Episode 18 - Love's Labour's Lost

Explicit content warning

12/31/19 • 59 min

It is the humble opinion of your hosts that Shakespeare starts coming into his own as a truly innovative playwright in Love's Labour's Lost. Up until this point, the plays have been fairly straightforward in presentation, structure, and subject matter; in LLL, all of that is played with, to great effect. Starting with this play, Shakespeare starts showing the sense of playfulness as a writer, experimenting with his craft, that marks some of the great works that follow.

A conventional love story on the surface--four noble men fall in love with four noble women; hilarity ensues--bucks the trends of comedy (there's no marriage at the end) and comments on its own production ("That's too long for a play") and does so with tremendous flair and wit that Shakespeare is well-known for today, but which must have been terrifically fresh when the play was first written and performed in the middle-1590s.
Join us as we chat about the fun themes presented in this innovative play!
Marriage Counselling

In today's bickering session, we debate the question of whether or not Love's Labour's Lost is a comedy or... something else?

Other Notes

The 2000 Kenneth Branagh film has been pretty thoroughly scrubbed from the internet, but we did locate a German trailer for the dub of the film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53hDoUMvZhk

As well as this audio from the original trailer, mixed up with a webseries that seems loosely based on the same events as the play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVuR945tOqk&feature=emb_logo

In today's bickering session, we debate the question of whether or not Love's Labour's Lost is a comedy or... something else?

Other Notes

The 2000 Kenneth Branagh film has been pretty thoroughly scrubbed from the internet, but we did locate a German trailer for the dub of the film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53hDoUMvZhk

As well as this audio from the original trailer, mixed up with a webseries that seems loosely based on the same events as the play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVuR945tOqk&feature=emb_logo

Previous Episode

Episode 17 - The Rape of Lucrece & Venus and Adonis

Of all Shakespeare's works, we were surprised to find that the most prescient and insightful thus far was not one of Shakepseare's plays, but one of his long form narrative poems. In the MeToo era, you'll find more willingness to discuss the terrible realities and long-lasting effects of sexual assault and gendered sexual power dynamics, but it was surprising to see them tackled so head-on in a poem from the 16th century.

In this episode we talk about the gender politics the two contrasting poems put forward, the insanely high quality of Shakespeare's writing, and the amazing psychological and artistic depths he was already reaching at this point - all while providing some of the historical and literary context that would help a new reader approach the texts.

This episode is also deserving of our first content warning, as we discuss sexual assault, unwanted sexual advances, and generally don't shy away from talking about the full range of what Shakespeare put forth in this unforgiving look at sex, desire, and power. Listen with care.

Next Episode

Episode 19 - The Sonnets

Shakespeare's sonnets are often the first and perhaps the easiest entry point for beginning students. They are lovely little bite-sized poems that exist in discrete units which can be appreciated as works of deep emotion and literary beauty or in grand cycles in the poetic tradition that lead the reader through a flurry of emotion when read together with other similarly-themed sonnets. Most of all, they contain some of Shakespeare's most romantic and certainly most famous written passages.

Our study today tackles the sonnets from both angles. We consider the history of the sonnet and the tradition within which Shakespeare wrote his 154-cycle work of art, before branching out into the works themselves, looking at them within the three distinct groups scholars have identified and as works unto themselves.

Eternal Bickering

It's a new year, a new decade, and so our newly named "Eternal Bickering" segment sees us tackling the age-old question of how to read the sonnets: Should they be considered autobiographical or not?

Notes:

List of Sonnets (with notes)

An Outline of the Contents of Shakespeare's Sonnets

The 8 Types of Sonnets and How to Tell Them Apart (check out the Terza Rima, Curtal, and Modern Sonnet!)

A fascinating article from the British Library about Mary Fitton, scandalized by her out-of-wedlock pregnancy by Shakespeare's patron, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, and candidate for Shakespeare's Dark Lady.