first rough form. 1t must
be retouched and decked out with such
ornament of ringing verse as the author
of Romeo and Juliet" and THE Mer-
chant of Venice" had at his command
1t is not hard to discover some of the