ABOUT THE PLAY

Love's Labour's Lost
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Peter Pasyk

House Program for Love's Labour's Lost

Grade Recommendation 8+

Content Advisory

Please see the show page for a detailed audience advisory.

Synopsis

In the Kingdom of Navarre, King Ferdinand and his three companions make a pact: in order to further their studies and wrestle with the great philosophical questions, they will avoid all female company for three years. The life of the heart, the men declare, must make way for the far superior life of the mind.

But the arrival of the Princess of France and her three lovely companions puts the King's decree to an impossible test. Meanwhile, romance is threatening Ferdinand's plan outside the scented gardens of the nobility. Love letters are posted, misdelivered and misinterpreted. Comic subplots abound. Vows are pledged and disavowed. Light-hearted drama reaches its climax in a twist as the four budding philosophers are schooled in the ways of the human heart.

Love's Labour's Lost is one of Shakespeare's earliest and most beloved comedies. As critics have noted, it is the first of the Bard's plays to fully display his command of a dizzying range of poetic and rhetorical forms. The play's love-smitten characters exchange puns, rhyming couplets, metaphor, and high philosophical speechifying, testing the very limits of language and expression. In doing so, they dramatize the conflict between heart and head, desire and will, and idealism and reality. Shakespeare is also making a wry comment on the impossibility of trying to contain the female experience within the narrow male gaze.

Reimagined for contemporary audiences by renowned director Peter Pasyk, Love's Labour's Lost shines a gentle light on our romantic aspirations and our often feeble attempts to express them.

Curriculum Connections

• Global Competencies:
  • Citizenship, Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking, Creativity, Metacognition, Self-Awareness
• Grade 8
  • The Arts
  • Language
• Grade 9-12
  • The Arts 
  • English
  • Health and Physical Education
• Grades 11-12
  • The Arts
  • English
  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Themes

• Appearance and Reality
• Authenticity
• Human Nature
• The Idealization of Women
• The Inevitability of Passing Time
• The Pursuit of Knowledge
• Love, Desire and Courtship
• Metatheatre
• Morality and Hypocrisy
• The Power of Language
• Social Status and Power
• Temptation and Responsibility
• Trustworthiness
• Upended Expectations

DISCUSSION AND REFLECTION QUESTIONS

PRE-SHOW QUESTIONS

• Do you believe young people can truly fall in love? Why or why not?
• Why do people write love letters? What are their intentions?
• What makes an effective love letter? Explain your thinking.
• What does the title of the play bring up for you? What clues does it give you about what the play might be about?
• Have you ever pretended to be someone you were not to get what you wanted? Do you feel that it ultimately helped you to accomplish your goal? Why or why not?
• What does trust mean to you? What is the relationship between boundaries and trust?
• What is more important in life: pleasure or discipline? Why?
• Should we always give people the benefit of the doubt? Why or why not?
• In what ways do romantic comedies reinforce traditional or problematic ideas about gender? In what ways do they support more radical or progressive gender ideas?
• What questions would you ask yourself or others before making a promise?

POST-SHOW QUESTIONS

• Choose one character from the production. What were your first impressions of them? Identify three elements that led to your impressions. In what way did your thoughts about that character transform by the end of the production?
• In your opinion, who was the most powerful character in the play and why?
• How do the King of Navarre's actions and decisions in the play reflect his conflicting desires for love and knowledge? Identify examples from the production to explain your thinking.
• Who do you believe was controlling the events of the play? Explain your thinking using examples from the production.
• In what ways do you think the male characters' assumptions about the women might have affected the way they approached their interactions?
• Are there any unintentional harms that might be caused through the production of this play? If so, what are they and what might be done to take care of the artists and audience members participating in the work?
• What differences did you notice in the principles or values of characters of different classes?
• Costard, the clown, is shown to lack the skill of reading, but is portrayed as intelligent in other ways. How might this relate to our understanding of education and intelligence today?
• Which of the characters do you feel are truly in love at the end of the production? How do you think the relationships at the end of the play will change over the next year? Explain your thinking.

MINDS ON

Objective: Students will explore a key plot device and analyse the language of Love's Labour's Lost by paraphrasing love letters read aloud in the play.

Materials: Printed copies of love letters from Love's Labour's Lost (Act 4, Scenes 2 and 3), paper, writing utensils, access to Alexander Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary (online or physical copies), access to dictionaries 

Directions:

1. Introduce the play through the synopsis and its themes, highlighting the importance of language, love and learning.
2. Let students know that they will be focusing on love letters read aloud in the play and will be invited to paraphrase them
   to explore how language is used to convey deep emotion.
3. Distribute copies of the love letters (which are read aloud in Act 4, Scenes 2 and 3).
4. Invite students to move into groups of three or four and ask them to divide their chosen letter so there is one section per person. Ensure that they divide the letters so that each person's section ends on a complete thought (complete thoughts are marked by periods, question marks or semicolons).
5. Ask students to read their section carefully, using Alexander Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary
   to look up the words they find unfamiliar. If the words remain unfamiliar or cannot be found there, help students use a dictionary and context clues to get to know them.
6. Then, invite students, together as a group of four, to paraphrase the letters, thought by thought, to reveal the meaning and intent behind the letter.
7. The class will come together and each group will share their letters aloud, with half of the group sharing Shakespeare's
   words and other half sharing their group's paraphrased letter, alternating after each complete thought.

Possible Extensions:

• Writing in Verse: When paraphrasing the letters, encourage students to use words that keep the paraphrase in the meter in which Shakespeare wrote their passage.

Debriefing Questions

• What did you notice about the words your character chose? Was there an abundance of pronouns, adjectives or verbs?
  What might this tell you?
• Using an example from one of the paraphrased letters, what do you think makes a compelling love letter?
  
  

CONNECTION TO THE ARCHIVES

Sarah Afful as Rosaline, Tiffany Claire Martin as Katharine, John Kirkpatrick as Boyet, Ruby Joy as the Princess of France and Ijeoma Emesowum as Maria in Love's Labour's Lost, 2015. Directed by John Caird. Designed by Patrick Clark. Lighting design by Michael Walton. Sound design by Peter McBoyle. Photograph by David Hou. Stratford Festival Archives, GPO.2015.007.0198

This will be the Stratford Festival's 11th production of Love's Labour's Lost since 1961. Why do you think it is so often produced? What do you imagine will be different about the 2023 production in comparison to the last time it was produce (in 2015)? 

The Stratford Festival's Archives maintains, conserves and protects records about the Festival and makes those materials available to people around the world. Their collection contains material ranging from 1952 right up to the present and includes administrative documents, production records, photographs, design artwork, scores, audio-visual recordings, promotional materials, costumes, props, set decorations and much more. These materials are collected and preserved with the aim of documenting the history of the Festival, preserving the page-to-stage process, and capturing the creative processes involved in numerous other activities that contribute to the Festival each season.

RESOURCES

Trailer -  Love's Labour's Lost (Coming Soon)
House Program - Love's Labour's Lost
Study Guide PDF - Love's Labour's Lost

Study Guides

View past Study Guides and Study Guides for all 2023 plays, available free of charge on our website.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Alexander Schmidt, Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary (Perseus Digital Library)

Love's Labour's Lost, Valentine's Day at Oxford (University of Oxford)

Remembering 2015's Love's Labour's Lost with John Caird, Ruby Joy and Mike Shara (Stratford Festival)

Stratford Public Library Suggested Reading List for Love's Labour's Lost

Booking Information: Tickets, Workshops, Chats and Tours

Student Matinées

You may book any available date, but selected student matinée performances for this show are at 2:00 p.m. on the following dates:

• Wednesday, September 13th
• Thursday, September 21st
• Friday, September 22nd
• Friday, September 29th 

Workshop & Chats

Pre or Post-Show Workshops and Post-Show Chats (virtual, onsite or at your school/centre) can be booked by calling the Box Office at 1.800.567.1600.

TOOLS FOR TEACHERS SPONSORED BY

Tools for Teachers include Prologues, Study Guides and Stratford Shorts.       

 PROUD SEASON PARTNERS 

PRODUCTION SUPPORT FOR LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST IS GENEROUSLY PROVIDED BY CATHERINE ELLIOT SHAW IN MEMBORY OF JOHN D. SHAW, AND BY THE TREMAIN FAMILY.

THE APPEARANCE OF MEMBERS OF THE BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATORY IN LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST IS GENEROUSLY PROVIDED BY THE MARILYN AND CHARLES BAILLIE FUND AND BY ALICE & TIM THORNTON.